You might look at yourself in the mirror after getting dressed up for a party and say, damn, I look good!
You might think of yourself as fairly good looking or quite attractive and therefore not worry much about yourself image. But how attractive you think you are or not, has nothing to do with your internal or subconscious self image.
You might have men or women lined up for you or hear flattering words and comments wherever you go, but still carry a low internal self image.
You might have a high self-esteem but a low self image.
How we think about ourselves can give us cues on what might be going on deep within our subconscious.
But it is not enough to understand and know what our self image really looks like.
To really know our internal self image, we would have to experience a lot of contrasting circumstances in life. And not all of us have the opportunity or misfortune (however you want to look at it) to experience a diversity of life encounters by the age of 20.
It's important to know your self image in order to minimize future negative encounters and maximize your manifestation powers to align with manifesting amazing things into your life.
To determine what kind self image you have, take a look at what your conditions of living look like and analyze why you make the decisions you make for yourself. What is the motive behind those decisions, is it to please yourself or to please others? Do you make decisions out of fear? Do you put things or people ahead of yourself? Do you allow others to make decisions for you? Do you stay in conditions you are not happy about? Do you do anything to change conditions in your life that you don't like, or do you just accept what is handed to you.
I will give you a personal example.
When I lived in Paris, though I managed to manifest a covetable, good paying job, with a high fashion luxury brand, my living standards were very low. I would chose the cheapest place possible. I would imagine myself being able to afford only the bare minimum living standards. So I narrowed myself to having the bottom of the bottom, and nothing else. Why? There are two explanations. One, I didn't understand the power of money and two, I was carrying a low self image of myself.
Had I had a higher self image of myself, I would have raised my standards of living, imagined a beautiful setting for living, and made living beautifully, a non-negotiable. So that during my search for an apartment, I would have kept an open mind on the price.
I would have thought of myself worthy of nicer things and made it a non-negotiable, allowing my budget some room to accommodate. So in this case, I made the idea of saving money more important than the comfort and pleasantry of my home.
Self image has direct relation to your self worth and your self belief.
If you have a low self belief then it is very likely you have a low subconscious self image of yourself.
Your self image reflects your living or life standards.
What do you feel towards the things that come into your life? and how likely or quick are you to change or remove what you don't like? What emotions drive your decisions? How specific are you about what you accept and desire into your life? Do you have any non-negotiables or do you generally allow and accept or adapt to whatever comes into your life.
Your self worth reflects how happy you are in the life you have chosen (or accepted).
Sometimes we attract beautiful amazing things into our lives, but then we have an overwhelming feeling of guilt. You might have heard of imposter syndrome. Except of being about credentials and your job, this can also exist in life and the effects could appear as unconsciously sabotaging the good thing you have in your life, without being aware of it.
So if you have a low self image, then you will allow anything to come into your life. You will accept what is given to you, instead of dictating what comes into your life exactly. You will accept that average relationship, you will stay with your ugly boyfriend that treats you bad, you will let someone else choose how your living room looks like, you will choose the cheapest product on the shelf. You will stay in that job you hate.
What caused this?
Well there are various reasons, from how you were raised, your economic circumstances growing up, your parents relationship with money and its effects on you, your parents own self image that got passed on to you, the list goes on.
Why do you allow this to happen?
This depends on the development and strength of your self belief.
Your self belief is your belief in your ability to do or accomplish something.
If you have a low self belief, then you will dismiss trying to change anything you feel is out of your control.
You will not create any goals or achievements for yourself. The effects this has on you, is that you don't develop your self worth.
In order to change your self image, you need to raise you standards and create a belief system that anything you desire is achievable.
It is not enough to raise your standards, and say to yourself, I won't date ugly or abusive men anymore, or from now on, I will only date men I am actually attracted to, that treat me like a goddess.
Though it is a very good start to word out your new standards and affirm them with affirmations, but it still hasn't change your self image.
Think of Self Worth as the act of speaking what you want you want into existence aka affirmations, which is very important. But it is not enough. Because now you have to back up your words with actions.
So now, think of Self Belief as the actions that are required in order for your conscious and subconscious mind to align. The actions will give your subconscious mind the conviction that this belief is true, and it will begin to rewire itself - this being the goal.
Self Belief is comprised of two concepts. Integrity and Discipline.
Beginning with integrity. Integrity is the action of keeping your word. When you say to yourself, I'm going to go to the gym this afternoon. You could say to yourself, or sometimes, it comes as an good idea in your mind, in that moment.
For example, if you wake up feeling crummy and then think to yourself, I know what could fix this and that is to go to the gym. But, then you end up siding with your crummy mood, you decide you want to continue to feel crummy instead of going to the gym. You have just given an example of having 0 to very low integrity.
Having high integrity means that you keep the promises you give to yourself, whether big or small.
Integrity is doing what you said you were going to do. Even if it was to yourself and even if it has no immediate effect on you or change in your life.
It's the small promises to ourselves that we tend to minimize that will in reality have the biggest influence in our self belief.
When you practice integrity you are developing and strengthening self discipline.
Self discipline is the ability to control your mind.
We make decisions from either our emotional mind or our logical mind.
Depending on the situation, you should listen to your logical mind 99% of the time. But 99% of us actually listen to our emotional mind instead.
When it comes to self-discipline, the logical mind will always be the most rewarding.
The problem is that we only really do what we feel like doing.
If we don't feel like doing something, chances are we won't do it. Unless, we make ourselves do it, and this is where self-disciple is involved.
The ability to shift out mindset is reflected on our discipline.
Here is one simple exercise to help you determine the spectrum of your self image:
Take a look at your environment. How clean and organized is it? How comfortable is it? How aesthetically pleasing is it to you? Did you choose the material things in surroundings or did someone choose them for you? Do you have or practice certain standards for the things you in your life? Ask the same questions in other areas of your life. For example, your relationships. How fulfilled do you feel with your current friends? Did you chose your friends, or did they make the decision for you?..
In conclusion
Our self image is dependent on our self worth & self belief, which is dependent on our integiry and our self discipline.
If we want to change our self image, we can begin by the intention to raise our standards in most or all areas of our life. And we do this by changing our language, choosing with our words the standards we want to have, or creating affirmations that speak this intention.
Secondly, we need to follow our words with our actions. This will help us to develop and strengthen our self belief, which in turn begins to create new neurological pathways.
Our Self Belief is related to our integrity and self discipline. Often times if we have a low self image it is most likely that we have a low self belief.
We strengthen our Self Belief by keeping the small promises we make to ourselves and strengthening our self discipline by listening to our logical mind instead of our emotional mind.
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