SELF-IMAGE

“Your Self-Image is the Blue Print of our Success”

The Discovery of the "SELF-IMAGE" represents a breakthrough in psychology and the field of a creative personality. The significance of the self-image has been recognized for more than a decade. Yet there has been little written about it. Curiously enough, this is not because "self-image psychology" has not worked, but because it has worked so amazingly well.

I was inspired by this book (New Faces—New Futures) which was published by a plastic surgeon and which has a fabulous collection of case histories where plastic surgery, and particularly facial plastic surgery, had opened new doors to many people. The book also talks about those amazing changes that often occur quite suddenly and dramatically in a person's personality when you change his face. Some patients showed no change in personality after surgery. In most cases, a person who had a conspicuously ugly face or some "freakish" feature corrected by surgery, experienced an almost immediate (usually within 21 days) rise in self-esteem, self-confidence. But in some cases, the patient continued to feel inadequate and experienced feelings of inferiority. In short, these "failures" continued to feel act and behave just as if they still had an ugly face.

This indicated to me that reconstruction of the physical image itself was not "the" real key to changes in personality. There was something else that was usually influenced by facial surgery, but sometimes not. When this "something else" was reconstructed, the person himself changed. When this "something else" was not reconstructed the person, himself remained the same, although his physical features might be radically different.

THE FACE OF PERSONALITY

It was as if personality itself had a "face." This non-physical "face of personality" seemed to be the real key to personality change. If it remained scarred, distorted, "ugly," or inferior, the person himself acted out this role in his behavior regardless of the changes in physical appearance. If this "face of personality" could be reconstructed, if old emotional scars could be removed; then the person himself changed, even without facial plastic surgery. Once I began to explore this area, I found more and more phenomena that confirmed the fact that the "self-image," the individual's mental and spiritual concept of "picture" of himself, was the real key to personality and behavior.

THE SELF-IMAGE—THE REAL SECRET

The Discovery of the self-image explains all the apparent discrepancies we have been discussing. It is the common denominator—the determining factor in all our case histories, the failures as well as the successes. The secret is this: To really "live," that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with. You must find yourself acceptable to "you." You must have wholesome self-esteem. You must have a self that you can trust and believe in. You must have a self that you are not ashamed to "be," and one that you can feel free to express creatively, rather than to hide or cover-up. You must have a self that corresponds to reality so that you can function effectively in the real world. You must know yourself—both your strengths and your weaknesses and be honest with yourself concerning both. Your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of "you," being neither more than you are nor less than you are.

When this self-image is intact and secure, you feel "good." When it is threatened, you feel anxious and insecure. When it is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of, you feel self-confident. You feel free to "be yourself" and to express yourself. You function at your optimum. When it is an object of shame, you attempt to hide it rather than express it. Creative expression is blocked. You become hostile and hard to get along with. 

If a scar on the face enhances the self-image, self-esteem and self-confidence are increased. When a facial disfigurement is corrected by plastic surgery, dramatic psychological changes result only if there is a corresponding correction of the mutilated self-image. 

YOUR PROGRAM FOR BETTER LIVING

In my opinion, psychology during the past 30 years has become far too pessimistic regarding man and his potentiality for both change and greatness. Since psychologists and psychiatrists deal with so-called "abnormal" people, the literature is almost exclusively taken up with man's various abnormalities, his tendencies toward self-destruction. Many people, I am afraid, have read so much of this type of thing that they have come to regard such things as hatred, the "destructive instinct," guilt, self-condemnation, and all the other negatives as "normal human behavior." The average person feels awfully weak and impotent when he thinks of the prospect of pitting his puny will against these negative forces in human nature, in order to gain health and happiness. If this were a true picture of humans and the human condition, "self-improvement" would indeed be a rather futile thing.

However, I believe, that you do not have to do the job alone. There is within each one of us a "life instinct," which is forever working toward health, happiness, and all that makes for more life for the individual. This "life instinct" works for you through what I call the Creative Mechanism, or when used correctly the "Success Mechanism" built into each human being. 

