It has been my experience that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
Dream of the person you want to be, but don't waste the person you are.
To become what you want to become, you must every day be what you want to be.
- Richard G. Scott
To a great degree you are what you think you are, and you can do what you think you can do. Your self-image, this is what gives you joy or heartbreak, success or failure, happiness or pain… - Maxwell Maltz, MD
The following basic facts about the self-image will help us better understand ourselves and accept ourselves while we also striving to become our best self.
Our emotions, attitudes, and behavior are determined by our self-image. We quite literally act and feel according to our perception of ourselves.
Our self-image is seated in the subconscious and is built from past experiences, or more accurately our perception of past experiences. This includes our perception of what others think and expect of us.
From these experiences we develop beliefs about ourselves from which we function. All of the information in our subconscious mind that affects the way we feel or act make up our self-image.
These beliefs, whether accurate or not, become “true” because the subconscious mind is non-judgmental, accepting whatever we tell it is truth. In other words, whatever we allow our subconscious to believe becomes true (at least to us).
Behavior will be consistent with our self-image. We will act like the kind of person we believe ourselves to be.
Will power does not have a chance against subconscious power. We cannot sustain a behavior that is inconsistent with our self-image no matter how hard we try.