If We Can't Make Someone Else Respect Us, What Can We Do? with Kushla Chadwick

Hey Matey's, Kushla Chadwick here!

Erin is in the hospital with a current health challenge and so she asked me to jump on and do a mini-episode with you this week.

So, let's lift her in our prayers because she absolutely is determined to be back soon.

But, this week, she asked me to talk to you about how sitting in the truth is one of the ways we respect ourselves.

If we are receiving the truth in our lives it helps us open up to truth. 

Opening up to the truth helps us respect ourselves and we teach others to respect us the way we respect us.

We can't make someone respect us, but we can invite relationships into our space that do because they reflect the respect we give ourselves.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Hey my friend, welcome back to the Other Side of the Struggle podcast. I'm your guest host, Kushla Chadwick, and I'm sending in today for my beautiful friend Erin, who has been unwell and actually in hospital. In case you didn't know, she'll be home by the time you're listening to this podcast episode. But if you could still send her some really good vibes, maybe if she's done something that's really helpful for you, you could send her a message saying, Hey, Erin, I listened to this podcast episode, or I read this post or this email, and it was really helpful and helped me to XYZ, then that would be amazing and really awesome for her. And also if you could keep her in your prayers for like a really awesome recovery, that would be amazing. All right, my voice just broke, so not really. Let's just dive on today's podcast episode. Today is what I call a mini sode. I don't know if Erin does mini sodes, but I do. Anyway, as I was preparing for today's mini sod, I kept coming back to one question. And Erin had given me some notes to think about, and obviously the topic, but yeah, I I'm kind of gonna share it like a a mishmash of our thoughts together really quickly. So I want to talk about today. If we can't make someone else respect us, what can we do? And I think this is an important question. And the answer is actually really freeing. We can become women who naturally invite respect from healthy people. Notice I said healthy people, because not everyone will respect your boundaries. Not everyone will like the version of you who stops people pleasing or starts speaking up. Sometimes the people who are most uncomfortable with your growth are the ones who benefited from your self-doubt and the behavior that came with it, right? Now that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong or you've been terrible or, you know, any of that stuff. Your journey has been your journey and you're awesome. But I want you to know healthy people are drawn to qualities like integrity, honesty, kindness, humility, and courage. And they trust people who say what they mean and mean what they say. People who own their mistakes, their decisions, and their commitments, people who know who they are. Now, those qualities don't obviously guarantee everyone will respect you, because maybe you'll you'll want to hit back at me and say, but kushula, like I am someone who's kind, I do have integrity, I'm honest, I have humility and courageous, but my husband still did XYZ or my parents still did ABC, right? I totally get it. Like, and I want to reiterate, those qualities don't guarantee everyone will respect you. But what they do is create relationships built on trust. And trust creates emotional safety. So one of the biggest shifts for me has been changing the question. Instead of asking, how do I get people to respect me? I am asked, I'm asking myself, am I respecting myself? Am I telling myself the truth? Because we can, like honestly, you might see yourself as an honest person, but there are all sorts of really sneaky sly ways we can slip into like avoiding telling ourselves the truth. And we kind of make ourselves lack clarity and lack awareness in certain areas because we don't want to sit with the truth ourselves or sit with yeah, sit with the truth ourselves, right? And so, yeah, that is the question to ask. Not not how do I get people to respect me, but am I respecting myself? So yeah, am I telling myself the truth? Am I listening to my intuition? Am I living according to the values that matter most to me? You'll be able to see that in your life. So, for instance, what value what matters most to me when it comes to my values? God, family, health, freedom, and fun. And you will like you will see it as so super obvious. Like you walk into my house, you see an infrared sauna, you see a gym set up in our out in the back area. You've there's a massage chair. The the food go open our our cupboards and you'll see certain foods and and they will be there because I value health and I value freedom. I want to be able to get around in the world well as I continue to age, you know. And so your values, if you're not sure what they are, you'll have a look. Um, one of mine's fun. I travel, I wouldn't say a lot, I travel a bit, you know, sometimes with friends, sometimes with my husband, sometimes with my husband and our children, sometimes with just one of my children, sometimes with two or three of them. Did I say with my friends? Like, yeah, so fun is something that I deliberately curate. And so for you, I want you to ask yourself am I living according to the values that matter most to me? Because it doesn't matter what other people's values are, you have to honor your own values, right? And am I making decisions from fear or from the woman God is helping me to be, right? So those questions have changed me because every honest answer strengthens the relationship I have with myself. And that's something no one can take away. When I think about respect, I can't help but, you know, think about do I have my own back? Am I really loving and respecting myself? And also I can't help but think about Jesus. He never chased people's approval, he never manipulated anyone into following him. He spoke truth with love, he honored people's agency and he allowed them the dignity of making their own choices, even when those choices caused him deep pain. And I think that's one of the greatest examples of respect we'll ever, ever see. Well, not I think, I know. And he loved people deeply without trying to control them. And I think that's our invitation too: to love people without losing ourselves, to tell the truth without becoming harsh, and to forgive without pretending hurtful behavior didn't matter. It does matter so much. And you don't have to keep staying in situations where hurtful behavior becomes normalized. It doesn't have to be normalized for you. Okay, that's a choice you have that you can make, right? And I also want you to have compassion without abandoning your own heart and your own feelings. I know that's not selfish, that's healthy. So this week I'd love to leave you with just a few questions, and you can take them to the Lord, you can write them in your journal if you'd like, but here are a few for you to think about. Where in my life am I trying to control something that isn't mine to carry? So, where in my life am I trying to control something that isn't mine to carry? Where am I waiting for someone else to change before I allow myself to heal? And what's one small promise I could make to myself this week and actually keep? What's one act of self-respect that reflects the woman I'm becoming? It doesn't have to be anything huge. Maybe it's going for a walk, making a phone call you've been avoiding, getting to bed earlier, finally saying no, or opening your scriptures before you open social media. Choose something that quietly says, like, this is amazing or this feels good, you know, to your own heart. And something that says, I matter, because you do. And every time you keep a promise you've made to yourself, you're cast in another vote for the woman you're becoming. And over time, those small decisions become your identity. Before we finish, I want to come back to where we started. We can't make another person respect us. We can't make someone tell the truth. We can't make someone choose integrity, but we can choose the kind of woman we become. A woman who lives with integrity, who honors her values, who tells herself the truth, who respects herself. And something beautiful happens when we do. Healthy people know where they stand with us, not because we're perfect, we're far from it, but because we're consistent and consistent in our values, consistent in our character, consistent in the promises we make to ourselves. And I think that's one of the greatest gifts healing gives us, not just healthier relationships with other people, but a healthier relationship with ourselves. True respect for ourselves as well. My beautiful friend, if no one has reminded you of this lately, your worth has never been determined by someone else's choices. Not by their betrayal, not by their dishonesty, not by their inability to love you well. Your worth was established long before any of those things happened. You are a beloved daughter of God. You always have been. And my prayer is that as you continue healing, you'll become someone you can trust, someone who knows her values, someone who honors her heart, someone who loves deeply without losing herself, because I truly believe that's where the other side of the struggle begins. And until next time, keep healing, keep trusting God and keep choosing truth and keep becoming the woman he created you to be.