Standing your ground isn’t about being aggressive about what you believe or trying to push your beliefs onto someone else. It’s about knowing yourself and the things that really matter to you. It’s knowing your values and morals. And it’s about being in comfortable in your own skin with what you believe and standing up for it when it isn’t easy to do so.
People who are willing to stand up for themselves or others are people who aren’t afraid to stand alone if they have to. They aren’t paralyzed by what others think of them or of standing up for what they feel is right. They know that the cost of not standing up for what they believe, is greater to their self-respect and mental health than any difficulty that may happen because they stood up and pushed back.
What happens when we don’t stand up for ourselves?
When we don’t take a stand for the things that are non-negotiables to us, our self-esteem erodes one compromise at a time. We lose sight of our own feelings and defer to others and what they want. We stop feeling comfortable making decisions for ourselves. Emotionally, we can become sucked into other people’s drama and take on responsibilities that aren’t really ours. We completely lose sight of ourselves, and the price our mental health pays is enormous.
The funny thing is, we never mean for these consequences to happen to us. We want to be nice and not rock the boat. The problem is, we fall into the trap of operating this way, day to day. It becomes our pattern and routine, and we lose ourselves along the way.
One way we can start stand up for the things that are important to us is to start by setting boundaries with others. You can start with smaller things first if the major things feel overwhelming. In an earlier post, I talk about how you can start setting boundaries in a fair, assertive way.
Remember, empathy is a great trait, but that empathy without boundaries is a form of self-destruction. In this previous post, I talk about the mental health challenges that can arise when we don’t stand up for ourselves and set healthy boundaries. Your turn…What do you stand for? Are you willing to stand by what you say you believe in?
