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Meditation to Improve Your Self-Image

Meditation to Improve Your Self-Image

Your self-image affects everything about you and your life. The way you perceive yourself filters how you view and respond to the world. It’s built of beliefs, and beliefs can be changed. Watch and listen to this short meditation that will help you start to shift how you think about yourself so that it’s more positive.



Transcript:
Your self-image is how you perceive yourself to be. And it affects your decisions, actions, attitudes and relationships. Your self-image is the filter for who you think you are and how you respond to situations around you. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that you make true. But you can also change it because it’s build of beliefs. And beliefs can be changed. Here’s a short meditation to get you started.

If you want, close your eyes. Take a deep breath, let it out, and relax.

Consider what is right about you. Think of the things you’ve done that have been right and good. Reflect on what’s good, valuable and worthwhile about you. Contemplate what you like about yourself – your appearance, talents, characteristics. People view you as a good person. Think of all the compliments you’ve ever been given. Accept them. Allow yourself to feel the warmth of their glow. Now, consider the person you want to be. What do you need to believe to be that person? What if you start believing it now? What would change? You can start making those changes right now. How would that feel?

Open your eyes. When your negative self-talk starts to bring you down, shift your attention to what’s positive about you. This will help to improve your self-image and will make massive changes in your world.

Read the article, 3 Steps to Improving Your Self-Image, that inspired this meditation.

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Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight

Sparks of Insight“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” – Winston Churchill

If you constantly are diverted by each little distraction that arises, you’ll never achieve anything. You’ll be taking your attention off your dream to deal with issues that don’t matter. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be aware of pitfalls, just that unless they’re actually delaying you, move around or through them. Keep on your path, recognize the dogs are around you, but unless one is actually threatening you, just keep going.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

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There is no secret sauce to success. It’s just a lot of work and doing things that are necessary for success. You’ll have to overcome limiting beliefs and motivate yourself. Here are some tips that will help you fulfill your innate potential for success.

3 Steps to Improving Your Self-Image

3 Steps to Improving Your Self-Image

by Linda-Ann Stewart

Self-esteem is a basic necessity for all success in personal and professional life. When you like and respect yourself, then you’re likely to make the choices that lead to creating the outcomes that you want. Your self-worth is created by your attitudes about yourself based on what ideas you accepted as a child and the things you tell yourself as an adult.

Your self-image plays a large part in the development of your self-esteem. Your self-image is formulated from your experiences, judgments, labels you’ve accepted, and your talents or your liabilities. These have helped to shape your beliefs about yourself that feed into your self-worth.
Woman with outstretched arms

You always act like the person you believe yourself to be. How do you see yourself? Do you perceive yourself as a competent and dynamic individual? Or do you doubt yourself and your abilities? Do you focus on what you’ve done wrong, or what didn’t turn out the way you wanted? This will erode your self-image and contribute to a low self-esteem.

If you have a strong, healthy self-image, then you make healthy decisions that support your vision, dreams and goals. You’ll exercise to stay fit, eat healthy, and avoid substances that would impair your health. These choices may be difficult or inconvenient, such as quitting smoking, ending a one-sided relationship, or finding another job that gives you a better chance to advance in your career. But you protect your health and well-being because you view yourself as someone who is proactive.

Your self-image forms the filter through which you view yourself and how you respond to situations around you. It demands that you remain consistent with your concept of yourself. Suppose you perceive yourself as a supportive person, who likes to make everyone happy. If so, to be congruent, you won’t stand up for yourself when you’re taken advantage of, even at the cost of your welfare.

For instance, Clarisse owned a service-based business. Initially, her attitude was that she offered a service that happened to be a business. With that approach, she was supportive, sympathetic and enabling of everyone who came to her. But her customers took advantage of her after she’d done work for them. After promising to pay, they reneged, saying they couldn’t afford it. Her business began to flounder.

To be successful, she had to shift her view of herself as a businessperson. She realized she wouldn’t be able to help anyone if she wasn’t in business. She changed her inner position to one of being a businessperson who provides a service. With this outlook, she made decisions based on what was good for the business.

To fulfill her desire to be of service to those who needed it, she selectively provided her service pro-bono to a client every once in a while. But they no longer were the majority of her clientele. Her business began to thrive.

Your self-image is malleable. You can impact it, making it stronger and more effective. But to do so, you’ll have to let go of some imbedded, old ideas. They may even be ones that you value, but they’re not helping you or your self-esteem.

Clarisse had to let go of her self-concept of being of service to everyone who needed her. That way was destroying her business. One major change she made was insisting on payment up front. She also set and kept boundaries, in the form of policies. If someone violated a policy, she refused to work with them. And she refused to take responsibility for others’ decisions that prevented them from living up to their agreements with her.

