When your principles in life are noble and your goals align with these principles, you will respect yourself in proportion to the greatness of the principles you believe in. And the more your actions match these principles, the more your self-respect grows and the higher your self-esteem becomes. When a person speaks about believing in noble principles yet acts in the opposite way, he loses his self-respect to the same degree as the gap between his principles and his behavior. Some people may think it is clever to deceive others by wearing a mask that makes them appear to hold great principles, when in reality they are deceiving no one as much as they are deceiving themselves. They do not realize that they are igniting a voice of self-contempt deep within, a voice that corrupts their positive feelings toward themselves at every moment, leaving them without self-respect and without any sense of their true worth. For this reason, the people who despise themselves the most are the hypocrites and the narcissists who live in continuous deception, while Satan adorns this deception for them and leads them to believe they are the cleverest of all, when in truth they are only the most contemptible before themselves and before those who see through them. To respect yourself and value yourself means to be genuine, not false. It means your words align with your actions. And if you slip, and your actions contradict your words and principles, then nothing will restore you except repentance, which brings you back to your true self, closes the gap that has formed within you, and returns you to honesty with yourself in the most beautiful way. O Allah, return us to You in a beautiful return.