Now we speak a lot about character and confidence, but there’s a word that keeps gnawing at me: dignity. Dignity is essentially having enough self-respect to conduct yourself with diplomacy and discipline in unfavorable situations. And that self-respect is enormously valuable because if you don’t respect yourself, nothing else matters.
Without self-respect, being your best is an impossibility because it determines how you handle yourself in every situation-- not to mention how you handle the other people that interact with you. Now, in order to truly have dignity and self-respect, you also need to have a healthy self-esteem. Self-esteem is different than self-respect because it speaks of how you feel emotionally about yourself.
DIGNITY :: self-mastery and fortitude with which one conducts himself in the face of life's unwelcome changes & rude behavior of others.
SELF-RESPECT :: recognizing standards and then judging oneself worthy by the degree to which one lives up to them.
SELF-ESTEEM :: feeling good about oneself.
So when I look around social media, the Internet, television, you name it, I am super concerned that we have forgotten what it means to have dignity. Social media's toxic seduction has many betraying their own dignity.
The common understanding of what is considered appropriate has been drastically morphed over the years. Just log on to any social media site and you can immediately see the bullying and spewing of disrespectful rhetoric about race, politics, religion and everything in between. This
transformation seems to be directly correlated to social media.
Most notably, we are living in a ‘selfie society’, and what concerns me the most is the constant seeking of reassurance -- which ultimately won’t lead to being happy. It’s comparable to a junkie who is addicted to drugs – each time someone posts, it’s like, “Whoa!” and then he’s chasing that first time feeling of getting a lot of likes and positive comments. But what happens when he doesn’t?
He starts questioning himself.
Developing self-respect is crucial. You should never lose sight of the fact that you need to feel like you are somebody because you were a man of principle, and not because others tell you that you're somebody. You are somebody because you are a man of your word and responsibility! And from that, you love yourself, you believe in yourself, and you know that you bring value which are the
cornerstones of self-esteem. This is not achieved by how many friends, subscribers, followers, or likes you have on social media.
What matters, and don’t lose sight of this, is being a good person with good character and DIGNITY. I know that the concept of dignity is a little bit abstract, but hopefully you get the point of this message. All I'm saying is that you need to feel fulfilled because of the person you are, not because of the reinforcement that you're getting from other people. Forming your sense of self around
how other people define you is not healthy, and this is a danger that we as a society are facing.
"Be aware of what you post, how you respond, and what you read. Social media already takes up much of our time and energy, don’t let it take your dignity.”
Social media is not going to get any better, so we need to take the situation upon ourselves and make sure NOT to rely on other people to make ourselves feel whole. We should, instead, build our own self-esteem (emotions) and know we’re respectable (actions) people. These are not built on what other people say but from belief in yourself and love of yourself which will translate into your
daily actions, aka your dignity (self-control).
This dignity translates into being a gentleman ... but we’ll save that discussion for another newsletter
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