Ideas are Changed, Not by ‘Will’, But by other Ideas.
How ideas about ourselves are changed? What is the common mistake people usually do while wanting to change some perceived ideas about themselves.
You have, for sure, heard it before: ‘ It is all about the power of you will’, ‘ It is your will that will make you undergo the change’, ‘only by the power of your will, you will be able to move on’.
According to Maltz, it is not only the will that will push us into change, especially when it comes to our ideas about ourselves… Maybe the will or the good intentions will help us in changing our ideas about other people, but here we are talking about ideas that we hold about ourselves… Self-image.
Have your ever took a real and honest look at who you are? What are the first ideas that come to mind when you think about yourself?
Write these ideas down on a sheet of paper… even thought this could a tough exercises for some people, but sometimes we have to get uncomfortable to step into the confortable. We are talking here about rooting ideas that were implanted in our heads since our childhood. Self-image building process has started long long time ago.
You are gonna figure out that most of these ideas are not ideas we made them or we discovered them. Most of these ideas, if not all of them, are old ideas that became belief at some point due to repetition.
These ideas have started with a simple opinion of someone who decided to voice them out. As kids, we don’t really know, if this is true or not, or why this person is saying what he is saying about our self-image.
The best thing to do about these ideas is to start replacing them as we are more aware now of who we are. It is a long process but worth it.
When people ask tell me who you are, make sure not to tell them who society or family told you who you are; my real self-image.
On the back of this paper starting thinking and writing about the person you want to be. Who you want to be.
It may take you time, it may take you a lot of energy, it may take you many times to know really who you want to be.
Start little by little, replacing in your mind the old ideas about yourself with the new ones… at least the one you are aware of 😉