THE SELF GROWTH JOURNAL

You don’t have to abandon yourself to make everyone else comfortable.

How often do you agree with a plan you dislike, wear something you don’t feel comfortable in, stay silent when something bothers you, or adjust yourself simply because you don’t want to disappoint someone?We often call it being understanding, flexible, mature or accommodating. But sometimes, beneath all that adjustment, there is something deeper. We are slowly learning to put ourselves last. And that is where self-respect begins to disappear.

Just a few days ago, while I was dining with friends, they asked me if I was comfortable with Chinese cuisine. I nodded even though I wasn’t comfortable. I thought I did this to avoid the hassle of changing the cuisine and venue. But soon I realised this is what most of us do very often.

Food, Clothes, Weekend plans, Friendships, Relationships, Even simple everyday decisions, we swallow our preferences to keep things comfortable for everyone else. It is good to accommodate everyone else, but perhaps it becomes unhealthy when you constantly abandon yourself to keep others happy. And this is deeply rooted in the amount of self-respect we hold.

But what exactly is self-respect?

Is saying “I love myself” self-respect?

Dr. Morris Rosenberg, a renowned sociologist, 1965, defined self-respect as the self-evaluation of being likeable, competent and equal to the rest. Self-respect is the ability to believe with complete conviction that you are as good and capable just like others. It is the ability to keep yourself at par with the others if not at first in most of the situations.

Self-respect is like saying “My feelings matter, choices matter, boundaries matter and dignity matters”

Can we demand self-respect from the others?

The word “self” in self-respect signifies that it comes from within. Neither can it be demanded from others nor expected from them. In a room of hundreds of people, I can respect myself even without anyone uttering a word to me. The beauty lies in how I show up for myself, which is independent of how others treat me. It is built on self esteem and self-worth, which are completely internal phenomenon.

Have you noticed some people who just simply smile at events and praise how much effort the hosts have put in instead of complaining that they were not noticed, complimented, asked to eat or sit or welcomed properly?

This is because they know their worth and respect themselves instead of demanding it from others. Yes, humiliation, disrespect or mistreatment must not be tolerated, but it should not anyhow change how we respect ourselves. We should only seek internal validation not depend on others to feel worthy.

Does putting yourself first mean self-respect?

A lot many times, we are accused of being selfish if we put ourselves first. Women especially are targeted for expressing their opinion, preferences and for putting their comfort first. A line of demarcation needs to be drawn here.

Being ruthless or disregarding others to keep ourselves first is being irrational and unacceptable. One cannot do whatever they want under the pretext of self-respect and self-love. Self-respect means keeping ourselves at par with others and choosing yourself just as much as you value others. It simply means putting your dignity and respect first while also ensuring you don’t get brutal and negligent of others.

What does the absence of self-respect do to you?

1. You seek eternal validation. You constantly need someone to tell you that you’re doing well. You slowly hand other people the remote control to your self-worth. And that’s a dangerous place to live.
2. You become a doormat for others. When you repeatedly ignore your own boundaries, people may start assuming you don’t have any. You are always available, and they become accustomed to you accepting whatever they want.
3. Your relationship doesn’t sustain? Healthy relationships require two people who can express their needs honestly. If you constantly suppress your feelings, resentment eventually builds due to unspoken expectations, leading to the collapse of relationships.
4. It leads you to develop self-destructive habits. When you repeatedly teach yourself that your needs don’t matter, you may begin neglecting yourself in other areas too. Your health and mental wellness may be affected. Most of the addictions also begin from a loss of self-respect.

Why is it the most essential attribute we all need to build today?

1. It gives internal validation that subsides all external expectations. You stop waiting for everyone else to approve of your choices and you start appreciating your decisions and who you truly are.
2. It settles internal conflicts and brings inner peace. When your actions match your values, there is less conflict within you and you don’t feel the need to pretend to be someone else.
3. It removes all kinds of competition and brings joy. When you respect yourself, you no longer need to run the race to prove yourself. You don’t chase any deadlines to become your best versions.
4. It helps inculcate good habits that help in the self-growth journey. Understanding your true worth allows you to build yourself through good habits such as eating healthy, working out, developing new skills and educating yourself.

