admin_website What we become in life, what we do in life and what we have in life is based on the self-image we hold of ourselves. Our self-image is not the way in which we look in the mirror. This is a mere reflection of our external appearance. We live in the great social media age where we can hide behind many false personas and project an image of ourselves to the world which has no real correlation with who we truly are at the core. We may be able to hide behind makeup, snap chat filters, botox, designer outfits and accessories and may even be able to talk the talk and walk the walk of someone who is self-confident both inwardly and outwardly. However, we fail to realise that we cannot deviate too far from how we truly see ourselves on the inside; we cannot be greater than the self-image we hold of ourselves.
Our self-image is the way in which we project ourselves to the world and the way we identify ourselves to be. It is a framework we form in our subconscious mind of how we see life and ourselves and what we believe and think is true. It is a set of assumptions about how the world, society and life works, how we work and who we really are. We have all types of assumptions which have been programmed directly into us through the environment we have been exposed to and the information we have taken on board consciously and unconsciously such as what other people have told us about ourselves and how they appeared to respond to us. Our self-image is also based partly on our own reactions and our unique interpretations of events, especially the manner in which we evaluate both ourselves and the nature of our interactions with others. Our self-image is extremely important to us because the extent to which it is both accurate and balanced significantly impacts every area of our lives. This inner picture of ourselves remains relatively stable over time impacting everything; from our weight, health, relationships, finances, skills, interactions and wellbeing. Unless we take deliberate steps to modify it, our results in life will and can only be only in alignment with this image.
A person’s self-image can become distorted, imbalanced, or otherwise unhealthy as a result of many factors. As children, we are highly sensitive to the judgements made about us by our parents, teachers, caregivers, those with power or influence over us, and especially our peers. If those judgments are too often and/or too intensely negative, we are likely to internalise a self-image which is more negative in nature. Our personality characteristics also significantly impact our self-image development, too. Some individuals are highly sensitive to criticism and may carry to an extreme the interpretations they make about events or about the actions of others which reflect negatively on them.
What is powerful about the self-image framework is that it determines our actions. We may think we are consciously making decisions and taking actions in our life, however, 95% of our actions and behaviours are governed by the extremely powerful subconscious mind and therefore our results in life are largely subconscious. There are many assumptions in our self-image which are completely false and complete illusions and this is keeping us stuck where we are.
For example if we grew up in an environment which mocked our inability to do mathematics equations and we were given the message through our environment that ‘mathematics is not our strong point’ – depending upon our resilience to pass off these comments, we are likely to hold a self-image of yourself as someone who simply isn’t good at mathematics. This, therefore, would become a self-fulfilling prophecy where we find ourselves always struggling with anything that required solving equations. We BELIEVED the message we heard from our environment and accepted it to be TRUE. Once you accept something to be true in the subconscious mind – it can only work towards this.
Our body and mind are like a thermostat and it wants to keep us in a state of balance, homeostasis and equilibrium. This is why it is so often difficult to make a significant and lasting change and why we seem to stay stuck at the same level of results. If we want to make big changes in our life, we want to improve our relationships, change our health, earn a better income, improve our skills and confidence then we must dig into our self –image. We must go deep into the recesses of our subconscious mind so we can start to unravel that which is not in alignment with the truth of who we really and what we really can achieve.
So how can we know the truth about ourselves? Can we even make a true evaluation? Whether we turn to science or religion, it is said that the potential of a human being cannot be measured. It is infinite. It is mentioned in the Quran. “We have indeed created man in the best of moulds” (Surah At-Tin). Man is created as the best of creation in the Universe with the power of reasoning and insight which is not given to anything created other than man. Man is created as a vicegerent with the status of doing God’s work on Earth. Every human being, therefore, is engineered for success by his creator. Every human being has been given access to the same inner resources and potentials as every other human being and we have access to a power which is far greater than ourselves. If we are engineered for success and happiness, then the picture we hold of ourselves as an individual unworthy of happiness, success and prosperity; a person who is meant to fail must be a complete error.
If we truly believe in an All-Powerful, All-Loving and All-Wise Creator, then we can draw upon some logical conclusions about that which He has created – man.
In the first place, such an All-Powerful Creator would not turn out an inferior product any more than a master painter would paint an inferior painting. Such a Creator would not deliberately engineer His product to fail any more than a manufacturer would deliberately build failure into a car. It says that God loves you seventy times more than our mother, which means infinitely more. As a mother what brings us more pride, joy and satisfaction than to see our children doing well, to living their best and achieving their best in this world? What about God then? Does He not want us to succeed? Absolutely He does. He wants us to shine, not hide. He wants us to be happy and confident. He wants us to believe in ourselves as He believes in us. He wants us to have faith, courage and determination that we can achieve great things in life. He has not created us to walk around feeling unworthy, inferior, unable to hold our head up high out of fear of failure and rejection. Are we not truly glorifying Him when we are doing what He has created and programmed us to do? God didn’t create us by accident. He created us for a purpose and created us in perfection with the ability to succeed.
When we start to work on our self-image we begin to make lasting changes which are sustainable, rather than having a yo-yo effect. This is how we can start to take giant leaps and start to see massive results with our weight loss, relationships, finances, our own psychology about how we feel and think, becoming more positive rather than negative, overcoming anxiety, depression, alcoholism, addictions and self-sabotaging behaviours. All of this happens when we work on our self-image. We must purify ourselves of the false conditioning of the world and realign ourselves with this true self-image because only then can we be in the world the way God has intended us to be – which is to be truly successful.
This Article was published in The Asian Leader Newspaper on the 5th September 2018.
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