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I spent years swallowing disrespect until I realized that I was literally training people to walk all over me. And Now I'm the CEO of acquisition.com. i help thousands of business owners to grow because I stopped tolerating that bull and I started commanding respect through actions. So if you're sick of being talked over, torn down, or treated like a joke, here are six tactics that will help teach people to respect you. Number one is that respect starts with you. Let's start with the biggest lie that you've ever been told. Right? Respect is earned from others. You don't earn respect. You set the standard for it. And most people set the bar way too low. Self respect is built. It is not begged for. And chasing respect is actually the quickest way to lose it. Every day, people walk into rooms, begging, pleading, being desperate to be respected. Okay, maybe it's a boss because they undervalue you. Maybe it's a partner that doesn't honor you, or they don't respect you, or maybe it's a friend that just takes you for granted all the time. But the truth is this, okay? You do not get respect by asking for all these, like, tips and tricks videos teaching you how to get respect with, like, long stares and body language. They are stupid and they're not reality. The real foundation starts with the fact that you don't even respect yourself. And so you get it by becoming the person who wouldn't tolerate that disrespect in the first place. Because if you tolerate it with yourself, then you'll tolerate it from other people. Respect isn't earned from other people. It's actually maintained within ourselves. And then other people catch onto the respect that we already have with ourselves. So people respecting you is actually a lagging indicator of you respecting yourself. Meaning the world catches up, but you're the one who has to go first, right? And so you have to respect yourself before anybody else is going to. And the fastest way to lose respect is to beg for validation from people who don't even respect themselves. I had a woman that came to me, it was about four years ago, and we had a meeting And I had 40% of my room was female executives. 60% was male executives. And one of the female executives came to me and she said, oh, you know, Larry doesn't respect me. It's funny, because the way that I actually saw the conversation go was that she has such little respect for herself. She didn't advocate for herself in the room. She didn't speak like somebody who respected herself and she taught other people in the room how to talk to her. Because of the way she showed up, she didn't have certainty, she didn't advocate for herself. And she allowed people to speak over her so many times that we catch ourselves pointing to the other person. And it's so often in the workplace, especially with women, we're saying, well, that person doesn't respect me. It's like, well, have I actually learned how to respect myself? Do I even know what self respect looks like? And I asked her that question, I said, do you know what it looks like to respect yourself? And she was like, I actually don't. I really don't. And it's a loop a lot of people get caught in. Someone disrespects you, it makes you feel small. You know, you feel pissed off, you feel frustrated, you feel angry, and then you think, I've gotta prove everybody wrong. So what do you do? You try harder to prove your worth and then what happens? They might actually respect you less, not more. And that's exactly what happened to her. She kept trying to prove that she needed to be respected. I saw she would escalate in the room, she would raise her tone of voice to do all these things that they weren't respectable, they were actually rude, they were mean, they seemed like somebody would do those things if you were talking to an enemy, not somebody on your own team. And then here's what happens. When she realized that was her behavior, she lost more self respect. And that's what happens in that cycle. Then you lose more self respect because you're trying to appease another person rather than yourself. And then you repeat the cycle. I know what you're thinking, which is like, if I stop trying to earn other people's respect, doesn't that make me look arrogant or selfish? But here's the thing. Respecting yourself doesn't make you selfish. It makes you stable. Because when you respect yourself, your boundaries are clear. You have standards that are non negotiable and people around you know where they stand. And ironically, it's like one of the kindest, most generous things that you can do because nobody has to guess who they're dealing with. They understand what your standards are and how you treat yourself. And trying to earn respect by tolerating disrespect is like trying to get healthy by eating cake and hoping your body's just not gonna notice. We wanna break that cycle. And that takes us to our next point number two. We measure people by what they cost you, not what they say. Just because somebody Talks up a big game doesn't mean that they should be in your life. So here's a good decision making filter. If somebody makes it harder to behave like the person I respect being they are too expensive to have in my life. Like, no matter how charming, how connected or how important they are. So here's the questions that you ask yourself to evaluate. Is that person worth your time and energy? One, do I like who I am when I'm around them? Two, do they challenge me in ways that elevate me or in ways that confuse and derail me? Most important, does my behavior with them when I'm around them move me closer or further from my values? A lot of people say, I know my boyfriend cheated on me, but he says what he says he is causing you to lose respect for yourself by staying with him. And it's not about him, it's about you. It's not that he inherently makes you disrespect yourself. It's that you choosing to stay makes you disrespect