Self-respect is free but 90% of people still won't do it
There’s a special kind of peace that comes from doing the small things before they turn into big ones. It’s quiet, sometimes invisible. You might not notice it in the moment, but you feel it the next morning when your space is clean, your mind isn’t buzzing, and you’re not already behind before the day even begins.
For a long time, I thought self-respect would feel (and look) more dramatic. I imagined it as something loud or firm, like standing up for yourself, saying NO!, refusing to be treated a certain way. And while all of that has its place, I’ve realized that most of the respect I show myself doesn’t look like some bold declaration. It looks like going to bed on time. It looks like making a real meal instead of eating snacks out of a bag. It looks like getting up when my alarm goes off, even when no one’s waiting for me. It looks like protecting my attention before I reach for my phone (this one is huge for me lately!)
These are not glamorous things. They are not self-improvement hacks or productivity rituals or tools for building an optimized lifestyle. They’re simply ways of saying, “I matter enough to not leave a mess for myself to clean up later.”
