The 7 Self Judgements we must overcome

The 7 Self Judgements we must overcome

Self-Concept:

Self-concept

is the umbrella term, the overarching term for who we think we actually are and

all the ideas we have about ourselves. We are not born with this. At

approximately 18 months old, we develop a concept of who we are which comes

from a combination of feedback from others and our experiences.

Concept is

open to the influence of others. If people always tell you that you’re bad or

your naughty, then you will believe it. 

If you are only told a few times, you’re more likely to question it and mediate

those comments against the other experiences you have had so that you can

assess its validity.

1.      

How do you describe yourself and your

attributes?

2.      

How much is this description based on pure

evidential fact?

Self-Image:

Self-image is

your idea, concept or mental picture you have of yourself.

Internally,

we can often turn these conceptions into factual and descriptive beliefs about

our physical attributes, what kind of person we are and what skills and qualities

we have. It’s really important that we help ourselves and other people have an

accurate self-image. We have all heard

about people having bad self-image, which is when the reality and their

thoughts about their physical attributes become distorted. Conversely,

children who have spent their lives being told they’re amazing, clever and

beautiful by their primary care-givers and then go to school to find out

they’re pretty average, can have a very distorted self-image also. It can be

very upsetting for people when they find out that they are not who they thought

they were in terms of image.

1.      

Close you eyes and imagine you are a total

stranger looking at yourself for the first time. What does the stranger see?

2.      

How realistic is your self image?

Self-esteem:

Self-esteem

is how you rate or value yourself and how you feel about that i.e. How much you

care about it. For instance, it means nothing if you are an amazing Artist but

you don’t believe you are, or you don’t value art. 

Even if you were technically the best artist

in the world, your self-esteem wouldn’t necessarily be high. It’s all about our judgements about ourselves

and importantly, how we feel about those judgements.

A high self-esteem in

itself is not a good thing.

Having healthy self-esteem depends on what it is

that we actually have self-esteem in and what we value.

If we value beauty, but

consider ourselves ugly, we will have very low self-esteem. 

If we value beauty and believe we have it, we

will have a high self-esteem. 

If we are

truly beautiful, but don’t value beauty, we may not have a high self-esteem.

Self-Efficacy:

Self-Efficacy

is your judgement beforehand on how well you think you will do in a task. These

thoughts are not necessarily facts.

They are beliefs about your own capability

or your own confidence in your ability to achieve something.

If you have high efficacy

you believe that you can achieve desired results, that you’ll find a way to

achieve and as a result, usually do succeed in attaining goals because your

belief of success is a high motivator, even when things get hard. 

I would describe these people as being ‘Efficacious’

which basically means ‘achieves desired results’. If you believe that you can succeed

in a given task, you have a much higher success rate even if you are not

actually very good at the task you are trying to undertake, as your belief in

your ability to achieve it is actually more what gets you to the successful

result as opposed to your ability to do it.

Perceived-self vs Ideal Self:

Perceived-self

is who you think you are.

The

ideal-self is who you think you should

be.

These

perception comes from others and what they say to you about what you should and

shouldn’t do and what you should and shouldn’t be.

If we know that we have bad

writing for instance and we know that we should have good writing, we will feel

bad about it.

If we were

told that we ‘should’ get a particular type of job and live a certain type of

life, but we end up doing something different, we may feel bad about it, as

there is a separation between what we think we are and what we think we should

be.

1.      

What do you think is the difference between your

perceived and ideal self?

2.      

What elements need changing to become more

realistic?

Self-Consistency:

This is when

someone has a set idea of who and what they are they try hard to protect that.

For instance

somebody may say ‘I’m no good at writing’ and therefore they don’t write

anything, and they will be unlikely to ever write.

This is not

a personality, although it looks like it is. So saying that ‘I am not good at

writing’ is not actually a fact. What

would be a fact is ‘I haven’t learnt how to write well yet’. That would be the

fact.

A lot of

people resist changing and therefore can miss out on changing for the better

due to the fear of approaching something unknown, or something they think they

are not good at.

So if a

person’s self-consistency is not aligned to what they want to achieve, they are

unlikely to commence that activity.

1.      

What ‘I can’t’ or ‘I don’t do that’ do you say

to yourself?

2.      

How are these stopping you from being a better

version of yourself?

All of the

things we have just mentioned; Self-Concept, Self-Image, Self-Esteem,

Self-Efficacy, Perceived-Self, Ideal Self and Self-Consistency cannot actually

be measured – at least not like we can measure height, weight or the symmetry of

our face.

They are

self-reported. We self-assess them. We self-disclose to others how we feel we

are measuring in these different areas. They cannot be assessed and nobody can

see or feel inside of us; they can only get ideas about all of these concepts.

How to change your demonic self-judgements

Pip Wilson

uses a visual technique to help apply ideas via images. One of these is known

as the Blob Tree.

View Blob Tree here

Image from www.blobtree.com

Metaphors

and stories in our teaching and training allows for all sorts of development

and healthy self-analysis. Using the tree allows you to understand or uncover

current levels of Esteem, Efficacy, Self-Concept and Self-Image.

You can also

use it for goal setting (which can lead to Efficacy) and therefore success when

people do achieve goals.

For Example

when using the Bob Tree we ask people to choose 3 blobs.

1.      

We choose the one that they feel they currently

are at the moment. This is the Perceived-Self.

2.      

We then ask them to choose a 2nd blob

in the tree to ask them where they want to be in the short term future or at

the end of a current project or task this would be described as the Ideal-Self.

3.      

Finally we ask them to choose the one that they

don’t want to be and ask why not. These are

blockages to Self-Efficacy and blockages to Self-Consistency.

4.      

We can also use a 4th blob for who we

want to be in the long term future and why. 

This gives us more clues about our ideal-self as well as allows to set

goals and plan how we will achieve them (every branch is an obstacle – discuss);

which again enables opportunities for us to grow in all of the above mentioned

areas.

Another great exercise for building

your own Self-Efficacy, Self-Esteem, Self-concept as well as that of your

students is to do a story or a piece of reflective writing as if you are an inanimate

object. This gets you talking and

thinking about yourself in a very different way.

For instance, you may say “I am a car

and I feel… “, “I am a window and… “

This will reveal expressions of who

you really are, what your blockages are and how you can increase Self-Efficacy.

 There are thousands of other techniques you can use to increase your own, or others’ efficacy and self-concept, which I will share with you in future posts.