How you choose to view yourself is key to what you believe you are capable of. Do you see yourself as a person who experiences success in life or as a big fat failure? May be you find yourself roaming around in the middle somewhere. I grew up being told not to “blow my own trumpet” and that “no one likes a big-head” which is what you were if you talked about yourself positively.
Thing is, your behaviours and actions are as a direct result of how you see yourself and your behaviours and actions are reflected back at you in your external world. If you see yourself as successful inwardly you behave as someone who experiences success and others treat you accordingly. Likewise if you see yourself generally as a failure you behave and act as a failure would, not taking the risks and doing what you need to do in order to experience success.
You have to have some belief, no matter how small, that you can achieve something, otherwise you just don’t bother to set out in the first place. Imagine you’re single and you’re contemplating going out on the town with a view to meeting someone, ‘pulling’ was the expression in my dim and distant memory of single life. Do you see yourself as someone who has luck with the opposite sex, someone that’s worthwhile for them to want to talk to and interact with? Or have you already asked yourself who would be interested in you? Depending upon the answer to that one, will determine whether you even make it outside the front door.
Once out there, I’m sure we’ve all encountered the sleazebag that thinks they’re gods gift, when they are anything but, or the person who appears to have it all but is chronically shy, because they cannot see their beauty through all their perceived faults. It’s all about how they are viewing themselves, it’s about their internal dialogue that accompanies those thoughts.
The story of our lives so far is a direct reflection of how we view ourselves and what we believe capable or deserving of. With the advent of reality TV we have become more judgemental of each other than ever, trouble is, the judgements that we make against others aren’t that different to the ones we fear about ourselves.
To step out and take a risk takes courage even for those that have belief in themselves and their ideas, to handicap ourselves with negative ideas about who we are and what we have to offer is a completely nonsensical thing to do.
Thing is we human beings are actually truly amazing.
The very fact that we are here at all, any one of us means that we are the best of the best. Our ancestors have to have survived all manner of natural and manmade perils in order for us to be here today. Wars, famines, earthquakes, disease, even the act of being born was perilous for both mother and baby not that long ago, not to mention getting safely through the first few years of life, yet they made it. They have to have made it for you to be here now. You are the end result of thousands of years of mans struggle to survive. Start there.
You have talents that no one else on this earth possesses, sure we may share similar talents but no one does what you do the way you do it and never will.
Ever watched It’s A Wonderful Life? When life has taken a turn for the worst, George Bailey tries to kill himself believing that his family would be better off without him, an angel named Clarence comes to show him that just by being born he has impacted people’s lives in a positive way, ways in which he doesn’t even know. I guarantee that you will have done that too. You may never know or see how but everywhere you’ve ever interacted with people, whether you realise it or not, you have impacted their lives.
If you want success on any level, as a partner, in your career, as a friend, a parent or any one of the many different hats we wear these days you first have to choose to see yourself in a positive light. For some this is not always an easy thing to do, but it is an absolutely necessary one in order for you to make the best of your life.
I started writing blogs a few years ago but after a while I took a negative viewpoint on my ability to write anything meaningful, anything that would create an impact in someone else’s life, so I stopped. A friend who was having some problems a while back texted me to thank me as something I had said had made her see things differently, which had gone some way towards helping her deal with those problems. I couldn’t recall when, where or how as we don’t have a close friendship where we have deep and meaningful conversations. Turns out she knew I was into personal development, and one day, at a particularly low point she Googled me and came across my blogs and read some of them. It was in one of them that she had found a sentence changed her perspective on the problem. Thing is now I wonder how many other people I may have helped if I had chosen to view my contribution differently and continued?...
If you’re used to seeing yourself from a predominantly negative viewpoint then you need to take steps to turn that around. You’ve spent time learning to be down on yourself and now you have to learn how to see yourself in a positive way.
Some suggestions:
- Write some of the successes in your life, doesn’t matter how big or small they are, find them and write them down, lets say 20 even if it starts with the one I gave you, I am from a long line of survivors, I’m from the best of the best.
- Keep out around your home anything that may remind you of your successes, awards, badges, photos, certificates.
- Write them down, there is something very powerful in the written word. I find having a list of my successes helpful when I’m having an oh woe is me day and my successes are readily coming to mind, I make myself read my list.
- Stand in front of a mirror at the end of each day and congratulate you on all the successes that you’ve had in that day. This one I heard from Jack Canfield – Chicken Soup For The Soul – I have to say I really struggled with this one and felt a right chump standing there. He does say that it’s something that can cause adverse reactions in people as they find it so challenging, butthere is something powerful in hearing your successes spoken out loud in front of you. It’s harder for you to ignore. The bigger the resistance the more you need to do it as it’s a gauge as to how negative you can be about yourself.
“Cause the words that come from your mouth
You're the first to hear
Speak words of beauty and you will be there
No matter what anybody says
What matters most is what you think of yourself” Get It Together - India Arie
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