Self Motivational and Self Image

Posted on January 30th, 2010 by admin in self motivational


The great thing about self motivational people is that they are not burdened by what other people think of them. That’s not because they are arrogant or conceited they just don’t let it make them feel less of themselves or on the flipside inflate their ego. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling; self motivational people can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same. It’s about staying on the level regardless of what people say or think about you. Especially what we think others think about us as very often we don’t have a very accurate view of this.

The main reason we often worry about what others think of us is that we crave their approval. Why might we be so dependent on others approval to make us feel good about ourselves? For many of us this behaviour pattern is instilled at a very early age. When children misbehave their parents often chastise them and tell them they are a bad boy/girl. If this is done relentlessly then the child begins to believe they are inherently bad or there is something wrong with them and that their parents don’t love them. If you are a parent of young children make sure that you highlight their bad behaviour not that they are bad. In this way you can direct their behaviour but leave their self esteem intact. Research has found that up to the age of 6 or 7 years a child will accept the opinion of any authority figure as being fact and will begin to form their character as a result. As William Wordsworth said “the child is father of the man”. The problem is further confounded when a child does something well and is given high praise and told they are a good boy/girl. Often they don’t understand why they are now inherently good but it makes them feel good about themselves. From then on they know they feel good when others think well of them and they become almost addicted to the situation. Thus they crave approval even if they are not sure how they go about getting that approval. As we grow up we begin to work out what get approval and what doesn’t though we are not always completely accurate in our analysis. It becomes even more complicated when others have different expectations of us and give approval for different behaviours. This then becomes a barrier to us being self motivational.

As a result we develop a belief that what makes us ‘good enough’ is what others think about us. We then become a puppet on a string to be led one way then another by what we think people will think of us. So how can we alter that belief? The first thing to realise that it is not based on reality it is just our map of the world and that we can change that map. One of the ways of changing belief patterns and becoming more self motivational is to use positive affirmations. These can be used by writing them down a number of times or saying them out loud especially while looking into a mirror. My favourite affirmation to use in this context is “What I think of myself is much more important than what others think of me”. If used often enough you hard wire this new belief pattern into your brain which in turn cuts those strings allowing you to be self motivational. For more ideas take a look at my self motivational booklist.

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