A 2023 study across seven countries revealed that self-respect and depressive symptoms are negatively correlated. This implies that a significant increase in the level of self-respect leads to a fall in depressive thoughts and promotes better mental well-being. In a world that constantly tells you to prove your worth, compare your life and seek approval, self-respect gives you something far more valuable.

It allows you to be yourself without any guilt and perhaps that is the quiet power of self-respect.

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Your journey is meant to be your own and not a copy of someone else’s

We humans are inherently social animals, a truth observed long ago by Aristotle. As we move through life, we form connections, build relationships, and become part of a social web. As we grow, the web keeps expanding. We are wired to look sideways, at our neighbours, our friends, relatives, the stranger on the other side of a screen, and we measure ourselves in relation to them.

Try as we might, we cannot survive without our sociosystem. Just like every other being requires an ecosystem to survive, we humans require a sociosystem. Our sociosystem consists of all those with whom we interact or have a relationship, whether personal or professional. The problem arises when we see ourselves in the context of others.

When Comparison becomes the compass

Comparison means the act of considering something or someone similar to another. If used wisely, comparison could be the most powerful tool for growth. If an athlete compares his records with those of other athletes and pushes himself to do better, then it is a forward-looking kind of comparison. It fuels ambition and efforts.

However, the moment you start comparing your inner strength and capability with the external achievements of another, it pierces through your self-worth and starts to work against your growth. We start to compare our skills and abilities with the external achievements of others. We see the progress of others and we compare it to our failures. Someone’s new car is a reflection of my failure to buy one for myself. Someone’s admission to a leading institute is my failure to get good grades. Someone’s beautiful or rich spouse is my failure to get one. Every comparison starts to reflect upon our own inner capabilities. we stop looking at our journey and instead every action is seen in the light of others and in this process we lose touch with who we are. Each time we compare, we are less of us and more of the other.

I ask, who are we to compare who is better?

When we set out to compare ourselves with others, we convene an invisible courtroom where we present evidence against ourselves, argue harshly against our own abilities and in the end we pronounce judgments against ourselves. Doesn’t it sound a little absurd that we give evidence against our own capabilities.

If you observe your life carefully, you might be doing this self-sabotage more often than you think. Each day, in subtle ways, we measure our lives against others. We see someone achieving more, moving faster, or reaching farther and without realising it, we begin to question our own journey. We scroll through the highlights of others’ lives on social media, the awards, the milestones, the radiant social life, etc., and we put them against the unfiltered, raw and crude life of ours. We compare the stage performance of others with our backstage fears, mistakes, anxieties and failures.

It’s time to return to the real race

The real comparison is not against others but against who we were yesterday. Our skills, our ambitions, our journeys, they are ours in a way that no one else’s can be. Our timeline is not a slower version of someone else’s story. It is a completely different story. The chapters are not the same. The themes are not the same. Each one’s book is different from the other and no amount of comparison can equate the two. The centre of our focus should be on us, our growth, our skills, our abilities and our ambitions. Our goal should be in accordance with our desires and not the achievements of others.

Practical ways to stop comparison and build self-worth

1. Shift the benchmark to yourself
Make yourself the reference point. Instead of asking “Am I doing as well as them?”, ask “Am I doing better than I was last month or last year?”. We know our own starting point, our own strengths and weaknesses and our finishing line. Tracking your own progress, improving skills, building habits, and gaining resilience anchors us in reality rather than illusion.

2. Borrow inspiration and not identity
Comparison isn’t always harmful. It becomes harmful when admiration turns into self-criticism. When you see someone doing well, pause and consciously reframe your thoughts from self-sabotage to self-belief and start working towards building yourself.

3. Audit the content you are feeding your mind
Most of what you see online is a highlight reel, carefully edited, filtered, and timed. You’re comparing your everyday reality with someone else’s best moments. That’s not a fair contest. Limit the content you feed onto in social media and start living in the real world.

4. Practice gratitude
Train your mind to focus on the blessings of your life. Start emphasising on what’s working for you rather than what’s missing. Comparison narrows your vision and gratitude widens it.