yourself. The same goes in the workplace. People ask me all the time, Layla, what do I do? My boss, I know they don't respect me. It feels toxic. It feels like they're constantly disrespecting me. How do I manage them up? You don't. You leave because you aren't going to change the other person. You just have to change the situation by changing how you've responded to the same situation over and over and over again. Person's not going to change because of you. People barely can get themselves to change. They think about yourself. Watching this video, you're trying to figure out how to respect yourself. You think for some reason you're going to have more pull over somebody else's behavior than your own. That's just not the case. And so you can't expect somebody's going to leave. You have to leave the situation. And I know that you're probably thinking, well, but this job, I can't get another job. Or like, this is my business partner. Like, I have to make it work, or I've been married for this. Like, I understand. But at the same time, there's a quote that comes to mind every time I think of this, which is like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting a different result. The situation won't change unless you do. And you don't change by wanting. You don't change by wishing and you don't change by feeling. You change by doing something different. Someone saying or doing Something disrespectful doesn't inherently make them toxic. It's allowing the disrespect. Is that what makes it toxic is that you allow yourself to remain in that situation. Someone can't disrespect you if you leave the situation. And so allowing someone to continually disrespect us is when you give away your own power and then you lose respect for yourself in the process. Here's where things get interesting, is that self respect is a system, not a feeling. Okay, Most people think that self respect is something that you earn, but the truth is self respect is a daily set of behaviors. You don't feel self respect, you do self respect. So let's break down the behaviors that actually build self respect. Number one, keep your word to yourself. I don't know how many times I have to say this. Keep your word to yourself. If you don't keep your word to yourself and you are pissed that people disrespect you, then you have nothing to complain about. You don't respect yourself. Of course they don't respect you. And you might say, oh, this person disrespected me by saying they were going to do something and then they did something else, or whatever it might be. Okay, but if you don't even keep your word to yourself, how can you be pissed that somebody else doesn't keep it to you? This happens all the time in relationships. There's a saying that people say, which is it only takes one person to change a relationship. And that goes for this as well. Because if you change, the other person has to change their behavior. But a lot of people don't see that. They just see I need them to change for me to change or for me to feel better. But we don't have control over what other people do. We only have control over we respond to ourselves and what we do. The second thing you need to do is you need to leave environments that make you behave out of alignment. For example, When I was 18, I lived in a house with six people and I realized that everything they did, smoking, weed, drinking, partying, stealing, lying, cheating, it was all out of alignment with the person that I wanted to be. And so I left. I didn't say, you guys need to respect me by upholding these standards that I want you to have of your life, because for some reason that will make me feel better. No, I just said this. I'm leaving this situation. They can do whatever they want to do. I'm going to live my life how I'm going To live my life. And so I left, and then I went and I lived in a house by myself because I said it makes it harder for me to respect myself when I'm surrounded by these people. It's a question I ask myself a lot. Am I surrounding myself with people that make me lose respect for myself? Because maybe I'm tolerating stuff from them that I wouldn't tolerate from other people. Maybe I'm acting in a way when I'm around them that makes it harder for me to respect myself. Or maybe I feel that their disrespect for themselves makes it hard for me to respect myself around them. A really big one is when people are drinking and doing drugs. Like, I still to this day, get uneasy when I'm around somebody that drinks a lot because I feel they don't have respect for themselves. And I'm like, I just hold myself to a higher standard of how much I respect my body, my mind, all these things. It's really hard for me to be around that now because I know what it was like. And so I don't sit there and try to preach to them. I'm not like, oh, you should stop drinking. I'm just like, I just won't be hanging out with you. I'm not even gonna tell them. I'm just not gonna be there. You don't need to make other people feel bad for the fact they don't respect themselves. You just need to respect yourself by leaving the situation. Now. The third behavior is that you wanna choose discomfort over self abandonment. Most people, and this happens all the time, they would rather abandon themselves, their values, their principles, their sense of self, than be uncomfortable. Instead, we wanna say this. I will choose discomfort if it means keeping the respect I have for myself. So I'll give you an example of when this happened to me in the workplace. So when I got a job at a gym when I was 21, I joined a gym. And it was the one that I felt like I could make the most money the fastest, Which I had moved all the way across the country. I didn't have much money, so I was like, it, whatever, I'll just work here. And when I was there, I remember it was like four days in, and one of the managers, he was like, hey, you should go talk to those guys over there. And it was like this group of older