The Battle of the Self

We all are the weapon formed against ourselves. So if you are going to battle with anything, it should first be with yourself. It’s time to battle with your self-concept because unlocking everything you are looking for lies on the other side of your self-image. Give me a few minutes of your time, you’re going to love this.

Your self-image is basically the picture you carry around in your head of who you are. It’s like your personal operating system, dictating how you show up in the world. It is the key to your personality and behaviour and this picture is the sum total of 5 things:

1. Beliefs
2. Identity
3. Attention
4. Emotional Conviction
5. Thoughts

So, your beliefs, what you focus on, how you identify yourself, the things you think about and those deep-down emotional convictions you harbour set the boundaries of what you can accomplish in this world. It’s like an invisible fence around your potential that defines what you can and cannot do. That is, your “area of possible” and the standards around it are defined, determined and expanded by your self-image.

Think of it as a diet for your mind. In a nutshell, you are what you metaphorically eat. Fortunately or unfortunately, you developed your self-image through your experiences in the past, and you might have been force-fed many of these. Experiences, memories and occurrences might have shaped you and stuck with you, or maybe other people’s voices got stuck in your head. You might also have been told, cajoled, or peer pressured into some of these but regardless they are ingrained in you. And they are what you carry around as the summation of your self-concept…the you that you believe yourself to be. This can work for you as a success mechanism or against you as a failure mechanism depending on how YOU! Yes, YOU, the operator, operate it and the goals you set for it…with your self-image.

It’s okay because the good news is, you can totally rewrite your self-image. You cannot scream affirmations to change your self-image or drown yourself in a sea of positive thinking if you have not worked on how you, deep down, think about yourself and who you are and can possibly be. Even Jesus warned us about the folly of putting a patch of new material upon an old garment or new wine into old bottles. Positive thinking cannot be used effectively as a patch or a crutch to the same self-image.

It’s about rewiring your brain, not faking it.

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The power of what your self-image can create or destroy in your life is likened to a “spiritual facelift” by Maxwell Maltz.

He says that there is within each of us a “life instinct” that is forever working toward health, happiness, success, and all that makes for a great life for you. This instinct is unique to and works for YOU through an algorithm he calls The Creative Mechanism. This Creative Mechanism will work automatically to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure…depending on the goals you set for it. Present it with “success goals” and it functions as a “Success Mechanism”. Present it with negative goals, and it operates just as efficiently and faithfully as a “Failure Mechanism”.

Like any other machine, it runs on clear-cut goals, objectives and problems to work on. What are these goals you might be asking…the images you have created in your mind.

Your self-image is the biggest goal that this Creative Mechanism is automatically running with. Allow me to paint vivid pictures:

“I’m a loser, everyone hates me”…ding ding ding!

“I look so ugly”… ding ding ding!

“I always have bad days”…ding ding ding!

“I always attract the bad ones”…ding ding ding!

“Things never work out for me”…ding ding ding!

“There’s no way I can achieve what so-and-so has achieved”…ding ding ding!

“Every time I start something it fails”…DING DING DING!

Your self-image defines the borders of what is possible in your life.

This Creative Mechanism is running with and working upon information and data you feed into it: the mental images, beliefs, thoughts, identities and interpretations we have given it and it continues to run with it…till this day.

If we feed information and data into our Creative Mechanism that we are unworthy, inferior, undeserving, or incapable ( a negative self-image) this data is processed and acted upon as any other data working with your brain and nervous system to give you that exact experience.

You control the settings. So, are you happy with the results you’re getting?

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If you are not it’s time to go to war with your self-concept and self-image. It is time to kill the diet that no longer works for you. It is time to tell yourself enough is enough. Set an agenda for battle. You will need to repeat this for a long time to kill beliefs, attitudes, thoughts and identities you have had all your life, but you can do it.

Learn, practice, and experience new habits of thinking, imagining, remembering and acting.

Give yourself a new identity. Go to war with your thoughts. Challenge the identity you have given yourself. If the sky was your limit, get a damn rocket and fly! As a man thinketh, so he is…think glorious thoughts and let your Creative Mechanism do its job!

You are a creator, everything you need is inside you.

There’s a life instinct in you, you need to reprogram it, you can do it. I am rooting for you.

Always xx