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Your self-image is the way you see yourself in your imagination. The reason your self-image is so powerful is because your behaviour will almost never deviate from this internal map. It acts as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, telling you how to behave or perform to act consistently with the kind of person you think you are. Yet many people don't even realize they have an image of themselves until they look.
How you think of yourself also affects how other people feel about you. Because over 90 per cent of what we communicate is unconscious, the people around you are continually responding to your body language, tone of voice and the emotional signals you are transmitting.
You are constantly letting other people know how to treat you by the way you treat yourself.
Paul McKenna, Change your life in 7 days, Bantam Press 2004.
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Over the years I have had the opportunity to meet and work with a large number of 'successful' people. I am continually struck by how many of them create an outer veneer as a way of hiding personal feelings of inadequacy. For example, they project any number of things to compensate for a lack of inner self-worth, flaunting their wealth, status, intellectual achievement, physical strength, social connections or moral 'superiority' in an attempt to prove that they are not as worthless as they feel inside.
Sometimes it starts out with a little lie, or a small affectation, but over the years it develops into an entire outer persona that is the complete opposite of how they feel on the inside. They continually feel like a fraud, fearing that at any moment they are going to be 'found out' and it will all be taken away from them.
This is by no means exclusively a problem of the rich and famous. Having worked with people from all walks of life, I have come to the conclusion that almost everybody is to some extent hiding or compensating for a part of themselves that they don't like.
Paul McKenna, Change your life in 7 days, Bantam Press 2004.
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While some of the earliest messages you got from your family were no doubt positive, many of them were not. Whether you were told you were a 'stupid child', 'ungrateful', or 'clumsy', you soaked up all the negative suggestions, along with whatever positive reinforcement came your way. A recent study revealed that the average American parent criticizes their children eight times for every one time they praise them.
Research has shown that by the age of fourteen, 98 per cent of children have a negative self-image. And it only gets worse. Irish author J.H. Brennan describes it like this:
If there is one word which ably describes adolescence, that word is confusion. And the confusion is so strongly felt that it can easily impinge on your basic self-image. It's a sorry picture: small ... helpless ... powerless ... dirty ... socially unacceptable ... inferior ... confused - and in particularly bad cases, unloved and unwanted as well. And sorry though it is, the image was largely accurate when it was laid down - not by yourself, but by the actions and opinions of others. And at this stage, Nature played you the dirtiest trick imaginable. You grew up, but your self-image didn't. No wonder there are so many people who aren't achieving what they would like in their lives.
From meeting and working with many famous and 'successful' people I already knew how much of what they had achieved was to compensate for their feelings of inadequacy. But it had never before occurred to me that I was one of them.
Once I got really clear on the content of my negative self-image, I knew it was time to make some fundamental changes. I resolved then and there to begin pursuing a new dream. I determined to find a way to 'heal the nerd within'!
Paul McKenna, Change your life in 7 days, Bantam Press 2004.
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In the mid-1980s, John Opel, then Chairman of IBM, gave a talk to an audience of Stanford MBAs. In response to a request for his advice about how newly minted MBAs should embark on their careers, he said he would share one of his 'secrets' for true success. As the eager young minds in the audience leaned forward, Opel whispered:
'Don't fake it!'
He paused and read the body language in the room. He then said, with great passion:
'No, really, I mean it!'
The room erupted in laughter. He went on to say that we are all smart enough to fake it and get away with it for a while, but eventually our faith in ourselves will be undermined, and with it our self-trust, self-respect and self-esteem.
The reason you are not yet living the life of your dreams is that you are wasting so much of your time and energy hiding your negative self-image from the world.
When all of your energy is going into maintaining the illusion of your projected self and hiding the image of your feared self from the world, the still, small voice of the authentic self - who you really are - can barely be heard.
Paul McKenna, Change your life in 7 days, Bantam Press 2004.
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At our core is our authentic self - the reality of who and what we really are.
But piled on top of the real us - with all our weirdness, foibles and unabashed 'us'-ness - is that layer of shame, fear and guilt, the person we're afraid we are, our negative self-image.
So in order to make sure people still like us, approve of us and give us love and money, we pile yet ANOTHER layer on top of our feared self - the person we pretend to be.
This uppermost layer is, if we're very, very good pretenders, all others get to see of us. In fact, we struggle so valiantly to make sure no one sees that layer of liabilities we are afraid characterise us, that we completely forget (sometimes for years at a time) that there's another, REAL, self underneath all that.
A. Your pretend self: who you pretend to be
Ask yourself:
- How do you like to be seen?
- Which aspects of your personality do you hope people notice first?
- What is it most important that everyone knows about you?
- If your life were trying to prove something about you, what would it be?
B. Your negative self-image: who you are afraid you are
Any 'negative' traits you identify are not really yours - they belong to your negative self-image and were programmed into you when you were a child. By identifying them honestly, you are about to let them go!
- Which of your secrets will only be discovered after you die?
- Who is your least favourite person and why? (Most perception is projection - we most dislike in others what we fear can be found in ourselves.)
C. Your authentic self: who you truly are
- Who you really are always feels like coming home.
- Who are you when nobody's watching?
- If you felt totally safe, what would you do differently?
- Who would you be if you lived beyond fear?
Paul McKenna, Change your life in 7 days, Bantam Press 2004.
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There is a story that when Michaelangelo was asked how he carved such beautiful angels, he replied, 'I see the angel in the stone, and I chip away at everything around it.'
Reprogramming your self-image is a lot like that - less a function of trying to be more like who you wish you were and more of recognising the magnificence of who you really are.
The more you align your self-image with the reality of your authentic self, the richer and more rewarding your life will be. This is not a new concept and is contained in every spiritual system of teaching on the planet.
All truly successful people accept their brilliance - they are not embarrassed by it. While aligning your self-image to the reality of your authentic self is not the answer to all of life's problems, it will help you to respond to your life more resourcefully. As who you think you are and who you really are become more and more aligned, you will begin to feel truly good about yourself.
And as I've found out for myself, the better you feel on the inside, the better your life will become.
Paul McKenna, Change your life in 7 days, Bantam Press 2004.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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One of those struck a major chord with me:
For ME I am going to try to answer them. No need for anyone else to.
A. Your pretend self: who you pretend to be
Ask yourself:
* How do you like to be seen?
>Happy, confident, outgoing, effective, expert.
* Which aspects of your personality do you hope people notice first?
>Confident expertise
* What is it most important that everyone knows about you?
>I truly don't know
* If your life were trying to prove something about you, what would it be?
>I think, but I am not sure, it is that I am happy
B. Your negative self-image: who you are afraid you are
Any 'negative' traits you identify are not really yours - they belong to your negative self-image and were programmed into you when you were a child. By identifying them honestly, you are about to let them go!
* Which of your secrets will only be discovered after you die?
>Answering that is an interesting concept. But, if we assume this is me talking to me, for most people it is that I am gay. However that is likely to change
* Who is your least favourite person and why? (Most perception is projection - we most dislike in others what we fear can be found in ourselves.)
>He is someone I met at university. Anally retentive, and a "little" man in so many ways. Aggressive and authoritative
C. Your authentic self: who you truly are
* Who you really are always feels like coming home.
>When I am with people I can relax with, I am who I am. "timmy" is a relaxed gay man
* Who are you when nobody's watching?
>I am timmy. I like him
* If you felt totally safe, what would you do differently?
>Be out and not proud, but content
* Who would you be if you lived beyond fear?
>timmy
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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