The Power of Your Self Image

Our recent blog posts have been exploring the subject of self-confidence.  A consistent finding in psychological research is a direct correlation between self-confidence and success. Confidence is a major differentiating factor between elite and non-elite performers.

To develop your self confidence it is important to explore how we think and how our minds work.  An important aspect for us to understand is that of our self image, how it is made up and what you can do to improve it.

In my last blog post I explained the difference between the two spheres of activity of your mind.  These spheres are often described as the conscious mind and the unconscious mind.

The conscious mind is your reasoning, objective level of mind.  It is the mind you are aware of when you are awake.  It’s role is to take in information, analyse it and decide if some action should be taken.

The unconscious mind is your automatic, subjective level of mind. It operates below your level of conscious awareness.  It maintains all essential life maintenance systems such as digestion, breathing and so on.  It is rather like a vast memory bank in which every experience of your life in its vast data bank.  This data contributes towards what can be described as your self-image.

Your self-image is quite simply the image you have of yourself that you believe is true.  As you were growing up, your unconscious mind has stored all the experiences, emotions, criticisms, praise and so forth in its data bank.

This has all been instrumental in forming your self-image.  It is the sum total of all of your past experiences, both good and bad, plus all of the thoughts you have accumulated throughout your life.

Your self -image is made up of thousands and perhaps even millions of mini self-images.  You will have a self-image of how good or bad you are at a huge range of activities – various sports, cooking, making love, reading, writing, making money and so on.  Then you will have a huge number of self-images about how intelligent you are, how popular you are, how funny you are and so on.  You have a mini self-image for every single aspect of your life. 

It is believed that our early experiences as children, for example, continue to affect our self-image when we are adults.  It is worth noting that our parents and other people have had a lot of influence over our self-image.  Many of these people may have had poor self-images themselves!

These influences can be passed on from parent to child and can be useful or not depending upon what they are.

When you enter into any situation in your adult life your mind instantly compares it to the information it has stored in its data bank.  Your self-image therefore has considerable control over your life.  As the psychologist William James put it: “We lead our lives as it is imagined in our minds”.

Much of how you feel about yourself is the result of a self-image (or more specifically a collection of mini-self images) that you probably haven’t been consciously aware of.  Your thoughts, feelings and behaviour will reflect your self-image.  Much of your conscious thought is the result of the content of your unconscious mind and your self-image.

It would therefore be useful to have a healthy self-image and holding data in your unconscious mind that supports you in a positive manner.  As Brian Tracy states in his excellent programme “The Psychology Of Achievement”: “What you think – you are”.

Quite simply, if you change your thoughts you can change your life.  Your life up to today has been the result of your thoughts – both conscious and unconscious.  If you change these thoughts now, in the present, you can change your life in the future. 

The past does not necessarily equal the future.  You can design the future you want.  By changing the data stored in your unconscious mind and by enhancing your self-image you can make significant and positive changes to your confidence and success.

In next month’s column we will look at some simple yet effective ways that we can do this.  Until then consider that what you think about yourself will frequently determine how successful you are in many areas of your life.  By practising thinking positive things about yourself you will be enhancing your self-image, your confidence, and therefore your performance. 

Simon Hazeldine
Founder
Increasing Life

Dedicated to Your Health, Wealth, Success, Happiness and Freedom  

The Two Spheres Of Your Mind

A consistent finding in psychological research is a direct correlation between self-confidence and success.  For example, a study of over 700 athletes from over 23 different sports concluded that elite performers had higher and more stable levels of self-confidence.  The conclusion was that confidence was a major differentiating factor between elite and non-elite performers.

 To develop your self confidence it is important to explore how we think and how our mind works.  It may come as some surprise to you that you have not one mind but two!  Or to be more precise, two spheres of activity within one mind.  These spheres of activity are often referred to as the conscious and unconscious mind.

 Your Conscious Mind

Your conscious mind is your reasoning, objective level of mind.  It is the mind you are aware of when you are fully awake.  Its role is to take in information, analyse it and decide if some action should be taken.  It is the mind that you consciously “think” with.

 If your conscious mind accepts some information as valid, it is transferred immediately to the unconscious mind that accepts it.  For example, as a small child you did not know that a flame would burn your skin.  Either from actually burning yourself or by observing the terrified reactions of your parents as you moved towards the flame, your conscious mind realised that “Flame equals pain.  Do not touch flames.”  This information would then be passed to the unconscious mind that accepts it without question.

 Your Unconscious Mind

Your unconscious mind is your automatic, subjective level of mind.  It operates below your level of conscious awareness. It maintains all essential like maintenance systems such as digestion, breathing, eyelid blinking etc

 It can be likened to a vast memory bank.  All of your life experiences pass through the conscious mind and are stored in the unconscious mind.  All experiences are stored be they positive or negative.  These experiences are not just passively stored but are actively stored.  This stored data persistently floods your conscious mind with feelings and emotions that affect your thoughts.

