Feel Good About Yourself – Understanding the Self Concept

Practical example 2:

You see yourself as a young aspiring artist, who is presently working in a bakery as she explores the many possibilities out there for her.  The job is seen as a means to an end and as such, is expendable.  You’ve been considering which art school to enrol in as you decide whether it will the performing arts or the literary arts that you will concentrate on.  You have always wanted to have a career where you could express yourself through your creations and work each day towards achieving that.  In this example, the young lady has a positive plan for her future.  She sees herself as ‘on her way up’ and believes that she can reach where she wants to be.  The gap, therefore, between her self image in these areas and her ideal self is very small, suggesting that her self esteem should be high in the particular areas disscusssed.

Conclusion:

To conclude, it is absolutely imperative that, to feel positive towards ourselves and value ourselves in as many ways as possible, we have to realistically assesss our aims.  If we assess our aims and our aims, by our own admiission, are high, then we limit our ability, not only to reach them, but to see ourselves as being worthy of them.  In other words, you can set your aims as high as you wish, just as long as you view yourself as able to reach them.  This can be achieved by setting short term and long term goals.  You know that if you can satisfy the short term goals, the next step is easier to navigate but you take each step as an ambition in it’s own right.  Then, when you have achieved that goal, you set another or move on to the next one which should be a logical step up from the previous one.

It is no good, when attempting to climb the highest mountain, to dwell on the summit.  Target on closer, more reachable levels and then move your target a little further on each time.  That way, you can regroup and set a fresh attitude for the next hike.  Life and ambitions should be seen in the same way.  You cannot build a house by constantly visualizing the entire house with every brick that you lay.  Once your measurements have been confirmed, you lay brick by brick according to the specifications of that section or task.  Often, that builder may not see the finished project, someone else moves in to complete the next stage and so on.  So what use is a picture of the house to the engineer who isbuilding the foundations?  None, if all the measurements are correct, he follows the plan, he does not rewrite it.

So it should be with your life.  Place each brick at a time and just concentrate on knowing that they shall become a wall, a very strong wall.  That’s your most important job to begin with.  When the wall is completed, you will know that you need another and another, one by one until the last wall, where you have made a room, or the surrounds of the house.  From here, you can decide if it is just a house, or are you now building the castle of your life?