I’m excited to continue our conversation about self-power. What is it? How does it manifest? Why do I talk about it? I care deeply about this topic, and I want to clarify what it is and isn’t. This concept goes deep, with many nuances in its foundation and what soft power truly means.
Today, I want to address one specific aspect and a possible misconception. The term “soft power” might be interpreted similarly to “self-love.” While that’s partly true, there are misconceptions about self-love, and the same applies to soft power. Let me elaborate on what I mean, focusing on the difference between self-love and self-respect.
Often, when we think of self-love, we imagine pampering ourselves—being kind, getting enough sleep and food, taking a bath, or getting a massage. It’s the self-soothing aspect. While this is part of soft power, it’s not its entirety or even its essence, in my opinion.
Soft power stems from a deep respect for yourself—for your energy, your divinity, your essence, your expression, your humanity, your time, your body, and your boundaries.
The difference between self-love and self-respect
In essence, self-love relates to sweetness, kindness, and being gentle with yourself. But self-respect isn’t always comfortable. Often, it’s not. For example, going to the gym, exercising, eating healthily, or doing a juice detox aren’t always comfortable decisions, but they show respect for our bodies. We know we’re honoring the temple we inhabit.
Self-respect sometimes involves facing uncomfortable situations: dealing with conflict, saying no, setting boundaries, respecting your energy, time, work, and who has access to you and how they treat you. These situations often arise in uncomfortable ways where you must stand up for yourself, set boundaries, say no, and unapologetically stop your energetic leakages. You must stop tolerating abuse and mistreatment. It’s uncomfortable because you might lose a client, a friend, or a connection. You might face humiliation, judgment, rejection, or punishment. You may experience emotional turmoil. But if you want to lead yourself powerfully and love yourself unconditionally, you must learn to respect yourself. As Brené Brown aptly says, “The most compassionate people are the most boundaried people.”
Why give your attention, care, love, time, focus, and gifts to people who don’t see, appreciate, or understand them? It’s not only unloving but also disrespectful to yourself. Self-respect is an invitation to fully honor your power. It’s not about cheesy love or mere TLC (Tender Love and Care) time. It’s a different aspect of true TLC.
Self-respect means truly loving yourself unconditionally. It’s not about playing the “good girl” or “good boy” or fawning to belong or connect in a false way. It’s about having your own back and loving yourself unconditionally, no matter what—choosing yourself first, always. Often, the superficial definition of self-love in society—treating yourself, having a nice dinner, pampering yourself—is a way to recover from the abuse and abandonment we’ve inflicted on ourselves, consciously or unconsciously.
For me, self-respect embodies your inner protector, your inner guardian. It’s about having no tolerance for bullshit, abuse, power leakages, energetic leakages, or boundary violations. It’s honoring yourself, taking yourself seriously, respecting yourself, and respecting the sacredness of your being unconditionally. Only then can your essence and heart soften. Only then can you walk with an open heart. Only then can you be indestructible yet soft. Only then can you stay in your softness while fully in your power.
You maintain your power because you honor it. I believe it’s only when you fully respect yourself that you can trust yourself. This is where you feel safe with yourself because you know you’ll have your own back when required.
This isn’t easy, especially if you’re a pioneer or rebellious, if you’re different from societal norms or collective rules, if you challenge the status quo or generational patterns. I can’t even begin to recount the stories of times I’ve gone against so many things. I’ve broken all the standards of traditional roles. Sometimes I was the only one in a class or group who stood up for what I felt was my integrity. I was called crazy. There were many times when I decided to speak up about my boundaries, my feelings, how I wanted to be loved, risking losing bonds and everything. And I did lose many bonds, clients, friends, and connections because I chose to respect myself and my integrity. I cried and grieved a lot, but I still respected myself because I decided not to abandon myself. That’s the key difference. You can love yourself and still abandon yourself, but if you fully respect yourself, there’s an unwavering voice saying, “I will not abandon myself.”
How is that translates into Soft Power.
This, for me, is what makes all the difference in soft power. It feels very different. Ironically, when you start to respect yourself, others start to respect you. You energetically shift all the abusive frequencies around you. They can’t withstand the face of self-respect. They can’t manipulate you when you stand in the integrity of your self-respect.
This is where you’re soft, calm, relaxed, grounded, and very powerful simultaneously. You’re deeply anchored in your truth, in yourself, in your integrity.
Do you recognize the difference between this kind of softness and the softness of being nice, being a people-pleaser, not wanting to upset others, being soft without self-respect?
There’s a world of difference in energy. Have you experienced situations where you felt it was unjust or unfair, where you worked hard and gave so much to a person or situation, yet felt unappreciated? This often happens because somewhere, you didn’t respect or appreciate yourself. In those situations, you didn’t honor or respect yourself. Yes, you gave a lot of love, expressed a lot of love, and were probably a very loving person, but at the cost of your self-respect. When you truly learn self-respect, an invisible energetic field forms around you—boundaries that people intuitively feel and know they can’t cross. Even if they do cross them, you course-correct. That’s how you stay in your softness while maintaining your power.
Self-respect is essential. It’s part of protecting, holding, and staying in your own power. It’s very much about energetics, and I hope this distinction is clear.
Self love is feminine energy, self respect is your masculine energy.
For me, the soothing self-love approach is more feminine energy. It’s necessary and important. It fills your cup and builds your capacity to go deeper into yourself. But self-respect is more masculine energy—that protector, guardian, warrior, the “no bullshit” attitude, the angry “no” when your integrity is crossed or something unfair happens. I believe when you balance both, when you holistically dance between self-love and self-respect, that’s where soft power truly shines. That’s where it blossoms into its true beauty.