 The famous hypnotherapist Ormond McGill has said that each of these memories and experiences stored in the unconscious mind are “forming a thread in the texture of our personality, the total of these impressions being the nature of the individual.”

The role of the unconscious mind is to make sure that you always think, behave and perform in a manner consistent with the information you have accepted as true with your conscious mind.

 Your unconscious mind is concerned with your survival. It maintains a constant vigil. It never sleeps. No psychologist or scientist has ever been able to give a full description of its abilities or activities.   It is universally accepted as a very powerful force in our lives.

 Your unconscious mind concentrates on maintaining what is known as your “world-view”. This is your unconscious mind’s map of the world.  Your world-view is a powerful survival tool.  For example, your world-view tells you that if you step off a cliff you will hurt or kill yourself.  This aspect of your world-view protects you from danger by preventing you from having to experience the danger of falling every time you are on a cliff top!

Once your unconscious mind has established a coherent world-view it is reluctant to allow any data in that conflicts with it.  It will therefore accept or reject information depending upon other information that it holds.

 In the process of growing up we will all have experienced our share of “positive” and “negative” events.  All of these events are stored in your unconscious data bank.  You have probably consciously forgotten many of the actual incidents, but their unconscious effect continues.

If a new idea is now presented to you, you will either reject or accept it depending upon your stored date.  In addition to this your unconscious mind influences your emotions, thoughts and attitude.  You may not be consciously aware of this but it does have a powerful influence over your life.

It is important that you realise that the unconscious mind does not rationalise.  It does not enter into logical debate.  It just controls.  Your unconscious mind does not necessarily work to provide what is logically best for you.  It works to provide what its stored data tells it is best for you.

It does not care if you are “happy”. It does not understand happy.  It does not think in the conscious sense of the word.  It instructs automatically based upon its stored data.  If the data it holds is negative then it could actually be working against what you desire.

Simon Hazeldine
Founder
Increasing Life: Dedicated to Your Health, Wealth, Success, Happiness and Freedom

How You Can Develop Unshakeable Self-Confidence

Whatever your current level of self-confidence is the inspiring news is that you can improve and enhance it.  People who are confident have developed their confidence.

As a result of developing their confidence they will tend to think about themselves in a different way from those who lack confidence.

 If you wish to enhance and strengthen your self-confidence then you need to understand that the mind can, and must be, disciplined in a similar way that the physical body is disciplined by physical training.

Your mind is not necessarily going to automatically going to support you in what you want to achieve.  It can and must be trained to think effectively.

 Our thoughts affect how we are feeling and this affects our actions.  Inappropriate thinking often leads to negative feelings and poor performance.  Appropriate thinking leads to positive and enabling feelings and good performance.

 Confidence is the result of specific thinking habits, and when these habits are practised until they become natural and automatic significant benefits can be realised.

 To develop your self confidence it is important to explore the area of thinking and mind in depth.  It may come as some surprise to you that you have not one mind but two.  Or to be more precise, two spheres of activity within one mind.  These minds are called the conscious mind and the unconscious mind.  This fascinating subject will be the subject of my next blog.  

Until next time, please remember to have confidence in yourself – you can if you think you can!

Simon Hazeldine
Founder

Increasing Life: Dedicated to Your Health, Wealth, Happiness, Success & Freedom

What is Self Confidence?

Self-confidence is a somewhat nebulous term.  It will be helpful to understand it in greater detail.  Specifically self-confidence can be thought of as a “global” trait that accounts for overall performance optimism, one’s overall attitude, and can also be much more specific –relating to a perception about one’s ability to perform specific skills.

 This perceived ability to perform specific skills is often referred to as self-efficacy, or “situation specific self-confidence”.  Self-efficacy can be thought of as your perception of your confidence to succeed in a given task at a given time.  It can be thought of as referring to specific/particular skills.

 A concept that is related to confidence is optimism.  Optimism can be thought of as a tendency to expect the best possible result or to focus on the most positive/hopeful aspects of any situation.

The propensity to look for opportunities to grow, develop, win and excel regardless of the circumstance is vital to success in life.

 When the three elements described above – self-confidence, self-efficacy and optimism are combined, they make up a very powerful “I Can Do It” belief that is both global and specific.

Confidence is often confused with arrogance.  It is true that certain confident individuals are outspoken, loud, abrasive and brash. Muhammad Ali would be an obvious example.

However, many quieter and more respectful individuals are every bit as confident.  You can be a highly confident individual without being conceited or arrogant.  A well-developed sense of self-confidence and a positive “Can Do” attitude is a very useful, practical and healthy thing to possess.

