Respecting our own personal sovereignty
This means:
- Independent thought: Independently examining and consciously choosing which ideas, claims, norms, rules, and ideologies to adopt, rather than automatically adopting what others tell us.
- Independent action: Independently examining and consciously choosing which requests posed to us by others to accept, rather than automatically accepting what others demand of us.
This is true even when others are supposedly figures of authority, such as parents, teachers, experts, professionals, government officials, or religious figures. Personal sovereignty means acting out of our own power, listening to ourselves to see what is right for us, and not doing things we don’t really want to do, even when others tell us that this is what we should or must do. Personal sovereignty means making decisions despite what others might say about us. Read more…
Respecting the personal sovereignty of others
This means remembering that other people are autonomous beings just like us, with their own choices and preferences.
- We do not act upon them without their consent.
- We do not try to impose our opinions or wishes on them, or pose demands, or force them to act according to our wishes.
- We certainly do not threaten them with sanctions, punishment, or violence (either verbal or physical) if they do not obey us.
- We do not try to get something from others through deception or manipulations.
- We do not claim that we have some entitlement to live at the expense of others.
- We respect and are sensitive to other people’s borders, we do not invade or impose on their space or time, we do not touch them without their permission, and we do not yell at them.
Exercise
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Think of events in your life when you did not respect your own personal sovereignty.
- How did it make you feel?
- Why did you behave in this way?
- How would you like to act differently?
- What are the challenges involved in doing so?
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Now do the same regarding events when your personal sovereignty was not respected by someone.
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Now do the same regarding events when you did not respect someone else’s personal sovereignty.