“Some of us have spent many years of our lives trying to get other people to respect us more. We may even have built a strong case for ourself as a victim of the abusiveness of others…And yet all the striving, aching, and complaining seems only to leave us more frustrated than when we began.
At some point we start to wonder if there must be another way. And there is. The key to the healing of abuse of any kind lies in this one awareness: It is not the respect of others that you have sought and needed – it is your own. You cannot attract people, events, or situations that are respectful to you unless you first respect yourself. Until you respect yourself, you will create people and experiences that misuse you, abuse you, cheat you, and hide the truth from you. This will happen only because you have hidden the most important truth from your awareness: You are respectable and you deserve love.
When you love yourself, you do not need others to validate your worth. You know that you are important whether or not anyone else agrees with you. Your self-esteem is not founded on the approval of others; it comes from inside you.”
Alan Cohen, in “Dare to Be Yourself”
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.
