This topic will be hard to swallow because it will deal with some terminology that is not exactly politically correct. The idea of respect and fear might be two separate notions when it comes to mindset, but when it comes to the code of conduct, they are the same. You cannot expect not to have respect with no fear implied or have respect with fear present. Though this notion is a complex one to follow, I will be breaking that down in today’s article on the ideas of respect and how it can be associated with fear.

There is one thing that many people want to have in their life. Wealth is the top one. The second is happiness/love/joy, all under one umbrella. Lastly, they want the presence of respect where they are. You might also think that health is one of the priorities, but health is one of those priorities we take for granted, so we will not see it as a priority until we get some wake-up call, i.e., heart attack, doctor call, etc. The reason for this is simple, we want the things we can see and pay attention to, and society does a great job of making us want wealth, happiness, and respect.

Though respect might be third on the list in today’s blog, it does not become a priority unless one or both of the basic things we want in life are not present. However, respect can operate on its own as a significant component of turmoil in one’s life and mind. Even if you have money or pretend to be happy, the lack of respect in your life, whether because of self or an outside factor, will leave you feeling empty. That emptiness is a dangerous place to be. After all, if you lack respect, you will be lacking in your critical reasoning skills because your mindset will not be in a positive state.

Before I dive into what defines Respect and Fear, we should have an understanding of the human mind when respect and fear are present or absent. Many would agree they want to have life present with respect and absent with fear, but in reality, people have it turned around. Many people live in fear and have several areas of their life where respect is absent. Though this is not on purpose, we must understand why this is the case. The reality is our minds are wired for negativity, which turns out to be the fear aspect, and we crave acknowledgment, which tends to be the respect aspect.

Respect is a deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, achievements, or the state of being admired or respected. This blog will look at the second definition more: are we being respected by others and ourselves? I will say from experience that many people have a terrible relationship with respect. They either do not know how to give it, or they do not know how to receive it. Giving it might look like taking care of your health or helping someone. Not having respect in a situation might look like copious amounts of drugs and drinking, lack of sleep, long-term unhealthy eating, and toxic and negative relationships.

If you are living with no respect according to these standards, you must have a healthy understanding of what should come next. If we lack respect, it is going to stop or restrict action. Like if you do not respect someone, you might not go out of the way for them. You might not even give them the time of day because you do not feel any type of connection with them. Respect is one of those connections that are significant factors in the quality of our relationship. If you have a low level of respect for someone, then the willingness you making changes or doing “right” by them is out the window.

Now I want to get into what will separate this article from other typical articles on the idea of respect. I have articles about respect differently; you can find them here. Today, I want to speak to you about the politically incorrect way we use respect, and that is with fear. Fear will be defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat. This definition of fear is the one we need to learn about the concept of respect and fear.

When I was young, my father was a construction worker. He moved heavy machinery daily, and his physique was that of a bodybuilder but even more solid. I remember when he would make a muscle, it was solid, like a piece of steel or rock. He was someone I admired,  but he was also someone I feared. My father never laid a hand on any of his children, and for a simple reason, he didn’t have to. Just his presence alone could bring happiness, or it could bring fear; we knew the difference.

What happened when we didn’t listen to our mom or didn’t show up in school and our studies he would make us aware that he was not our friend; he was someone to be feared. Though the most he ever did was take away our video games, the fear inside when it happened was almost helplessness. However, I knew I could take action, but what stopped me was not because I feared he would hurt me but because I respected my father. He was someone I looked up to as a young boy, and I learned the premise of respect and fear. Today, however, respect and fear have changed to some degree.

In our current society/world, many aspects my father lived by or upheld are no longer the way most people operate. Many parents want to be their children’s friends or in a relationship, but the wife does not respect the husband. Of course, the husband should respect the wife, but men and women process emotions differently. There is a great book called Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs. This book has helped save countless relationships and marriages because it clarifies that what men need is different than what women desire. However, when it comes to taking action toward the betterment of your relationships, respect is one of the fundamental aspects that have to be present.

Fear plays a role in respect when one person, typically the person who is the victim, must take action to make it known that respect was taken away. There is a reason why men do not go around yelling at other men in public. We would be in constant turmoil as a society. This is ingrained in our DNA; respect should be given unless we have something to gain or lose by not giving it. This means I will gain nothing from disrespecting a random guy on the street. However, I will gain something if I disrespect someone who needs to be put in their place.

Fear plays a role in putting someone in their place. Just like my father would lecture us or take our video games away, we knew this man could crush us in a heartbeat. Luckily for us, he never did, but just because you have the nuclear launch codes doesn’t mean you should be launching nuclear warheads at enemies or people with opposing viewpoints.  Often, when respect is absent and fear is not desired, we will ignore or continue with our life. However, there are situations where you cannot turn a blind eye, and you must take action.

