What is a Self-image?
Your self-image is the mental view or the image that you have of yourself. This consists of the dictionary or the words that you use to describe yourself – both positive and negative. This includes words such as beautiful, kind, honest, insecure, ugly, or stupid. These words come together to form the way that we see ourselves and form our self-image.
How we form a self-image
Our self-image is developed over time through our experiences, beliefs, and thoughts. Most of the time, our self-image is based on what we have been told by others or what we have concluded about ourselves.
For example, if someone tells us that we are not good at something, then we may start to believe that is true and begin to act in accordance with that belief. This can eventually lead to us having a negative self-image.
Similarly, if we are constantly complimented and told how wonderful we are, we may start to believe that is true and develop a positive self-image.
How we form a negative self-image
Most of us have negative beliefs which we have formed in our childhood when we focused on the negative things different groups of people told us, instead of the positive. We did this because our brain is biased towards being negative
This includes things our teachers, parents, and relatives told us which made us feel bad about ourselves, without them realizing it.
Their aim may have been to help us improve, but because we internalize their comments, instead of improving and going forward we started believing and saying that we were failures.
Improve yourself to improve your self-image
Instead of internalizing their constructive criticism, we should use it to improve ourselves. When you hear someone say someone negative about you doesn’t take it personally, instead assume that they are giving you feedback to help you improve yourself.
Don’t call yourself dumb. Remember each one of us has the ability to do great things. When you start to doubt yourself, tell yourself “I can do it if I try hard enough. I just need to practice more.” You just have to change your beliefs, so that you believe in yourself, and keep working towards your goals.
When you label yourself as stupid or dumb, your inner mechanisms start working and you start seeing evidence everywhere that you are stupid. Even when in reality there is no evidence. Psychologists call this experiencing cognitive distortions. It is your brain lying to you, and making you believe things that are not true.
Related: Find out how your brain lies to you.
How our self-image impacts us
If our self-image is constantly putting us down and doesn’t allow us to believe in our abilities this can hinder us from our true potential
Whenever we do something we are always thinking of failure and this leads us to fail.
If we believe we are going to succeed we will succeed and if we believe we are going to fail we will fail. We must look inside us and see what beliefs we have. If we have beliefs that tell us we are not going to succeed and we are not good at something then there is hope and there is something we can do about it.
When we feel good and secure about ourselves, we feel confident and can creatively and freely express ourselves.
We must have a realistic, healthy, and good trusting self-image. A self-image that is wholesome and helps us move forward and helps us progress. A self-image that reflects our potential.
A negative self-image can prevent you from achieving your goals
Our self-image is like an inbuilt system, that steers our lives, and determines how our life will play out.
Having a positive self-image, and being confident in yourself, means that you are able to better focus on your goals, and stick to them.
When you have a negative self-image because you don’t believe in yourself, you find it difficult to set clear goals. Even if you do, it is harder to stick to them, because you don’t actually believe you will achieve them.
We must think we will succeed and feel good about our goal and not block it by having negative thoughts about it. Having doubts, blocks and confuses our inner mechanism and guide. Our brain thinks, why are we working towards this goal if we don’t believe we can achieve it? And that prevents us from moving forward.
Once you have started a project put everything into it. Tell yourself that you can succeed, if you try hard enough. You will be guided and one thing will lead to another and another and you will find yourself progressing towards the goal.
Comparing yourself to others can hurt your self-image
Each one of us is unique. We know that each and every one of us has our own fingerprint. Isn’t that mind-boggling? Similarly, we all have our own distinct abilities. We all have something that we can contribute to the world. We just have to tap into it and let it flow.
What we do instead is we compare ourselves to others and when we see others doing well we feel “oh, he can do it so well and I can’t.” We want to measure up to what people think of us and we will never be able to measure up to them because they have different beliefs and priorities.
Yes, he can do what he is good at and you can do what you are good at, as you have your own abilities.
You have what he doesn’t have and he has what you don’t have.
Start believing in your uniqueness and you will realize you can do wonders.
