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Executive Education, Personal and Professional development Programmes
Executive Education, Personal and Professional development Programmes
Self-image - Is yours holding you back or helping you rise?
Bella Enahoro
I remember the first time I got a career break that took me into a different league. It brought me substantially more than I was then accustomed to experiencing – higher income, status, attention, credits and with it credibility and of course, interest. It took me quite a while to catch up with it all. The discrepancy between the image I held of myself in my mind and what I was actually experiencing, left me at odds with my life. It took me a while to realise that what needed changing was my image of myself to match my new found incease.
It got me thinking about where we get our image of ourselves. What are our sources? Are they critical or positive sources? For many of us, we can look back at our childhoods and see how we were treated by those who raised us. What did they point out about us? Positive attributes? Negative attributes? Or did they have negative reactions to what was good about us, leading us to disown what was right about us?
Perhaps we’ve disowned inner attributes that we’ve been made to feel bad about or we’ve been trained to amplify out of all proportion, attributes others have told us are not good, so over time our awareness of our positive traits shrinks such that we lose a sense that there is in fact anything good about us. We may even lose the awareness that it is alright to feel good about anything to do with ourselves. We may have noticed that our positive aspects appear to cause other’s pain and they lash out at us. How do we respond to that?
Supposing we have learned to ‘play small’ in order to survive our environment? What if we have learned to focus on what we’ve been told is wrong with us? Perhaps we are raised by those who ‘picked at’ us? Maybe they were threatened by what they saw in us and we began to think it was up to us to make them feel okay about themselves in our presence. So we changed, we became less and they calmed down. Maybe we even made ourselves invisible and that seemed to make them happy. And where does that lead us? Perhaps we grow into adulthood and begin to stabilise a negativity-based image of ourselves which has allowed us to survive and cope with our hostile and unsupportive childhood environment.
And in response to an environment we experience as hostile to the truth of who we are, we may disown certain personal attributes in order to avoid violence, rejection, maltreatment, ostracization and many other unwanted behaviours from others, without realising what we actually doing to ourselves. In our childhood it may have been a wise strategy but in or adulthood it may be holding us back. But is it really our job to dim and diminish ourselves to make others feel okay around us?
And now as adults we have things we want to do, people we want to be and things we want to have. Likely as not our small, contracted, survivalist self-image is not a match to anything we truly desire. We have to learn to see ourselves as the kind of people who are allowed to be all they are. How do we do this?
We can begin by noticing when we play small, less than, not worthy of, not fit for – and forgive ourselves. We don’t need to condemn ourselves for it – we did our best as children but we’re adults now. We can do it differently.
We can investigate and research – play around with the idea of the new set of circumstances we desire and as we do so, we will begin to notice that any sense of barrier or distance between us and what we desire, will begin to dissolve.
This process is important. We are undertaking a retrieval process – for all the disowned aspects of ourselves which have dropped out of our awareness. We are undertaking a re-visioning, learning to see ourselves in a more positive light and re-evaluating ourselves in this light.
As we begin this retrieval, re-visioning and re-evaluative process we may deal with pent up rage for all the ways we feel we were coerced into abandoning ourselves, pent up pain for the ways in which we feel were unaccepted and unloved for who we truly were and pent up shame because we may have come to feel shamed for not being who we are told we ought to be. And not wanting to be who we were told we ought to be.
Self-image is not fixed. We don’t have to live with an idea of ourselves that is less than who we want to be. If our image of ourselves causes us pain, check out the cause and forgive. One of the powers of forgiveness is that it frees us from the past, painful consequences of others behaviours and our own toward ourselves. It allows life to be creative rather than a continual re-living or reproduction of the past. We were born to be who we are, not who others think we ought to be. Give yourself permission to glory in being you, offer the gift of who you are to life, let those who are ready, accept and watch yourself soar.
Copyright ©Bella Enahoro Aug 2011
It got me thinking about where we get our image of ourselves. What are our sources? Are they critical or positive sources? For many of us, we can look back at our childhoods and see how we were treated by those who raised us. What did they point out about us? Positive attributes? Negative attributes? Or did they have negative reactions to what was good about us, leading us to disown what was right about us?
Perhaps we’ve disowned inner attributes that we’ve been made to feel bad about or we’ve been trained to amplify out of all proportion, attributes others have told us are not good, so over time our awareness of our positive traits shrinks such that we lose a sense that there is in fact anything good about us. We may even lose the awareness that it is alright to feel good about anything to do with ourselves. We may have noticed that our positive aspects appear to cause other’s pain and they lash out at us. How do we respond to that?
Supposing we have learned to ‘play small’ in order to survive our environment? What if we have learned to focus on what we’ve been told is wrong with us? Perhaps we are raised by those who ‘picked at’ us? Maybe they were threatened by what they saw in us and we began to think it was up to us to make them feel okay about themselves in our presence. So we changed, we became less and they calmed down. Maybe we even made ourselves invisible and that seemed to make them happy. And where does that lead us? Perhaps we grow into adulthood and begin to stabilise a negativity-based image of ourselves which has allowed us to survive and cope with our hostile and unsupportive childhood environment.
And in response to an environment we experience as hostile to the truth of who we are, we may disown certain personal attributes in order to avoid violence, rejection, maltreatment, ostracization and many other unwanted behaviours from others, without realising what we actually doing to ourselves. In our childhood it may have been a wise strategy but in or adulthood it may be holding us back. But is it really our job to dim and diminish ourselves to make others feel okay around us?
And now as adults we have things we want to do, people we want to be and things we want to have. Likely as not our small, contracted, survivalist self-image is not a match to anything we truly desire. We have to learn to see ourselves as the kind of people who are allowed to be all they are. How do we do this?
We can begin by noticing when we play small, less than, not worthy of, not fit for – and forgive ourselves. We don’t need to condemn ourselves for it – we did our best as children but we’re adults now. We can do it differently.
We can investigate and research – play around with the idea of the new set of circumstances we desire and as we do so, we will begin to notice that any sense of barrier or distance between us and what we desire, will begin to dissolve.
This process is important. We are undertaking a retrieval process – for all the disowned aspects of ourselves which have dropped out of our awareness. We are undertaking a re-visioning, learning to see ourselves in a more positive light and re-evaluating ourselves in this light.
As we begin this retrieval, re-visioning and re-evaluative process we may deal with pent up rage for all the ways we feel we were coerced into abandoning ourselves, pent up pain for the ways in which we feel were unaccepted and unloved for who we truly were and pent up shame because we may have come to feel shamed for not being who we are told we ought to be. And not wanting to be who we were told we ought to be.
Self-image is not fixed. We don’t have to live with an idea of ourselves that is less than who we want to be. If our image of ourselves causes us pain, check out the cause and forgive. One of the powers of forgiveness is that it frees us from the past, painful consequences of others behaviours and our own toward ourselves. It allows life to be creative rather than a continual re-living or reproduction of the past. We were born to be who we are, not who others think we ought to be. Give yourself permission to glory in being you, offer the gift of who you are to life, let those who are ready, accept and watch yourself soar.
Copyright ©Bella Enahoro Aug 2011