If you want to have more impact, be more effective and more successful, the first place to start is with improving your self-image. Here are a few suggestions of what to do.

1. Let go of the judgments and labels from your childhood. They belong in the past and don’t reflect who you are now. Besides, they were simply someone’s, usually mistaken, opinion and don’t define you in the present.

2. Stop of focusing on what’s wrong with you.
You’ll always be able to find something to criticize in yourself or what you do. Break that habit as it’s not helpful. Instead, focus on what’s right about you.

3. Make a list compliments that you’ve received.
Don’t dismiss them as untrue or someone just being nice. Accept that they’re true of you.

No matter what your dreams, you’ll always make decisions, and act, in alignment with your self-image. To become the person you want to be, and achieve your dreams, you’ll need to change it so it supports what you want in your life. You can do it. Just consider the life that awaits you and stay focused on your dreams.

Affirmation:
The Universe loves and approves of me as I am. I accept my true worth. It’s safe to let go of old concepts that aren’t true of who I am. I now acknowledge the things that I do that are good and right. People like me, and I accept that I am likeable. I now shift my self-image to reflect the person I want to be.

Watch the Monthly Mindset Coaching Tip Video, Meditation to Improve Your Self-Image, that was inspired by this article.

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~ Linda-Ann Stewart

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~ Linda-Ann Stewart

Eliminate What Is Not Working

Eliminate What Is Not Working

Do you feel stuck, overwhelmed or like your life isn’t progressing the way you want it to? If so, the hindrance is probably something you’re holding onto and haven’t released. Without your knowledge, it could directly or indirectly be getting in the way of your dream.

If you’re like most people, you’ve crammed your life full of activity and technology. Computers, smart phones, social media keep you busy and engaged. One downside to this is that it allows very little time to assess what’s outdated and not working. You’re always on the way to the next meeting, text, call, email, or project.

Your life is stuffed full and overflowing. By jamming more and more into your life, you don’t have the space to move or grow. You’re always reacting to what’s coming at you. And you’re so pressured that it doesn’t allow you to respond in an intentional way. Unless you eliminate something, you’ll just continue to become more stressed and anxious.

As you meander through life, you also drag your old habits, beliefs and outdated stuff along with you. They’re so much a part of you and your environment that you don’t notice them. You just keep plugging forward as that weight slows you down. But this costs you time and mental/emotional resources.

To create more space and energy, you need to cleanse old grudges and expectations from your life. Just as you clean out your refrigerator every so often, tossing away sour milk and moldy cheese, you should take stock and clear out your mental and environmental closet. Eliminate those ideas, habits, connections and tasks that aren’t working for you anymore.

First, you have to become aware that they’re present and that they’re holding you back. Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away. Until you become aware of it, you can’t resolve or eliminate a problem. Here are some areas where most people have blocks.

Mental. These are beliefs and attitudes that are undermining your vision and goals. They’re so integrated into your personality that you don’t even recognize how they’re affecting you.

You may have an underlying belief that you don’t deserve your dream, aren’t worthy or ready for it. Or you may be a perfectionist. This is a hard habit to break, because it has so many beliefs attached to it. This belief developed in response to your early life, but is outdated. Treat yourself more gently, and seek a more realistic ideal.

Do you have any beliefs that are interfering with your effectiveness?

Habits. These can be mental and physical habits that undermine you.

For instance, you spend too much time on Facebook or social media. Or you want to be more active, but you’re a couch potato. These habits can be detrimental to your relationships and to your career. When you make the effort to be more balanced, you increase your effectiveness and others will respect you more.

What habits do you have that are holding you back?

Relationships. These can be personal or professional relationships, such as difficult customers.

You may feel like you’re trying to fit a square peg into round hole. No matter what you do, it’s not good enough. Or servicing the relationship takes an enormous amount of time and energy. You keep trying to make it work, and it does to an extent. But you would be valued higher elsewhere. It’s time to recognize your worth and find those who agree with you.

What relationships have you outgrown?

When I was in a coaching group, my coach would ask each of us what we could let go of that week. It could be an emotion, a chore, responsibility or something else. To be able to take more on, something else has to be released to create the space. And for life to flow more smoothly, outdated attachments need to be ejected. [This allows the Law of Attraction to work more easily.]

If there’s any place in your life that isn’t working, spend some time to take a long look at it. Are you trying to force a situation or relationship to work when it’s not right for you? Do you have a task or chore that isn’t supporting your dream or vision? Or is there something deeper that’s blocking your progress, such as a habit or belief?

Before you can have more success, harmony, peace or joy, you have to eliminate what’s standing in the way of these desires. Once you figure out what it is, then you can make different choices and change your approach. Install what will help you move towards your dream. You can then move forward unimpeded and create the life you want.

~ Linda-Ann Stewart

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~ Linda-Ann Stewart

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~ Linda-Ann Stewart