"Self Respect"

My teacher presented the question “what was more important, self-respect or happiness”. The question was a intriguing question because I have never been asked to compare my self respect to my happiness. I always went through life as if they were hand and hand. I needed a better understanding so I grab my Oxford Dictionary/Thesaurus and looked up the terms. Oxford defined the self-respect as pride and self-confidence, happy as pleased or contented. Now I know many people will probably say that there happiness is more important than their pride and I have no problems with those who do so. However, I believe that you have to think about the self-confident part of the definition. I sat back and thought about putting my happiness in front of my belief in myself. I just could not imagine myself doing so. The confidence I have in myself is what leads to my happiness. My confidence or pride is what I stand on when it is time to perform task or when I am difficult situations that put me under pressure. From inner confidence I project and demand respect. This is also how I gain the respect and trust of others, which allows me to have a healthy social life. I also believe the respect I have for myself can be seen in the everyday me and has helped me tremendously with all the hiring process’s I have been through. Having self-respect is the same as having morale to me. My happiness is important and I want to have happiness in my life but I know that this cannot be achieved without having self-respect for myself. Another thing I know is that without respect others will take advantage of me. Men should have confidence at all time in their life.
Self-respect or self-confidence can also take a person down a narrow road where their vision is blurred and they depend too much on their opinions and findings to guide their lives. This would be a case of over confidence, and pride becomes the term commonly used when people mention you.
I have a very open mind so I do not let my pride get the best of me, often. I pride myself on being open to all things I believe I will stay that way. I am happy with myself today and hope I continue to prosper. Happiness I figure will come as long as I stay true to myself and remain confident in my actions, opinion, and ideas. The question caused me to put something’s into perspective and think about the things that are important to me but seldom pay attention to. It Important to me to have my children look up to me and respect me. I do not know if love is strong enough to keep my child from developing negative thought me and doing something wrong prematurely. This is why I hold self-respect so high, I have respect for myself there for I want to see myself succeed so my children will do better and know more than I ever imagined knowing.