Clean Run - March 2012 - 52

Agility Mind Gym
The Effect of Self-Image
By Kathy Keats

“Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.” —Maxwell Maltz
Your self-image—does it imprison you or empower you? Self-image is a series of beliefs we hold about ourselves that not only includes our physical looks, but also how we perceive our abilities, our worthiness, and the type of person we are. This image we hold of ourselves is developed over time from our thought processes and the important influences in our lives and our experiences. As a matter of fact, our self-image is such a powerful framework for who we believe we are and what we are capable of doing, that it is literally impossible to outperform your self-image over the long term. As we become aware of our beliefs, other techniques become more effective because we start to recognize when we are sabotaging ourselves. For example, although repetitive positive self-talk is a very powerful tool, if you have strong negative beliefs about yourself, the positive self-talk eventually fails because you don’t even realize that another voice in your head is telling you not to believe the positive self-talk and that is the final voice you hear. Goal setting, which we talked about in the previous article (CR February 2012), will fail if our self-image isn’t consistent with achieving those goals.
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Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon who wrote a ground-breaking book in 1960 called Psycho-Cybernetics. Maltz began to realize that when he performed a surgery—for example, to remove a terrible facial scar from an accident—a patient’s image of himself was often very different. Not only did the patient’s behavior change, his entire personality changed; and in turn, so did his experiences. This perhaps doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch. However, even more fascinating were the patients who, when given a beautiful face, still acted as if they were disfigured! Their self-image was so strong that they couldn’t see the truth about themselves, and couldn’t accept the beauty. Indeed, they were still disfigured on the inside, which no amount of surgery could fix. And, of course, Maltz gave the examples of young men who had saber scars on their faces that proclaimed they were members of an elite society. These scars, Maltz pointed out, had the same effect of giving confidence as removing a scar gave confidence to others.

someone who just got out of an abusive relationship end up in other abusive relationship? Why does a successful athlete continue to achieve great wins, while other skilled athletes don’t? How do entrepreneurs like Donald Trump pull themselves from the brink of bankruptcy, billions of dollars in debt, while others topple over the cliff? There are lots of factors, but ultimately, in each of these examples the people continued to “act in a manner consistent with [their] self-image.” When the chips are down, we default to behaviors that support our beliefs. The obvious question is: how do we change our beliefs about ourselves? The most important point is to first understand that you have a choice about how you perceive things. We can’t change the past, but we can choose how to perceive it. Your past is not your prison, unless you choose it to be so. Everything good or bad that happens to us is a lesson in life. It is harder to take the lesson out of the difficult times, but those times are usually the most instructive if we are willing to find the lesson. We are not our mistakes. Mistakes are simply non-judgmental moments in time that take us closer to our goal. Yet we are so willing to identify with our mistakes. Maltz wrote: “Of all the traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome; for it is a pit
Clean Run | March 12

“The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.” —Brian Tracy
The above quote by Brian Tracy is so true. Why does someone who wins the lottery end up in terrible financial trouble a year later? Why does

Clean Run - March 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - March 2012