How’s Your Self-Image?

You create a picture of yourself when you’re young, based on how you interpret your environment’s reactions to you. This picture is your self-image. It’s the picture of yourself that you believe in the most, a self-portrait that makes you feel either confident or insecure.

You may be the most intelligent person, but if you don’t see yourself that way, you will never apply to that college that you want to go to or pursue that job opportunity because you’re not “smart enough”. You may be stunningly beautiful and charming, but if you don’t see yourself that way, you’ll never have the courage to walk up to that person you like and start a conversation, or believe yourself to be worthy of being with someone you consider to be beautiful, because they’re “out of your league”. If you don’t see yourself as worthy, you’ll keep creating situations to support your belief and they will show up in the form of people or jobs or relationships.

Your self-image literally runs your life. It dictates your choices and your choices dictate your reality. If you’re struggling with the results that you want to accomplish in spite of putting in your best effort, it’s because your desired results are inconsistent with the self-image that you hold of yourself. Until you change your self-image, you run on will-power and that’s exhausting and often not enough to keep you going in the long run in a sustainable way.

But just because you carry this picture with yourself, it doesn’t mean that it’s true. The beautiful thing about your self-image is that it can be changed. If you’re unaware of it, it changes based on other people’s opinions that you believe are true. But if you’re aware of it, you can absolutely change it if you know how.

Looking back on my life, I can see the exact moments where I changed it, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. And the results would follow, like clockwork. Now I consciously change it all the time and I also use this as a tool when I coach. The first thing I do with my clients is check in with their self-image and alter it as needed.

We are constantly being presented with choices and we can choose to grow, or to repeat old patterns. Choose growth. Work towards bettering your self-image. How you see yourself is how you

see the world and how you see the world is how it shows up.