For a better embodiment of this concept, think about people you truly respect—not just love, but deeply respect, almost sacredly. Consider how they behave regarding self-love and self-respect. If you’re struggling to anchor these concepts, imagine how someone who embodies self-love and self-respect would act. What do they do? How do they behave? What’s different? List the elements that create your respect for them. Conversely, think about people you admire and care for but don’t really respect. What’s the difference? What do they do? How do they behave differently? Why don’t you respect them?
This is why I say it’s deeply energetic. We all respond to it, often unconsciously. We simply respond to the energetics, especially if you’re a sensitive person—though we all are, to some degree.
The main difference
For me, this is the main difference in the soft power movement and soft power leadership. It’s not about being a soft person. It’s about being soft in your heart, open-hearted, with a relaxed nervous system instead of a protective and agitated one. It’s about leading with softness, expansiveness, and relaxation because you feel safe with yourself. Then there’s a different kind of softness where you lack a spine, grounding, a compass, and honor for your integrity, truth, and self. Yes, you might be a nice person—sweet, likable, adaptable—but you’re not powerful. You’re probably not powerfully leading your life, yourself, your movement, your business, your community, or your point of view in the world.
Self-love is a tool to build your capacity, fill your cup, and soothe yourself. Self-respect is a tool to reclaim, hold, and handle your power. It’s a way to stay in your body, in your truth, and free to be who you are.
In our societies, where oppression is normalized and giving away your power is glorified and conditioned from an early age, it becomes very difficult to respect ourselves. When you consider how everything in our society constantly signals that “You are not worthy, you are not free, and you are not supported,” you realize you’re not encouraged to respect yourself. Quite the opposite. Often, those who do are perceived as crazy, emotional, or drama queens. Yes, there’s a difference in how you handle that, but that’s another story.
It starts with literally respecting yourself. This goes deep and has many layers. The moment you start to claim your power and step into powerfully leading yourself, you realize how many ways you leak your power and how societal structures force you to give it away. In business, it’s particularly insane.
What is your relationship with self respect?
Consider how many ways during the day you “drop” yourself. How many ways—big and small, grand and tiny—do you feel disrespected by others as you move through the world? If you focus on those little boundaries first and do your due diligence… We’re not even talking about the massive stuff yet—that’s already a million little things compounded.
Self-respect is an essential part of learning to love ourselves unconditionally. Much of what we call self-love or love is transactional and conditional. The uncomfortable truth is that if you don’t know how to truly love and respect yourself, you cannot fully love and respect others. Think about it. It’s not only about leaking your own power; you’re contributing to doing that for others too.
I apologize for bringing up these uncomfortable conversations, but they’re important. They matter because I care about you staying in your softness and your power. I believe soft power is our natural state, our alignment, where we embrace our softness and stay fully open-hearted.
We don’t compromise the atomic explosion we are. So, in closing, I want to ask: How deeply do you love yourself? How strongly do you compromise yourself? What does it take for you to compromise yourself? How easily and how often do you do that? In what situations do you leak your power? What are you afraid to lose?
Then, honestly ask yourself: Do you deeply respect yourself? Do you respect your energy, your essence, your desires, the way you are? And an even more probing question: How much do you respect yourself when it’s uncomfortable? When you’re challenged, pushed into a corner, disregarded, rejected, misunderstood, when your boundaries are crossed, even in the face of potential humiliation or backlash? How strongly do you stand your ground then? How strongly do you respect your truth, your integrity, and yourself in those moments? It’s easy to stay in your power when circumstances are favorable, when it’s comfortable to love and respect yourself. But how deeply do you respect yourself when it’s hard? In moments when all circumstances are against you? When your character, capacity, and integrity are truly challenged? How deeply do you respect yourself then?
Self respect is really very essential part of starting to love ourselves unconditionally. A lot of self love, a lot of love is transactional love. It’s conditional love. And the shocking truth, uncomfortable truth is if you don’t know how to really love and really respect yourself, for sure, somehow, some way, unconsciously, you cannot love and respect others. Think about it. It’s not only you leaking your own power, you contributing doing that for others.
And I’m sorry that I’m bringing all those uncomfortable conversations here, but they’re important conversations. They matter because I care for you to stay in your softness and stay in your power. Because I believe soft power is our naturalness, our alignment, where we embrace our softness, where we stay with fully open heart.
And we don’t compromise the atomic explosion we are. So just as a closing, I just want to ask, How deeply do you love yourself? How strongly do you compromise yourself? What does it take for you to compromise yourself? How easy and how often you get to do that? And what situations, what are your vulnerabilities where you leak your power? What are you afraid there to lose?
And then really honestly ask yourself, do you deeply respect yourself? Respect your energy, respect your essence, respect your desires, respect the way you are. And even more poking question, how much do you respect yourself when it’s uncomfortable? When you are challenged, when you are pushed in a corner, when you disregarded, when you rejected, when you misunderstood, when your boundaries are crossed, even in the eyes and potentiality of possible humiliation or backlash? How strong do you stand your ground then? How strong do you respect your truth, your integrity, and how much do you respect yourself then? Because it’s easy to stay in your power when circumstances are favourable there, when it’s comfortable, it’s easy to love yourself, it’s easy to respect yourself. But how deeply do you respect yourself when it’s hard? In the moments where all those circumstances are against you? When your character, when your capacity and your integrity are truly challenged? How deep do you respect yourself then?