Simon Hazeldine

Founder

Increasing Life

How to Develop Your Self Confidence

How confident are you?  How confident are you about your abilities? How do you feel when you are confident?  How do you feel when you are lacking confidence?  You don’t have to be a highly qualified psychologist to understand that when you feel confident about yourself it feels good!  However as vitally important as it is to feel good about yourself, feeling confident about yourself and your abilities has many other significant benefits.

 A consistent finding in psychological research is a direct correlation between self-confidence and success.  A study of over 700 athletes from 23 different sports concluded that elite performers had higher and more stable levels of self-confidence.  The conclusion was that confidence was a major differentiating factor between elite and non-elite performers.

Psychological research that suggests that high self-confidence leads to individuals selecting more difficult goals, and having greater commitment to achieving these goals once they have been set. This means that having confidence in yourself leads to you attempting more ambitious goals for your life.

Further psychological research suggests that when in stressful situations, individuals low in self-confidence will tend to give up more readily and experience greater anxiety. The self-confident individual will tend to demonstrate greater tenacity and to generally be more relaxed when confronted with challenging situations.

For the person who wants to achieve their full potential, ensuring that they have developed their confidence to its fullest extent has to be an important priority.

In a series of forthcoming blog posts we will discover exactly how to develop our self-confidence!

Stay tuned!

Simon Hazeldine
Founder
Increasing Life
Health, Wealth, Happiness, Success, Freedom

Where Do Our Beliefs Come From?

Our beliefs can come from a variety of sources.  They can come from the way we were brought up, from observing and copying significant people in our lives (such as our parents), from past events that have scared or traumatised us, or from repetitive experiences. 

We build our beliefs by having an experience of the world and other people and generalising it.

We may currently believe some things as a result of what we were told when we were growing up.  When you were young you had no way of knowing if these things were true or not.  The expectations that that people around us had during our childhood can instil beliefs.  Some of these beliefs may persist and influence you to this day.

When we believe something, we act as if it is true.  This makes it very difficult to disprove. 

Our beliefs act as very powerful filters on what we perceive.

What The Thinker Thinks…The Prover Proves

Leonard Orr models the human mind as having two main parts, a “thinker” and a “prover”.  The thinker is very flexible, and can think any number of things.  The thinker can think the earth is flat, the thinker can think the earth is round.  The thinker can think pretty much anything!
The prover, however, is far more predictable.  Whatever the thinker is thinking, the prover will search and sort for evidence to support the belief.  If someone believes that they lack intelligence (perhaps from comments made to them by their parents or teachers at an earlier stage of their life) then the prover will show that to be true.  Evidence to support the belief will be noted and evidence that contradicts the belief may be ignored or deleted.  In this way beliefs can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Beliefs are very powerful and help us to get a sense of certainty and direction in a world that can be anything but predictable. 

Beliefs can become so powerful that we don’t remember that they are not necessarily true – but we behave as if they are. 

Beliefs are not just “maps” of what happened in the past – we also use them as “blueprints” for our future actions.

Perhaps the point to reflect upon is not if your beliefs are true or not.  The question is: Are they useful or not?

The Power of Belief

The Power of Belief
By
Simon Hazeldine MSc

“Man is what he believes” - Anton Chekov

The beliefs that we have about ourselves, about other people, and the world around us, will exert a powerful influence over our performance in every single area of our lives.

They can power us to success and achievement or, like prison chains, shackle us to mediocrity and limitation.  So let us examine beliefs and the effect they can have upon us.

What are beliefs?

Beliefs are essentially judgements and evaluations about ourselves as individuals, other people and the world that we live in.  Beliefs are our guiding principles, the inner “maps” we use to make sense of the world.  They can give us stability and continuity in a constantly changing world.

Most of us share some basic beliefs about the world we live in.  The majority of people on the planet believe that our earth is round, for example.  However, I am reliably informed that there exists a society for people who still think that the earth is flat!

As amusing as this may seem, you do not have to go very far back in history to find a time when most people believed that the earth was flat and that the sun and planets revolved around the earth.
Many of our beliefs are very helpful and useful.  We believe that fire burns and that broken glass is sharp.  Therefore we avoid exposing our bodies to hot flames and don’t step onto broken glass in our bare feet.

Beliefs can be thought of as generalisations about what causes certain things to happen, what things mean and the boundaries in the world around us, in our behaviour and our capabilities.
Beliefs can affect our behaviour.  For example, depending upon which belief you have:

1. “Success requires hard work” or
2. “Success is mainly a matter of luck”

…will affect your approach to attempting to reach success!

Next time we will look at where our beliefs some from.