Be Your Best Self

27 August 2010

Be your best self
by I.M. Soni

YOU have been troubled by inferiority feelings which are often based on memories or on remarks made by others. These feelings lead to self-concepts that are flagrantly wrong, but as long as you believe in them, you are influenced by them. Therefore, it is important for you to keep telling yourself that you are a much better individual than you are made to believe by envious people. If you accept this as a fact, it will begin to influence your life because what you do with yourself life depends on your own self-concept. Your self-concept makes real things happen to you. You may say: “I can do this” and “I can’t do that,” simply because of remarks that other have made about you. You underestimate your own abilities. Your inherent abilities are much greater than those you actually use. No one ever gives his best, is not a joke. Henry Ford once said, “Everyone can do more than he thinks he can.” No matter what your abilities are, they can be developed only if you choose to develop them. It is up to you. Accordingly to Prescott Lecky, every human being strives to be a consistent whole. He rejects what he thinks contradicts his self-image. Sometimes he rejects traits

that would be greatly to his advantage, because in a thoughtless moment, someone has told him that he was very dull. If he accepts this, it becomes part of his mental picture of himself, and from that time he behaves accordingly. A poor speller, for example, can be turned into a good one by changing his idea about his ability. When he changed his opinion of himself, a high school student, who had previously misspelled 55 words out of 100 and had failed in most of his school subjects, became one of the best spellers in his school, and got a general average of 90. He overcame his “disability” and became proficient. Self -concept may be compared to building houses. If a man, in a fit of alcoholism, builds up an image of himself that has no basis in... [continues]

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