subject: Upgrade your Self-image – Change Your Life [print this page] Upgrade your Self-image Change Your Life
"The ''self-image'' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior." Maxwell Maltz
Before we can affect lasting personal changes, we have to change the way that we perceive ourselves to be. Before we can change the scope of what is possible for us, we have to change the way that we perceive ourselves to be. Before we can change our earning power, our status in society or the scope of our influence in the affairs of man, we have to change the way that we perceive ourselves to be.
Any major change that we wish to affect in our life has to begin with a change in self-perception. We have to change the way that we see ourselves. We have to look at who we are from a different perspective and through different lenses. We have to put ourselves and our humanness under the microscope, set preconceived notions aside and discover what it is to be a man what it means to be who we truly are.
Because there are so many of us humans, we tend to forget what magnificent animals we are. We tend to focus more on humans' failings than we do on our amazing grandeur. The ugliness overshadows the magnificence and it colors the way we see ourselves.
One of the reason that man tends to diminish his image is to lower the expectations that he has of himself and prevent disillusionment over possible failures. Few things hurt as bad as a bruised ego therefore we are so overprotective of that sensitive tyrant that it distorts the way that we see ourselves.
We are the product of millions of years of evolution and refinement. We have been endowed with a brain that is said to be virtually limitless in its intellectual capacities. Every second that we live, that brain has to regulate every minor chemical reactions in the most evolved organism on Planet Earth.
That same brain, in a collective effort, has brought us from an almost animal like existence to today's amazing status. We are the most refined and complete form of life known to exist, yet, in spite of that; we sometimes find ways of seeing ourselves in a poor and unflattering light.
A proper assessment of who we truly are cannot be done without deleting every previous belief that we had about mankind in general. A truly objective view of the single man has to be utilized as the common denominator. That is, we need to look at man with the eye of a scientist coldly appraising a machine.
We need to observe how man can function and what he is capable off while deleting from that observation the aberrations that have occurred. What that study will reveal is who we fundamentally are and what our potential is.
We are much more than our past history. What we truly are is the potential of what we could be. It is when we view ourselves in that light that we see how meaningful and important we truly are. That is when we see that we are a true player on the world stage and not just another tiny piece in the gigantic puzzle of humanity.
Self-discovery is the adventure of a lifetime. We are much more than we think. At one point, we need to set the prejudices aside and start seeing and appreciating our true nature. Our future depends on it because we think and behave as we perceive ourselves to be and not as we fundamentally are. By changing our identity, we change our life.
