Chapter 4 - How You See Yourself? (Self-Image, Day 2) Part-1 | Begin with “I” by Rohit Sethi - Self Help Learning PDF Download

How You See Yourself? (Self-Image, Day 2)

“Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.” ~Nathaniel Branden

The alarm rings. Ron jumps out of bed, turns the alarm off and launches himself straight into his morning rituals as instructed by Ron+. This time, he is conscious of all that he does and says to himself. He ensures that he is thankful to God instead of complaining. In the process, he realizes how over all these years, he has forgotten all his prayers of thankfulness.

Figure 18: Forgetting all prayers

Now that he has more time for breakfast in the morning, he ensures that he makes it a wholesome and relaxed meal, to give a more energizing start to the day.

In the car, he greets his mates as usual. Instead of explicitly announcing that he will start moving time away from his ‘hobby’, as Ron+ calls it, to more productive activities, he decides to keep it subtle and gradually make the shift. Ron+ has introduced this strategy to Ron on how he can bring his peers onto his side. The strategy directs people to start making a shift towards what they want and observe how the peer group responds. If the peer group is fine with you making the change, carry on. If the peer group starts to oppose your change, announce openly on what you are trying to achieve and bring them onto your side. Ron buys a personal development classic on his phone and starts to read. When one of the mates asks him what he is reading, he responds saying that a friend of his recommended this book to him. The others acknowledge Ron’s response and decide not to bother him for rest of the trip. They continue with their usual discussions, but with lesser intensity than usual, as Ron has interrupted their habitual pattern by choosing a different response. As they don’t respond with resistance, Ron decides to continue implementing his change without explicitly announcing it.

“If the peer group is fine with you making the change, carry on. If the peer group starts to oppose your change, announce openly on what you are trying to achieve and bring them onto your side.”

In the office, Ron is conscious about his distracted focus and attempts his best to keep it in check. He realizes that it is not possible to transform overnight but is keen to take at least small steps towards that direction. As Jim Rohn said, “You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction.”

Ron takes fewer coffee breaks, chats less, and completes all the work expected from him with increased efficiency.

In the car on the way back home, Ron again starts to read. He realizes how it had been a long time since he last read a book. He has another major revelation during his reading. In the author of this personal development book, Ron has found someone who is telling him that he can achieve anything he wants in his life if he focuses his mind and actions around it. He realizes it had been a while since someone genuinely encouraged him to become bigger and better and emphasized the need to look at the positive side of things.

He reaches home and since he has no work from office, he decides to go for a run on the treadmill. The run is tough, as it had been a while since he last did it. He comes back home, orders food, showers, watches television for a bit, finishes dinner and starts to chat with Ron+ again.

“Ron, let’s talk about the first element within the pillar of ‘Individuality’, Self-image. We start from here as this is something extremely fundamental to each of us. In fact, everything in our lives revolves around this pivotal concept. Let me introduce you to the key principles here.”

Principle 1: Our lives revolve around the concept of our ‘Selfimage’ (yes, I call it a concept as it can be changed!)

“Each of us has a sense of identity that we establish for ourselves over the years. It is the sum-total of our beliefs about us. The core of all personal development and transformation begins from the self-image inside out. This sense of identity gives us our anchor in life and enables us to make all our decisions on what we like, what we do not like, who do we want to associate with and who do we want to avoid. As we mature, this sense of identity keeps becoming more rigid, as over the years, it gets verified again and again. And the simple reason it gets verified is because we always act in ways that are consistent with that identity.”

“The core of all personal development and transformation begins from the self-image inside out.”

“I don’t think I fully get you here, can you please give me some examples?”

“Sure. For instance, someone who is convinced that he is not an adventurous type of person because he met with an accident from such an activity in his childhood will always avoid every opportunity to be adventurous and by mid-age, would have done nothing adventurous at all. If, on the other hand, during his youth, someone had pushed him into experiencing adventure, say a girlfriend or a close friend, someone who had a strong leverage on him – yes, love and friendships provide strong leverages and can push people out of their comfort zones – he might have just liked it and continued onto bigger adventures in life.”

“Let me give you a more unfortunate example, say of someone who thinks he is a failure type of person. You can already imagine how rigidly this person would want to live in his comfort zone and how strong an aversion he would have to try anything new. And, if he is absolutely forced to try something new, he will be so full of worries and anxieties that he will actually paralyze his mental and physical faculties into creating the result that is all over his mind, yes failure! And as soon as that happens, he will shout out, ‘See, I already told you, I will fail!’ Remember Ron, people do not always create the results they deserve, but the ones they expect.”

“People do not always create the results they deserve, but the ones they expect.”

“Yes, I have observed people living in their own little worlds that they are too scared to make any changes to. Does it have to do something with self-image?”

“Well, with the years, as our exposure in life increases, we come across ideas or individuals who do not necessarily fit into our then view of the world. Given that maintaining a consistent self-identity is a primary need of the mind, the mind immediately disregards these ideas or individuals as things that don’t belong to our world. Also, we end up not liking these individuals and it is quite possible that we might not even consciously know why we don’t like them. This is when we can know that our sense of identity has started to constrain us. That’s the time to make a change. It is not necessary that we forego our previous identity completely, but we can certainly make some additions to it and enhance it further to expand on who we are as individuals.”

“Maintaining a consistent identity is a primary need of our mind, even if it means keeping us insulated within our own closed worlds compromising our growth.”

“In fact, if we can go a step further, we should see such a conflict as an opportunity for growth. Isn’t it true that people who make us feel uncomfortable, can push us to become bigger and better than what we are currently settling for?”

“Isn’t it true that people who make us feel uncomfortable, can push us to become bigger and better than what we are currently settling for?”