As I approach 30 years of life, it really just hit me: I’m responsible for how I continue to allow people to treat me. There comes a point when you have to get fed up with the things that people do to you. It’s only when you acknowledge that enough is enough that you will truly reclaim full dominion over your life. At the very minimum, you must demand people to treat you with basic respect. If people are not willing to treat you with respect, then take a stand against them. Cast those who are not willing to respect you out of your life. Do it right now! I had to come to the realization that if people are not going to do anything else they are going to respect me. I have recognized that I have the power to not allow disrespectful people to occupy space in my life. As long as you accept disrespectful people in your life, you need to own full responsibility for their treatment of you. It’s not their fault—it’s your fault. You keep allowing it so go ahead and own what you are doing to yourself.
Many of the people in our lives are disposable, but we keep them around like they are necessities. In essence, many people are optional but we let them stay around us like we don’t have a choice. When they keep mistreating and disrespecting you, look right in the mirror at the person who should be held completely responsible for this mistreatment and disrespect. You begin to press yourself smaller and smaller when you give people the constant authority to devalue you. Your mother and father did not conceive you to sit up there and let people persist to push you around and do you any way they want. You have the power right now to stop this from happening.
What’s really sad is many of us are not able to even understand when people are constantly disrespecting and mistreating us. We have allowed disrespect and mistreatment to become such the norm in our lives that we don’t see them as needing to be eradicated from our lives. Open your eyes and see what’s really going on around you. You deserve to be valued. The things that are important to you deserve to be respected.
I want you to think critically about the people in your life and give them a comprehensive evaluation. Are there any people who really do not value you as a person? Are there people who do not value your education, business, responsibilities, time, and/or etc.? Are there people who don’t show you appreciation for the things you do for them? Are there people who don’t evince their gratitude to you? If you have people like this in your life, then you need to dismiss them right now. It really is that simple when you truly love yourself.
Are you in a “serious” relationship with a person who only values you for the sexual intercourse? If so, eliminate this person from your life. Do you have “friends” who only come around you when they want something? Cast these people out of your life! Are there people in your life who only want to talk to you about themselves all the time and everything is always about them? Get rid of them right now.
We need to start appreciating and valuing ourselves more. Love yourself enough to get rid of the people in your life who are not good for you. The right time for some Spring cleaning is right now. Get busy!
Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Revolutionary Paideia 
Winning! Respect! Throw them a t-shirt on their way out!
Just sayin…winning!
LOL! That’s truly a #winning way to get rid of them. Thanks for reading and your response, Ginnie.
Excellent post! I hope that more than few take heed to the message that you provoke in this post. Nothing worse than a friendship or a relationship of pure convenience. Trust me! I will say that when you allow for people to treat you a certain way, then you are ultimately fostering their treatment toward you; good or bad. This, however, does not excuse the intentional and sometimes “indirect” actions, words, or social media blast of others messy ways towards who you are. I WILL NOT place all of the blame on myself. When individuals take it upon themselves to intentionally hurt the core of who I am or tarnish my character, I in most cases will “slaughter them with kindness”. Then there are others that only understand me when I am aggressive and harsh; also known to some in their description of me as ghetto or mean. I could go on and on about this post, but I digress and have to head toward the classroom of students that await. Again, excellent post and thank you for sharing.
Thanks very much, Pampered Sweet Tooth! I very much understand the sentiments expressed in your response. For me, I have to take full responsibility for what I’ve allowed others to do to me. After all, no matter how minor or significant these people have been in my life, I allowed them to occupy a space where they could constantly mistreat, devalue, and disrespect me. Whether or not I deserved their disrespect, devaluing, and mistreatment is up for debate, although I contend that I did not. What I have finally come to acknowledge is the only person who is holding me back from eliminating these people from my life is myself.
Life will present us with enough challenges and problems that are beyond our control. Therefore, there’s no use in me self-creating problems for myself to experience by allowing problem-people to occupy space in my life. I’ve resolved to take back that space that some people have occupied. Yeah, I probably should not say that I’m completely to blame but the way in which I process things has me to see that the root person who allowed all the negativity to persist is myself. Therefore, for me, it’s me who is responsible for it all. I allowed it–it’s my fault. It’s my fault no longer because I’ve made up my mind to eliminate all people who are problem-people in my life. Thanks very much for your great response and for reading.
This is a timely article with the seasons changing. I’m not sure if age has to do anything. We tend to have a few stragglers we have to cut off. I think it’s important to keep a strong circle of peers around. Not only do we have to appreciate ourselves more, we have to have consideration for others too.
Great post!
Thanks, Drew! Before we can have true consideration for others, we have got to do a better job of valuing ourselves first. One cannot truly know how to have serious consideration for others until he or she understands how to have true consideration for himself or herself. Thanks for reading and your response.
I gotta send this post to my cousin because I was telling her for lent many people need to give up on some people just as much as some things…
Thanks for reading, responding, and passing along the post!
I had that problem with someone I called my “bff” we grew up together and had been friends for 13 years. I realized that she didn’t respect me. When I decided I need to change that..I felt like I had no control.
Needless to say after a talk I told her how I felt and we have been good ever since. I think some people you can sit down and tell how you feel and they don’t feel like things have got to change then you exit stage left.
A lot of other people in my life didn’t make the cut. There for I step aside and moved on.
I love this post!
Thanks so much! Yeah, there are some people who you can sit down and talk with them about the problems that you have with them, but there are others that will need to be simply cut off. I appreciate you for sharing your personal example. Thanks for stopping by, reading, and responding!