Some people are hesitant to expose who their idols are.

They seem to feel that their act of revealing who they respect can be used against them. The flaws of the individuals they respect would come back to hurt them in the worst case scenario. People can point out just how bad of a person the ones you award your respect to really are. Others can poke fun at your support of people who may be embarrassing to be a fan of.

Vocalizing your respect for certain individuals is thereby a sensitive pursuit. You place yourself as being on the team of the ones you respect, and you’d almost be expected to defend attacks which come their way.

Even with the sensitivities of the situation taken into account, this article is aimed to encourage you to express the respect you have for other individuals in life.

The points presented below have the goal of benefiting you first and foremost upon their execution.

Respecting Others Insinuates That You Strive to Adopt Their Traits

There’s a point of view that’s shared by many surrounding voicing your personal goals for others to interpret. The argument of those who subscribe to the idea of not withholding your goals / plans from public knowledge, is that you’d be forcing accountability on yourself. By telling others your goals, you’ll be pressured to meet and exceed those goals. You’ll have witnesses to hold you accountable to meeting the goals you told them you have.

The same philosophy can be extended to publicizing who you respect. Depending on what your respect for an individual is rooted in, your act of respecting them insinuates that you aim to be at least a little bit like them. Your respect may be rooted in how an athlete answers questions from the media, or how a famous scientist is able to communicate complicated ideas to the general public. Your respect is a sort of admission that some traits of the individual in question are desirable to you.

Once you voice who you respect to others who care to listen, you’ll put a subtle pressure on yourself to learn from those who you respect.

If for example, the person you respect is quick to admit to their own mistakes, your act of not admitting to your own mistakes quickly can be hypocritical in a sense. You’d be seen as valuing the trait of admitting wrongfulness in others, but not acting that trait out in yourself.

The people you say you respect thereby hold you accountable with subtle expectations to act in accordance to how they would act in certain situations. In an effort to avoid hypocrisy, you’ll find yourself exhibiting traits that are driven by the people you said you respect.

Your Respect for Certain Individuals Paints a More Accurate Portrait of You

Your alignment with certain respected individuals gives the people around you more information about you. When first getting to know you, people ask about hobbies, likes, dislikes. They want to know what you’re a fan of, and whose philosophy on life you subscribe to most.

The people who you respect are extended images of your tendencies, habits, virtues, and interests. We respect people who personify the ideas we value in the life we live.

Once others discover the public figures you respect – and the celebrities who you look up to – a sort of analysis will begin. The people you’re speaking with will connect the dots between the traits of those you respect and what philosophies you ground your future actions in.

In feeling like they know you a little better, the interactions you have with these individuals will become more meaningful. A simple gesture of exposing who you’re a fan of can make its mark in facets of your relationships you did not expect. Aspects of your interests, personality, and tendencies are stored in your selection of who to respect in life.

You Can Incentivize Others to Express Their Respect for the Same People

There are some people in life which nobody expects you to be a fan of. For example, if you look like a manly man to others, they wouldn’t expect you to be a big fan of a female popstar with a predominantly female audience. In exposing that you’re a fan of such a person, you’d be exposing a rather unexpected fact about you.

The factor of unexpectedness, which our selections of the people we respect carries, can entice those around us to open up about specific unexpected information about themselves too. The friend you open up to in regards to unexpectedly being a fan of a certain public figure will be enticed to reciprocate with some of their own unexpected knowledge.

They may say, “You know what, she’s got some catchy tunes, I’m a fan too.” In essence, you entice people to reciprocate when expressing your vulnerability about the people you respect. You’ll find out about the people they unexpectedly respect themselves, and if nothing else, will gather previously unknown information about the individuals you’re in conversation with.

These exchanges of vulnerability will lead to a meaningful connection being made between yourself and those you speak with. Once you both know who the other secretly respects / admires, you’ll have an uncommon quirk to the relationship you develop.

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