You choose your self-image!!
Your self-image is the picture you hold of yourself. Maxwell Maltz, author of Psycho-cybernetics, argued that your self-image is not an accurate reflection of who you are! It is a mass of ideas and thoughts you choose to believe about yourself due to past experiences. Thoughts are subjective, they may not be facts but become part of your self-image.
Our subconscious mind believes our thoughts regardless as to whether they are true or not. It cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality. Your brain automatically reacts to thoughts and your imagination as truth.
You’ve used your imagination, by hypnotising yourself, through thoughts and feelings that create a mental form of image, causing impressions on your mind, forming beliefs that define your self-image.
Is your self-image wired for success or failure?
Worrying is a form of mental imagery. Thinking of things that could go wrong creates anxiety and fear. Your self-image impacts success. It determines how you react and how you view social interaction and experiences in life.
According to Maltz, feedback loops reinforce learned behaviour and programming. Humans rely on their self-image to understand feedback from their behaviour. Your self-image makes the decision to forget negative feedback to function successfully, or remember negative feedback to behave dis-functionally, creating failure.
Focusing on negative feedback leads to programming causing the reinforcement of negative patterns of behaviour, working against what you want to achieve.
An Example
A bullied child who is violated and feels victimised cannot trust others. Unable to form relationships she becomes aloof and hostile. This keeps people away. To her, this is evidence that they don’t want a relationship with her, reinforcing feelings of victimisation, and perpetuating isolation. Unable to move forward to what she wants.
Creating a positive self-image
As a self-image coach I can provide you with tools and techniques to explore your inner and outer self-image.
Together we can identify the positive and negative aspects, helping you to develop a self-image that is consistent and congruent, i.e. matching inwardly and outwardly.
The end result will be that you will feel authentic and genuine in how you see you see yourself.
I will be sharing other ideas and concepts regarding self-image during further blogs, if you would like to subscribe to subsequent blog posts and join my email list to receive notifications of new blog posts then please sign up.