men. And I was like, why? He was like, well, I think that those would be your ideal clients. And I was like, definitely not my ideal clients. My ideal clients are women in their 20s, why? And he was like, listen, I remember he looked me dead in the eye, and he, like, grabbed me on my shoulder. He put his hand right there, and he was like, pull down your shirt. Pull up your shorts. Go talk to them in the moment. I was like, I don't even know what's happening right now. And I end up leaving later that day. I said, oh, I have a stomachache. I've gotta go. And I just called them after and I said, I'm not working here. I'm done. And they were like, why? And I was like, not for me. I'd rather be uncomfortable knowing that I don't have the money, don't have all this, you know? Now I'm uncomfortable with the fact that, like, I don't know how I'm gonna make ends meet, but at least I keep my dignity. At least I'm keeping my values. Like, that's just not how I roll. And by the way, if you roll that way, whatever you do, you. But, like, I just don't roll that way. And so I was like, I just gotta exit the situation. And doing little things like that over time, that's how you build respect for yourself. It's by keeping the promises, keeping the boundaries, and deciding it's okay to be uncomfortable as long as I'm aligned with my values. The fourth behavior is speaking truthfully without emotionally vomiting. This one's insidious. A lot of people lose respect for themselves because of what they say to other people. And then they walk away thinking, I shouldn't have said that. I think I said too much. I'm not happy with how I showed up. I don't know if I should have said that. And that's because they speak out of impulse and emotion. This is when people speak from unmanaged discomfort rather than speaking truthfully in alignment with the results, they want. A question I ask myself all the time is, what do I want to have happen from this conversation? Like, what's the action I want this person to take? What would I like them to do? When we get done talking? I don't ask myself, how would I like to feel? I ask myself, what would I like to have happen? And that's a huge one. Because if you think about it, a good example is if you're mad at your spouse because they didn't get you the gift you wanted on your birthday, you say, okay, well, why am I mad? Because I'm uncomfortable with the fact that I think about them so much on their birthday that I would never forget this. But they forgot it for me. And so I'm uncomfortable. I don't feel good. Well, what do I want to have happen? Well, I want them to think of me on my birthday. Then do you think emotionally vomiting all over that person is going to result in them thinking about you on your birthday? Or do you think it's going to result in them liking you less because you made them feel bad for something they didn't even know that was an expectation of themselves. And so that's why you have to ask yourself these things. And people go around in the workplace, in their friendships, in their relationships, emotionally vomiting because it feels good in the short term and it feels really bad in the long term because you don't build that self respect. And so if you think about it, self respect is, is like fitness. You just do it one rep at a time. Every time you choose not to betray yourself, and every time you betray yourself, you lose self respect. Every time you break a promise to yourself, you're showing the world how to treat you and you show yourself how to treat you. Because here's the thing, people who really respect themselves, they just leave situations. And people who don't respect them, they don't complain about it and they certainly don't YouTube Google search videos about it. They just dip, they ghost them and they leave. So self respect is built in systems that make it easy for us to keep promises to ourselves. The fourth tactic is that respect is taught through consequences, not conversation. Saying to somebody, you need to respect me is useless unless there is no consequence. When they don't respect you, nobody disrespects us without our permission. And so respect is taught by what you accept, not what you explain to people. So let's go back to the cheating example. My boyfriend cheated on me and I told him, if you ever do this again, you, you have to respect me. You can't treat me like this. Words, just words. Words don't mean if you really wanted him to respect you, you would leave. And then maybe at that point you have a chance at salvaging the relationship because he has now learned there's a consequence. If I cheat, she leaves. Versus before it was, if I cheat, she just says some up to my face. She talks at me, I get yelled at for a day. The same goes for teammates. If they disrespect you and all you do is say words, nothing changes. But if you say, I'm taking this project away and you just take it away, if you demote somebody, if you suspend somebody, okay, now there's a Consequence. And that is likely not going to happen again. So here's the thing. Nobody is going to respect you unless you demand it through action, not through talking. There was a time when somebody said something to me. I remember this. There was an employee and they made a joke about me in front of my team and I was in a meeting with them. There was like probably six of us and I didn't say anything. I just left. Left. And me leaving, it taught me something, which was that there was nothing I could have said that would have been more powerful than me leaving that room. Not only did I get an apology, I got the most remorseful letter I've ever read. I can't believe I offended you so badly you left the room. And the thing was that I didn't feel bad about myself for leaving the room. I didn't regret it later because what would I have done otherwise? Say something. Emotionally vomit. Then I'm doing something that feels out of alignment with my values because I don't like