According to dictionary.com, respect means:

esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability:

“I have great respect for her judgment.”

to hold in esteem or honor:

“I cannot respect a cheat.”

to show regard or consideration for:

“to respect someone’s rights.”

Is it true, “All respect must be earned?” Many people strongly believe this. I will quote a friend who spent many years in the military. He said, “All respect must be earned. True respect is only obtainable from how you are living your life. While almost everyone will say they respect themselves, those that do not hold themselves to a high standard do not really respect themselves deep inside. How much you adhere to your own principles, determine how much you respect yourself.”

There is truth here, but is it the whole truth? The core question is: Does self-respect come from responsible behavior or does responsible behavior come from self-respect. My higher self tells me the later is more true.

My friend also said: “The more you respect yourself, the more you will require yourself to live at a higher standard.” This statement I can fully get behind.

We can at least agree there is a kind of respect that must be earned, but there is another kind of respect that does not need a kind of achievement. It comes from God. It doesn’t matter how far down the scale we have gone with our behavior, deep within we still deserve respect, and this respect can be rediscovered at any time.

Babies command our respect, and they do nothing for it. And we all have that beautiful child-like innocence still within us. Respect is our birth rite.

But some children were not given the respect they deserved. They learned they could only get some respect if they did what their caretakers demanded. Many of these people became over-achievers but never felt good enough no matter how great their actions. At some point most wound-up exhausted and depressed, and this was a ripe opportunity to go deeper to discover their deepest self that exudes unconditional love and respect.

Many lives have been saved when someone showed respect for a person who was really down on themselves for their past behavior. They were reminded that just being human, even with all their mistakes, gives them a divine right to be respected.

Beyond our human reactions and perceived limitations we have a soul that is always perfect, whole, beautiful, strong, loving, and innocent regardless of what we have done or not done on the personal level. Everyone deserves the dignity and respect of their human process, of their ability to learn and grow through their mistakes. Do we give a child less love and respect for falling down while learning to walk? No, the best we can do is respect its process whether they learn to walk or not. All beings deserve this unconditional respect, including ourselves.

Studies show, prisoners in Norway, who have been given the most respect, compared to every other prison system in the world, have had the greatest rehabilitation rate.

I myself, recently had this experience. I am a DJ, and usually proud of my performances that keep people dancing for hours, but last month I had an unexpected electrical problem that had me give the worst performance of my life. At the end of that dance, I could have hung my tail between my legs, and walked away as fast as possible in miserable disrespect, and by doing so invoke others’ disrespect. Instead, during the dance and afterwords, I internally told myself, “With this happening, I deserve MORE LOVE not less!”

When the dance was as over, I stood up, admitted it was my worse performance ever, explained I was choosing to love myself anyway, took a bow, and to my great surprise everyone clapped for me, loudly! This was a very healing and freeing experience.

Even though I had lost the kind of respect that comes from my behavior, I summoned the deeper respect that comes from my core, that we all share, an in so doing, I seemed to inspired others. Perhaps, if I can love and respect myself even when I make a big mistake, they also felt freed from any way they may have judged themselves as not good enough.

We have been so programmed to believe that we are only respectable if we we act in certain ways. I invite you to let go of the popular illusion your value comes from what you do. While you may feel a kind of respect for living your life at a higher standard (which can easily slip into a kind of arrogance or guilt when you miss the mark of your expectation), really, your value has nothing to do with your behavior. We are all equal in value whether we are rising or falling, winning or losing.

When our behavior is not tied to our value, we are free to be creative, to play full out instead of be crippled by serious perfectionism and judgment of ourselves and others. Imagine the day when most people unconditionally respect instead of disrespect people who are struggling and making big mistakes, because they stopped disrespecting themselves for their own mistakes. This unconditional respect that co-creates a more harmonious world is already starting to happen.