Living a Better Life

Self-image is our own conception of the "sort of person I am." It has been built up from our own beliefs about ourselves. But most of these beliefs about ourselves have unconsciously been formed from our past experiences, our successes and failures, our humiliations, our triumphs, and the way other people have reacted to us, especially in early childhood. From all these we mentally construct a "self" (or a picture of a self).

Once an idea or belief about ourselves goes into this picture it becomes "true," as far as we personally are concerned. We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true.

This self-image becomes a golden key to living a better life because of two important discoveries:

1. All your actions, feelings, behavior even your abilities are always consistent with this self-image. In short, you will "act like" the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. Not only this, but you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or will power. The man who conceives himself to be a "failure-type person" will find some way to fail, in spite of all his good intentions, or his will power, even if opportunity is literally dumped in his lap. The person who conceives himself to be a victim of injustice, one "who was meant to suffer," will invariably find circumstances to verify his opinions. The self-image is a "premise," a base, or a foundation upon which your entire personality, your behavior, and even your circumstances are built. Because of this our experiences seem to verify, and thereby strengthen our self images, and a vicious or a beneficent cycle, as the case may be, is set up.

2. The self-image can be changed. Numerous case histories have shown that one is never too young nor too old to change his self-image and thereby start to live a new life.

The method itself consists in learning, practicing, and experiencing, new habits of thinking, imagining, remembering, and acting in order to:

1. develop an adequate and realistic Self-image

2. use your Creative Mechanism to bring success and happiness in achieving particular goals.

If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you can succeed. As you will see later, the method to be used consists of creative mental picturing, creatively experiencing through your imagination, and the formation of new automatic reaction patterns by "acting out" and "acting as if."

The things you are called upon to do are simple, but you must practice and "experience." Visualizing, creative mental picturing, is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some scene out of the past, or worry about the future. Acting out new action patterns is no more difficult than "deciding," then following through on tying your shoes in a new and different manner each morning, instead of continuing to tie them in your old "habitual way," without thought or decision.