yelling at people in front of people. I don't like making people feel bad. I also don't like being made to feel bad. So I just left. And that's why people will respect us through our actions, not our words. Which brings me to point five, which is mastering emotions is one of the highest forms of self respect. People who are really, really powerful, people who have true personal power, they don't yell at people. Emotional outbursts, they can feel satisfying, but they don't teach people anything. Calm, decisive action does. And so mastering our own emotions and is how we successfully create boundaries without all the drama. You don't need to yell, you don't need to shout to explain yourself. You decide ahead of time what happens the next time somebody does something and then you follow through with it. When the thing happens, when they do this thing, when they say this thing, when they have this action, no yelling, no emotional vomiting, no explaining. You just do the next thing. That means that if somebody cheats on you and you're thinking to yourself, I will leave, you don't need to yell at them. You just leave. The next time your boss yells at you, say something demeaning to you, they talk about how you're not worth something, they do something unethical, you just leave. You don't say something. This is not about your boss, this is about you. It's about you respecting yourself enough to walk away from the situation and not need to emotionally vomit on somebody. Because that again is going to make you respect yourself less. So what does handling your Emotions look like in practice, we do not fight. We don't argue, we don't yell. We don't call people names that are derogatory. Instead, we choose silence and action over conflict. We use our actions, not our words. It's funny how we're taught that when we're young, like, use your words. Like, no, use your actions. We distance ourselves rather than trying to prove a point to somebody. And then we calmly exit situations instead of emotionally exhausting ourselves in front of people. And I know it feels like you have to confront everybody every time they wrong you, but you leaving and enacting a consequence says more than any word could ever say to somebody. And so anytime you create drama, think about it, you end up respecting yourself less. So you have to learn to master your emotions, stay calm, and use your actions. The sixth tactic is that high respect. People never argue to be respected. They just leave. So you'll never see a confident person begging to be valued. They've already decided their worth before they walked in the door. An example of this is like the. When I was in college, I had a boyfriend that I was with for a year and a half. I found out he cheated on me. And he told me. And I remember sitting there and the first thing that came out of my mouth was, okay, well, I guess we can't be together. And I remember he was like, first shocked that I wasn't yelling. Secondly, shocked, like, oh, wait, what? He was like. He was like. He could not compute. I'm sure that guy had never had a girl not scream and rip his head off when he had cheated, because he'd definitely done it before. And I was just like, yeah, well, then we can't be together. And I remember I made a choice consciously in that moment. I was like, I want to respect the woman I am and how I handled the situation. Because guess what? I had already decided if anyone ever cheated on me, I would walk away in silence. I'm not going to yell, I'm not going to scream. I'm just going to be done. And why is that? Because it's not about them. It's not about how they feel in the situation. It's not about if they know they disrespected me. It's because I wouldn't respect myself if I turned into the girl who screamed, who cried, who begged. I don't want to be that person. I don't want to carry that with me. I don't want to wake up the next morning and think about that. And so I said, we can Be friends. If anything, he was a nice guy. I liked him. He'd made a mistake. But I was like, I've already decided, I'm done. We're not gonna be together in a situation. I know a lot of people think, well, shouldn't I try and talk it out? Am I just giving up? And it's like, why do we talk? Why do we talk to people? We talk to people because we wanna change something about what they do. So my favorite thing that my husband and I do is that when we have tension, when we have anything we disagree on, we just say, what would you like me to do differently? Because we have all this drama in relationships, people stay up until three. I've never done that in the last 10 years of my marriage, by the way. I did not stay up till 3am we do not have late night fights. It's very short, to the point, like, we get it. We, we have this down. What do you want me to do differently? I don't need you to yell at me. I just want to know what behavior would you like me to change? And then I can decide if I'm willing to do that or not. And if I'm not, we'll just come up with a different way of doing this. And the second piece is that, like, leaving doesn't mean that you give up. It means that you grew up. You recognize that some conversations don't need to be had. Not every conversation needs to be had. It really doesn't. And if they didn't change after the first time that this situation occurred, then they're probably not going to change after the fifth or the sixth. And so walking away from a situation is not quitting. It's choosing to respect yourself more than the situation. And that is why respect doesn't start with other people. It starts with you, with how you behave, with how you show up. And it's what you tolerate. And the version of you that you're trying to be can't survive in an environment where you're constantly disrespected by yourself. If this video helped you and if this resonated with what you're struggling with right now, you can go ahead and check out my video on how to become dangerously confident.