Positive Self Image
Today I’m going to elaborate on one of the most important and limiting or enabling qualities of a human being. I’m going to talk about the man or woman in the mirror.
Your view of yourself determines your behavior. Because your behavior today affects who you become and how you perform tomorrow, the Law of the Mirror says, you will never out-perform your self-image.
The value you put on yourself is the value that others will put on you as well.
John Maxwell says,
“If you place small value on yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise the price.”
Steps for Building a Positive Image / Visual: Clearing the Muddy Waters
When you are a baby your water is clean. Let’s say that your psyche is this cup of water. Your psyche is clean. You have a personality, a potential, and a set of natural gifting that are yet to develop. But as for the voice in a baby’s head. It’s mommy and daddy’s cooing voice they hear.
As we get older and negative events and voices start making their impact on our lives, the cup begins to get tarnished with these voices. Until the voices become our own and we can’t distinguish between the negative voices. And the voices are nothing more than ideas we can believe or not believe. Their truth value is determined exclusively by you.
I believe that every person is born with unique gifts and potential just waiting to be tapped into. There are some people that can do things that I will never be good at. I stick to the things that I’m good at and that I love. I work on a lot of the things I’m not good at so that I can get better, and because doing those things builds me up as well…
(That doesn’t mean that I was always good at the things I’m good at today. When we’re babies, we don’t know anything. We naturally develop all the abilities we own today).
The problem is that many people never even give themselves room to develop the innate abilities within them. They judge themselves by the way that water looks to them. They say, water isn’t for me, when they have to put in the work to develop. Because no-one who was ever great developed their abilities accidentally. They slaved over those skill sets.
Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”
The voices about yourself you believe determine the vision of the future you can achieve.
How many of you criticize yourself heavily on a pretty regular basis? And it looks like: “Man, I’m not good enough. Or, I can’t really do that. That’s not something for me. I’ll never be good at that… look at other people, they can do this so well… I wish I could be that good, but I’ll never be that good…” ?
I used to call that the auto-criticism monster. Other people call it the gremlin. Some people call it the enemy.
In the little bit of time I have left, I want to show you a vision of what your life could be.
This hazy glass is dark and murky. This is your subconscious… your psyche literally has an unclear view of itself. And so the vision of your future in turn is unclear.
The Secret is…
We need to flush it out.
Our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves create emotions. Emotions are ENERGY in motion. Emotions affect our actions. We think about our actions on a conscious and a subconscious level –– those thoughts create further emotion. That energy in motion creates our behaviors.
We sometimes can’t control the thoughts or voices of our auto-criticism monster/ our gremlin. But we can control what we say back to those thoughts. We can control what we believe. It takes work. But let me show you.
To build your self esteem:
- Guard your self talk. Stop talking negative things to yourself. Never say it out loud, even if it’s in your head. Instead, talk to yourself out loud and say positive re-enforcing things. Find positive adjectives and say them out loud while looking in the mirror.
- Stop comparing yourself to anyone. When you discover that the best version of you has unique things to offer that someone else doesn’t, you’ll be liberated.
- Create habits and disciplines to combat and kill the auto-criticism monster/ that deadly gremlin cancer. Practice a small discipline daily. Get up early and listen to empowering music.
- Celebrate small victories and log them in your journal. (You should be journaling and reflecting daily)
- Write and speak positive adjectives about yourself and give yourself room to grow.
- Perform intentional acts of kindness and add value to others.
Embrace growth is a process. Breathe. Let yourself make mistakes and learn from them.
Our behaviors determine our habits. Our habits determine our character. Which in turn determine our DESTINY.
Make the glass clean.
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