Our Self Image and Our Self

So we've identified what we want in our lives. We've set our goals and made a plan. All of which is great and vital in achieving what we want. But in itself it’s not enough. It’s only part of the picture, the other part is contained in the behind the scenes activity of our minds.

What we really think and believe about our self completes the picture and holds the key to our ultimate success. This is our self image and it is one of the most important and fascinating facets of our make up. Since we were a children, new born babes, we’ve absorbed countless snippets of information - our conscious mind has been bombarded with sensory data; from our environment, parents, teachers, brothers, sisters, Great Aunt Mabel, the kids at school, movies, television and newspapers.

It's a continual flow of stuff which our conscious self instantly evaluates and decides whether to accept or reject. It categorises this raw material as correct or incorrect, true or false, useful or useless, positive or negative and so on. And it changes all the time. Whatever thought our conscious mind chooses to adopt is immediately passed on to our sub conscious which accepts it unconditionally. Everything is in there, faithfully stored away by our sub conscious and it is here that our beliefs and self image put down roots.

Sub conscious is a bit like an innocent bystander; it makes no judgements about whatever comes its way. It has no powers of discernment and is unable to rationalise. Its job is to obey and it will beaver away to bring about the circumstances in our life that confirm what we believe. The picture of our self, the way we feel about our self and where we have placed our self in the scheme of things has been built layer on layer over the years and it is this that our sub conscious acts upon. Our sub conscious develops well worn responses from all the data that lands in its in tray.

It is our silent governor. It makes sure that what we believe about our self is not contradicted. That is its job and it’s very good at it. It will ensure that how we see our self is reflected faithfully in our results. The actions that we take will accord perfectly with our self image which will see to it that we go on doing what we’re doing to uphold that vision. That is why we sometimes do things but don’t know why we’ve done them. And often wish we hadn’t. It is also why we often don’t do things we know we should but don’t know why we didn’t. And often wish we had. It’s our self image being maintained diligently, no matter what it costs, by our sub conscious.

So to be completely successful at achieving the goals we’ve set for our self a change of image is required. Our self image needs to be consistent with what we’re setting out to do. Unless our self image matches with our new expectations our success will be limited.

A bit of subterfuge is required here. Dear old sub conscious will need to be fooled into thinking that we are already the person we are planning to be.

Remember that our sub conscious will not make any judgements about the new us, it will not try to dissuade us or comment in any way. It will simply take its instructions from our conscious self and go to work to bring our life into line with our new image. Sub conscious cannot stand inconsistency and will act immediately to bring about the changes needed to fit the image.

All we need do is be consistent about our new image. After all what we 'see' is what we get.