Stop measuring your chapter against someone else’s cover. The most extraordinary story you will ever read is the one you are still in the middle of writing  and it was never meant to look like anyone else’s so believe in your worth and work hard to make it accomplished.

We live in a world overflowing with “How to” blogs and tutorials. Every challenge, whether it’s tech trouble, health concerns, or financial stress, seems to have a step-by-step solution just a click away. Yet, once we close the tab, the information often sits idle in our minds, rarely transforming into real life change.

Here is a space that will gently guide you through life, not by shortcuts, but through practices, coping mechanisms, and lessons from my own healing journey. It will provide ways to nurture resilience, emotional strength, and personal growth. My hope is that these reflections guide you in your own journey of self-discovery and healing.

🌸 The Practice That Changed My Life

I wish to start this initiative with that one practice that has stayed with me forever and has helped me, guided me and shaped me into who I am. We often catch ourselves caught in loops of regret about the past or anxiety about the future. Questions like Why did that person betray me? What if my decisions don’t lead to success? Why was life unfair to me? Keep haunting us. As we grow older and accumulate experiences, these thoughts intensify. But pause for a moment and think, was this the case when you were a child?

Children are the happiest not because life was easier back then, but because they live fully in the present. They laugh, play, and experience each moment without the burden of past regrets or future fears. As we grow, we gain experiences and learn the standards set by society for success and well-being. The achievements of others and the idea of a perfect future generates anxiety in our minds.

We keep revisiting our past or worrying about our future and in this process, we lose out on our present. As it’s rightly said, one has to be somewhere; if not in the present, he will either be depressed about the past or anxious about the future. As humans, we have a tendency to either visit our past that drains our energy or anticipate the future that makes us fearful of what might go wrong in future. In both scenarios, the event has already happened or it might most likely never happen in future but we ruin our present by thinking about them.

🧠 The Monkey Mind

Psychologists describe our minds as “monkey minds”, constantly hopping from one thought to another. We can travel decades in time and continents in space in a few seconds. On average, humans have more than 6,000 thoughts a day. Most of these are repetitive echoes of yesterday, ruminations, worries, and mental noise. In both cases, the present moment slips away unnoticed. Physically, we may be here, but mentally we’re decades away.

So, how do we break free? How do we stop being prisoners of time, haunted by the past and anxious about the future? The answer lies in awareness and training. Living in the present is not a gift, it’s a skill. And like any skill, it can be practised and mastered.

Steps for Embracing the present:

1. Mindfulness: We have to start by observing our thoughts andeach time we catch ourselves thinking about past or future, we have to catch hold of them and bring them back to the present. Daily meditation acts as a powerful tool to monitor thoughts and control them as and when required. It helps to guide thoughts in the right direction. Journaling is also a wonderful way to become aware of one’s thoughts.
2. Sensory grounding technique: It involves using the sense of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell to anchor yourself in the present moment. Each time we catch ourselves ruminating about the past or future, we must use our sensory organs to bring back our focus on the things present around us.
3. Deep Breathing: Taking deep breaths helps in centring our thoughts. Each time we inhale and fill our lungs with air, we force our brain to focus on something that is happening internally at the current moment. It calms our nervous system and brings us back to the present immediately.
4. Gratitude: Focusing on your blessings instead of what is missing from your life, helps bring calmness and positivity in our lives. Appreciating the relations, resources and career opportunities we currently have makes us more grateful and soothes our brain.
   
   

Adhering to these practices will develop mindfulness and it will eventually help in living in the present. My grandmother remembers the exact fare of a bus ticket she bought 30 years ago, not because she had extraordinary memory, but because she lived each moment fully. That’s the secret, when we immerse ourselves in the present, life becomes vivid, memorable, and meaningful.

Finally, Life is not meant to be lived in the shadows of yesterday or the fears of tomorrow. It is meant to be experienced here and now. By practising awareness, we reclaim our energy, our joy, and our peace.

Always remember that the present is the only place where healing happens.

Aakshi Goel, Well-Being Enthusiast