Following are the symptoms of low Self-image:

• jealousy
• rejecting luxury unnecessarily
• negative talk about ourselves
• failure to give affection
• experiencing guilt
• failure to accept and enjoy affection
• failure to give compliments
• criticizing others
• inability to accept compliments
• comparing ourselves with others
• not taking our own needs into account
• constant poor health, which is the drive for attention at any cost
• not asking for what we want

The solution to this?

Give compliments. Accept compliments. Always speak well of yourself and others. Praise yourself. Separate your current behavior from who you are as a person. Treat your body well. Let others know how you want to be treated, and remember to treat them that way as well. Get around good people. Pamper yourself. And paint a picture of yourself in your mind as you want to be. You will gravitate toward that mental image.

Once you are on the road to becoming on the outside who you always were on the inside, you can begin to love others effectively. As you give out compliments and feed the hunger of other people, you will begin to receive their acceptance, approval, and appreciation – the very things you desire for yourself.

PRACTICE EXERCISE NO. 1 

Get a New Mental Picture of YourselfThe unhappy, failure-type personality cannot develop a new self-image by pure willpower, or by arbitrarily deciding to. There must be some grounds, some justification, some reason for deciding that the old picture of self is in error and that a new picture is appropriate. You cannot merely imagine a new self-image; unless you feel that it is based upon truth. Experience has shown that when a person does change his self-image, he has the feeling that for one reason or another, he "sees," or realizes the truth about himself. 

The truth in this chapter can set you free of an old inadequate self-image, if you read it often, think intently about the implications, and "hammer home" its truths to yourself.

Science has now confirmed what philosophers, mystics, and other intuitive people have long declared: every human being has been literally "engineered for success" by his Creator. Every human being has access to a power greater than himself. This means "YOU."As Emerson has said, "There are no great and no small." 

If you were engineered for success and happiness, then the old picture of yourself as unworthy of happiness, of a person who was "meant" to fail, must be in error.

Read this chapter at least three times per week for the first 21 days. Study it and digest it Look for examples in your experiences, and the experiences of your friends, which illustrate the creative mechanism in action.

Memorize the following basic principles by which your success mechanism operates. You do not need to be an electronic engineer, or a physicist, to operate your own servo-mechanism, any more than you have to be able to engineer an automobile in order to drive one or become an electrical engineer in order to turn on the light in your room. You do need to be familiar with the following; however, because having memorized them, they will throw "new light" on what is to follow:

1. Your built-in success mechanism must have a goal or "target." This goal, or target, must be conceived of as "already in existence—now" either in actual or potential form. It operates by either

a) Steering you to a goal already in existence or by

b) "Discovering" something already in existence.

2. The automatic mechanism is teleological, that is, operates, or must be oriented to "end results," goals. Do not be discouraged because of the "means whereby" may not be apparent. It is the function of the automatic mechanism to supply the "means whereby" when you supply the goal. Think in terms of the end result, and the means whereby will often take care of themselves.

3. Do not be afraid of making mistakes, or of temporary failures. All servo-mechanisms achieve a goal by negative feedback, or by going forward, making mistakes, and immediately correcting course.

4. Skill learning of any kind is accomplished by trial and error, mentally correcting aim after an error, until a "successful" motion, movement, or performance has been achieved. 

After that, further learning, and continued success are accomplished by forgetting the past 'errors, and remembering the successful response, so that it can be "imitated."

5. You must learn to trust your creative mechanism to do its work and not "jam it" by becoming too concerned or too anxious as to whether it will work or not, or by attempting to force it by too much conscious effort. You must "let it" work, rather than "make it" work. This trust is necessary because your creative mechanism operates below the level of consciousness, and you cannot "know" what is going on beneath the surface. Moreover, its nature is to operate spontaneously according to present needs. Therefore, you have no guarantees in advance. It comes into operation as you act and as you place a demand upon it by your actions. You must not wait to act until you have proof—you must act as if it is there, and it will come through. "Do the thing and you will have the power," said Emerson.

6. When nothing seems to be working even after ensuring all the above five steps which indicate “Stress” this is an indication that you have deviated from your defined path. At this don‘t think of anything just accept this truth and realign yourself to the Goal and success is inevitable.