One of the main areas where many people take action is the lack of respect in their relationships. It can be a friend, family member, or partner. Internal conflicts begin when respect is lost or someone walks over the line of disrespect. We can either tell the person we do not like what they did or ignore it to keep the peace. The issue with ignoring it is that the person who caused the disrespect will have learned that you are ok with what has been said.

Most people cannot look at a person and see their internal emotional response. This is a skill you can learn and strengthen. Still, many relationships lack this, and what happens, as a result, is one member of the relationship being unhappy for a short period or even a longer period. Respect, once lost, is typically hard to regain, but in our world today, a sorry can fix almost anything, right? Wrong! People’s mindset today with respect and fear is that they should respect someone and not use a negative aspect like fear for control because it is “wrong.”

There is a reason that our youth are running rampant, and there is no structure in the modern relationship, and it all stems from people not wanting to use fear when respect is lost. It is common in a relationship that if we offend someone and they make it aware, we apologize because we are afraid to lose them. As humans, we crave attention and acknowledgment; even deep down, we want at least one person to be with us and love us. However, that need can cause a lack of action, resulting in disharmony in the long run.

The aspect of applying fear into your relationships once fear is lost is politically incorrect in our current society. We should not need fear to make someone love us or appreciate us. The issue is that we live in a plush society where many people take what they have for granted. We have also been given a clouded sense of worth that stop us from looking at ourselves in our actual life but instead seeing ourselves in a haze of the fantasy we were told to believe. There is a reason the divorce rate in the west is so high, and it stems from respect and fear.

Since we have decided to live and act passively, for the most part, we will continue to allow disrespect in aspects of our life. As a mindset coach, I help people understand that if you do not have respect present, you have to make a difficult choice. Do you allow the person to keep making it and stay in your situation? Do you leave/run away to avoid additional conflict? Or do you instill fear into the other person to create the boundaries of respect? Regardless of your choice, you must know what the aftermath will bring to your mindset.

If you choose to do nothing, you will create a victim mentality mindset. If you ignore it and run away, you will create the habit of running at the onset of a challenge or struggle. If you instill fear, you will develop a restrictive mindset, which can be good and bad if viewed in a particular light. Depending on the situation, you might use one or a variation of these choices because not every relationship is worth keeping and fighting for, especially if you have grown apart from someone and your values no longer align. 

In our current world, we should be worried about the lack of respect and fear in relationships. What the majority of people are doing is checking out. Many men choose not to get married, and many women put their careers first and seek a man later in life. The issue with this is you cannot insert fear and respect into any of these mindsets because these people are under the impression they do not need anyone to survive. 

From our provisions to our technology, we have come a long way as a society; we are set in our basic need category. The consequence of creating a world that is easy to live in is people taking the relationships around them for granted. Though it can be seen from both sides in a relationship, there is one person who should understand what they will lose. However, in a world where we all get a trophy for participating, people have lost the value of self and cannot grasp the consequences of loss until after.

Applying fear to get respect is one of the instincts we have but have chosen to ignore. Typically you would not fight someone bigger and stronger than you from a safety standpoint. In our world today, we rely heavily on law and order and not so much on the human code of conduct. One of the major issues is why disrespect is rampant worldwide. The simple lack of consequences caused people to disrespect and have no penalty for fear, but will that be the long-term method as we evolve?

For now, we will continue down this path, but there will come a point where fear is used in conjunction with respect. Similar to how I respected and feared my father, we will again fear and respect our relationships. Of course, this will be a dominating aspect, especially in relationships, but as I said before, it won’t happen for quite some time. Men have decided to choose weakness and femininity, so they will not have a harsh hand, especially if they are in a scarcity mindset.

One of the most dangerous people to fear today will be someone who has the values of respect and fear and uphold it in their walks of life. I do my best to be understanding and politically correct, but my father instilled in me an understanding that we have a choice to make in our life. We can be taken advantage of and accept it, or we can handle our business and allow no one to stop us. As you can imagine, I choose the latter. I will not be held back, regardless of vows or commitments, if respect is not given. You can choose to fear or respect me; the choice is yours. I know I will not allow disrespect, especially continuously.

The idea of respect and fear is helping people understand their TRUE value rather than what they are led to believe. The issue with society today is that men have to create their value, whereas women have to maintain their value. That means men have to work to receive respect, and women must do what is necessary to maintain respect. What that entails will have to be for another article because the conversation is full of twists and turns. I can tell you that if you can learn to create fear without negativity, then you are on the right path to learning this aspect of respect and fear. You do not need violence, just as my father has proven effective. If the line is crossed of disrespect and action is necessary, you do not want to be on the other hand of someone who is not fearful of showing you how important respect is to them.

 

Until then,

Michael Rearden

Founder of Reven Concepts