Ways to distinguish yourself – #52 Continue to gain respect from people close to you
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 28 Oct 2005, 6:42 AM – 3 Comments
One of the questions in a recent interview was “What is your yardstick of success” and I remembered the above sentence and that was my answer to the question.
(Disclaimer: It’s not me who coined this phrase but I don’t remember who said it first)
Think about that for a second. Most of the time it’s easy to impress
someone who you met recently. They don’t know you and when they get to
know you for the first time – what do they hear? All your success
stories and achievements and how you are very good at that and how you
are very good at this. Simply speaking you will put your best foot
forward. Since the relationship is only luke warm, there is no
discussion about topics that will make you uncomfortable either. So you
are freely talking.
Now think about people that are close to you. They know a lot more
about you than others. There is no question of you putting the best
foot forward. You can try. But these people know your best and the
worst. So, if people that are close to you have to genuinely love and
respect you, you must be “special”. If you want to continue to gain
respect from people that are close to you, it requires special effort.
Some of the things that come to my mind immediately are:
* You can’t PRETEND to be good; you MUST be good
* You can’t PRETEND to care; you MUST care
* You can’t PRETEND to be honest; you MUST be honest
Of course, there are many more. I am sure you can create your own to-do list to continue to gain respect from people that are close to you.
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- Ways to distinguish yourself – #77 Treat your competition with respect
- “25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself” released at ChangeThis.com
- 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself in Spanish – Translated by Carlos Padilla
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3 Comments so far, Add Yours
anon on November 6th, 2007
That moulding comment sorta makes sense.
your close friends tend to figure out what your weaknesses or negative actions are and can start to lose respect for you in those areas.
so if you’re aware of this, you can choose to mould those “negative actions” around close ones so they don’t continue to develop that expectation of you. =]
Neto on December 8th, 2007
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Anonymous on April 27th, 2006
Wow! Interesting concept!
Very well said Rajesh. More to this ‘gaining’ the respect from the closed ones, I think the next challenge is ‘maintaining’ the expectations of that respect.
Many times it happens that, the more you become close to someone, the more that person understands your drawbacks. And then that person might start loosing the respect for you. Now to maintain the expectations of that person, you may need to mold yourself as per the expectations. And then being totally honest with yourself may not be valid anymore. To gain and maintain that respect, you may need to compromise on your own way of living and thinking.
But I think this is a little gray area. We can not draw the excat line where to mold and where to not!