Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Self Image and Your Authentic Self

The Power of Authentic Self-esteem

You’ve been raised by your family, whether the actual family or one you’ve adopted one way or another. Your self-image is formed first as a small child as you decide what the main quality or characteristic that’s unique to you in your family; something you offer that’s different from anyone else.

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That is the ‘strong suit’ you’ll use to survive and even thrive in life. Among the many choices are: ‘brains’, ‘beauty’, ‘humor’, ‘aggression’, ‘people pleasing’, etc. What’s your choice?

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#1.  Create a Model Of Personal Integrity

A definition of how you will and won’t behave. You decide, for example, if it’s ok to tell a ‘white lie’, talk behind someone’s back in order to get what you want or need, and define character issues like ‘loyalty’, ‘trust’, ‘honesty’. Unfortunately, some of us try to apply our model of personal integrity to others and that’s where a great deal of upset comes from.

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As you venture out into the world you pursue your ‘purpose in life’. We can confuse ‘purpose’ with ‘goal’ in life and make the pursuit of ‘having’ instead of ‘being’. The reality is that our purpose is to provide something to the world.

#2. Our Purpose To be an Extension Of the Role

Our purpose is to be an extension of the role, the strong suit we adopted as young children in some active form. For example, if your strong suit as a child was ‘brains’, your purpose is to share knowledge with others, maybe as a teacher, a leader, a lawyer, or some other form of living where knowledge creates success.

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You are NOT living your purpose when you’re misusing your skillset. Following on the ‘brains’ example, misuse would look like condescension, intellectual bullying, talking down to others or needing to be right all of the time.

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#3. Defensive Move

The ‘finding myself’ game is really a defensive move. Saying that you are up to that game is like giving yourself a ‘pass’ on what’s happening in the here and now. Just reading the few paragraphs above should give you a deeper understanding of your ‘self’.

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The truth is that the ‘self’ is such a core impulse. It is a ‘gut feeling’ that doesn’t need to be found so much as accepted. Self-doubt is the foe. The non-you that is trying to prevent you from finding yourself. It stops you from truly seeing your authentic self-image when, in fact, you were never really lost. You were never really hidden!

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