You have so many strengths which get drowned when you start comparing yourselves. Focus on your own strengths and start building on them.
When we are striving to be like somebody we are looking at their strength rather than our own and as a result, we start feeling bad and we feel we aren’t good enough. Then we go down a negative spiral, and this drowns and conceals our own uniqueness.
We begin to get anxious and insecure and start to feel bad about ourselves.
Changing your self-image
While there are many ways to change your self-image, we have found the following to be the most effective:
- Visualizations
- Hypnosis
- Mindfulness
- Journaling
- Meditation
Using the power of imagination to change your self-image
We have the power of imagination and we can use it to help us make a change
Mental rehearsals work because they activate the right circuits in your brain. When we imagine performing an activity, the same parts of our brains that are activated when we actually perform that activity are activated. So, the same circuits get activated and strengthened.
The more vivid the mental rehearsal is, the more likely it is to be effective.
So if you visualize a positive self-image by imagining in a more positive manner, your brain will begin to believe that you are that person. If you visualize being confident, your brain will believe you are confident, and gradually you will begin to feel and act more confidently.
Hence to have a good positive self-image, do it by rehearsing it mentally. P
Changing your negative self-image through hypnosis
So one way of changing that belief is hypnosis. Hypnosis is one way of making positive suggestions to yourself, to improve your self-image. With hypnosis, your mind can absorb external suggestions, and internalize them. The hypnotist takes you to your most relaxed state, where your mind is very open. This is the same state of mind where you are most creative, inspired, and innovative. The hypnotist will introduce positive suggestions to increase your self-image, without any resistance on your part.
When you use this tool to influence yourself, it becomes easy to change old negative memories or situations which have been holding you back from believing in yourself.
Hypnosis is very useful for people who have had a lot of negative experiences in the past, and you want to change those negative feelings into positive ones. Hypnosis is particularly effective if you find yourself absorbing negative remarks of people because then it means you are able to absorb positive ones as well.
There are many different techniques of hypnosis that can be used to influence how you think about yourself, your self-esteem and build a strong foundation of confidence.
Mindfulness to improve your self-image
If you don’t want to go the hypnosis route, there are some other ways of building a positive self-image. Mindfulness is also an extremely effective way to improve your self-image. Mindfulness is about bringing yourself back into a state of awareness and attention from your unconscious mind to the present moment.
Mental chatter is the term used for the constant stream of thoughts that run through our minds. Often, these thoughts are negative and counterproductive. The thoughts can be so loud and persistent that they drown out any positive thoughts or emotions.
Most of the time we don’t even realize that we are engaging in internal chatter. Mindfulness allows you to become aware of the thoughts you are having.
The best way to deal with mental chatter is to first become aware of it. Once you’re aware of the thoughts, you can start to challenge them and question their validity. Are they true? Or are they just your fears and doubts talking?
Journaling to improve your self-image
Another effective way of improving your self-image is to write in a journal. Journaling is extremely powerful as it helps you reflect on what’s happening in your life, and for many people, it helps them process the negative emotions they are experiencing.
You can also use journaling to question the negative self-image you have. If you assume you are stupid, ask yourself what things you have done in your life, which show that you are smarter than you think you are. Think of all your accomplishments, no matter how small.
Meditation to improve your self-image
Meditating allows you to clear your head. e. You get to take a step back and give yourself time to be quiet while focusing on your breathing. While meditation is great for calming the mind and bringing awareness back to the present moment, there’s something else that can result from regular meditation: it can help improve your self-image.
People who experience low self-esteem often ruminate about their past mistakes. They may even be dwelling on what other people think of them (in other words, they’re highly self-conscious). When you meditate regularly, your thoughts will naturally become calmer and you’ll feel less inclined to dwell on these negative things which only make feel worse about yourself.
All the above things help us and they are worth trying and finding out for yourself Once you realize they help you You will start believing in it and the change has already started Vow!
BRAVo now you have already started your way forward. Even if you falter, start again.
