What Image of Yourself Do You Have in Your Own Head? And Does that Align With You?
A couple of days ago I was internalizing how I think others view me and that reminded me to think about how I view myself. Its an incredibly difficult topic to think about… what image of yourself do you have in your own head? And does that align with who you like to be?
We all have an image of ourselves in our heads. That image is often written in our mind and accepted by our conscious at a young age. The problem is as we change over time in our lives that image we have already accepted doesn’t necessarily change and align with the new us. So many of our flaws, shortcomings, and fears are risen from this already accepted image of who we are in our own head. If you want to find reasons as to why you do things a certain way you need to think of that old image of you and work on aligning the two existences of you into one. We are unconsciously being controlled by this outdated but already accepted image of ourselves, its the nucleus that runs the show, change that, and you change you.
When I look back into my childhood I have always been a shy person. It was always difficult for me to connect with strangers. Once I knew someone in the group and had already made the connection then I would glow as an incredibly social person but starting a conversation with total strangers had always been a struggle. As I have been making progress on my personal development and growth I have been trying really hard to change this aspect of my personality. It has been frustrating, difficult, and at times very overwhelming. But it all became much easier when I realized that in order to make a lasting and fundamental personality change I needed to look inward and not outward. It appears that we are unconsciously controlled and effected by who we think we are more than who we actually are. We can appear to have changed externally but unless we have changed this internal core image of ourselves we haven’t changed at all. When I looked deep into myself I realized I still had that shy image of me in my head even though I had matured up and developed a very extrovert personality. That shy image of me was preventing me to fully take advantage of my new extrovert personality. It was as if I had two conflicting views of the world, one that was unconsciously holding me back and another that was confused on why I am not able to step up my game.
“It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us but rather our mindset about our physical limits.” Ellen J. Langer
The more we realize that most of our views of ourselves, of others, and of presumed limits regarding our talents, our health, and our happiness were mindlessly accepted by us at an earlier time in our lives, the more we open up to the realization that these too can change. The danger of not constantly aligning our inner core image with our external personality and reality is that we might go through life unaware that what we’ve accepted as impossible may in fact be quite possible.
So … when was the last time you changed this image of you in your own head? When was the last time you questioned these already accepted views of your surroundings? I encourage you to think hard and deep in order to re-open and re-consider all that you have assumed and accepted. You will be surprised of how much has changed within you.
