Self Image

Self Image, Identity – Building Your Foundation For Success

Relationships are the key to a joyful, successful Life. Your relationship with yourself is one of the most important; your self image, the picture of yourself that you hold in your mind will determine how much you put into and therefore, get out of life.

The great thing about your relationship with yourself is that you have total control over the information you process. Your thoughts are your own and no one else’s. If there is something that you would like to change about yourself, you have total and final say on what you want. Who do you want to be?

All you have to do is find out the as is situation, and how you feel about it, decide on what you want, bridge the difference with strategic actions and build positive empowering habits which give you the results you need. Simple, right?

Simple, but sometimes not easy. There is real work involved when you start to change foundational habit patterns. Here is where the ‘act as if’ scenario really assists us with changes we want to make.

Clarify what you want, decide to make it happen, internalize it, and then act as if it has already taken place and soon it will become part of you. Your mind will accept your constant input, and make it real.

Decide that you would like to have a certain personality trait, let’s say adventurous, and then behave as if you are, think about it all of the time, associate with adventurous people, and then one day you will find the transformation has taken place.

You will find that over time, you have actually became adventurous. This can be accomplished with any trait or habit you want to develop.

The most important action to take when dealing with traits and habits, is to find out which ones will automatically propel you towards your life’s dream, your purpose, your mission in life, and develop these.

You have probably heard that the most important thing about the accomplishment of some particular goal is not the accomplishment of the goal itself, but the person you become while achieving the goal. Well, this actually works in reverse too!

Practice and internalize those traits that successful people have, model their thoughts and efforts, and you shall almost coast to success.

Our Label, our Identity that we hold for ourselves, affect our action, or inaction.

What I am going to say here is not to blow my own horn, but to share a method that I am using successfully to get myself to take action, whenever I need to. It proves without a shadow of a doubt that we can elevate ourself to the labels or identity, we give ourselves. The negative is also true.

I created this label/identity for myself, when to tell you the truth, I was as far from a ‘realgoalgetter’ as one could get. Having always failed previously to consistently take action on the goals I would create, I tried everything. I read every book I could get my hands on about success and life strategy, ordered and listened to quantities of cassettes, and actually took in some seminars for self improvement. I would get excited for a while, and then fall off, when the real work began.

On one of Tony Robbins tapes, on Identity, I decided to create one for myself that empowered me, but was far from who I actually was. It was even a stretch for me to imagine that I could live up to it.

My nickname is, ‘actionman’, my identity, ‘realgoalgetter’, and when I needed to boost myself, I chided myself by saying that ‘actionman’ could do this. I can do this, I am actionman, I am a real go getter, I am a ‘realgoalgetter’!, with all the positive posture I could muster.

I felt so foolish the first times I would do this, and then I noticed that soon I was not having to remember to aspire to my identity, as I was becoming my identity.

I have a whole page of description, as to who I really wanted to be, and I am gradually turning into that person. That person is me. I hope I am not losing you here, I am trying to communicate volumes with a few words.

To make a long story, short, One must be careful what labels one puts on oneself, because we do tend to live up, or down to them. So we might as well as put the qualities we would like to cultivate, up there so that we can live up to them.

This really works in your favor!

Self Image, your identity is the foundation that you build on when it comes to believing whether you are up to the task. Is your foundation solid? Who do you want to be when you grow up? — Al Smith