Your Self-Image (and Life) Depends on This Process

Sam suffers from a poor self-image. Let me explain what that means.

Sorry, Sam. You will not like this. But you’re our hero for this article.

Sam believes no one likes him (and no one ever will). After all, he also believes he is ugly.

To make it worse, he believes he doesn’t deserve success and won’t ever achieve his dreams. This is a bad combination of beliefs.

Sam’s ideal is extreme and unrealistic at times. For instance, he wants to be liked by a specific type of people — the people who rejected him when he was young. You know, the cool kids!

He should be fit and athletic. Also, he should look so good that people can’t help but look at his masculine face and athletic body.

Don’t get me wrong. Those things are great. It is wonderful to be ambitious. But those are only expectations, not goals.

Not only are they not backed up by any real actions or natural abilities. They are also fueled by inferiority and grandiosity at the same time!

Let’s look at the reality instead of the expectations and the ideals. Sorry, Sam!

Sam suffers from crippling social anxiety that makes him act like a creep around people. He is so shy that he can’t look someone in the eye.

He is overweight, and he never exercised in his life. The idea of being in a gym terrifies the shit out of him. Plus, nothing but fast food finds a way to his stomach.

His lifestyle is not aligned with what he is asking for.

His father is a perfectionist (and probably a narcissist). He’s disappointed with his son and shows no inhibition in expressing this — from physically beating him when he was a child to never giving him the approval any son in the world wants to get from his father.

Also, being shy and socially awkward doesn’t help. Other people weren’t so merciful. He was bullied throughout school for being awkward. He was never taken seriously, neither by his family nor by most of the people around him.

It makes perfect sense why he developed such extreme ideals that include getting approval from a bunch of assholes (who don’t care about him) by trying to impress them.

But he’s not a total mess! He has some good qualities as well.

He is not as ugly as he thinks he is! In fact, he is a decent-looking young guy. Behind his shyness and social anxiety, he has an interesting personality and great ideas.

He is smart. He loves helping people, and he hates seeing others suffer.

However, he can see none of that. He only sees the flaws that make him loathe himself even more.

A Deeper understanding of self-image and self-esteem

Contrary to common beliefs, self-image isn’t only about appearance. It’s about how you see yourself. It’s about what stories you tell yourself about yourself!

Sam’s story above tells us what self-image is. Let’s break it down.

What is self-image?

Whether we admit it or not, we all judge people, negatively or positively. What goes unnoticed is the fact that we also judge ourselves.

On the other hand, people’s judgments have the power to influence the way we see ourselves. I’m not saying we should be defined by people’s opinions. But we get affected to some extent depending on many factors.

This judgment, whether made by you or other people, will lead you to believe certain things about yourself. Those things can be real or imaginary.

This is self-image. The way you see yourself. Who you are. Who you could be. Your appearance, personality, expectations of yourself, desirability, skills, abilities, and everything in between.

This is the short definition. The beliefs that you have about yourself and how you generally see yourself.

However, I am not satisfied with this simple definition. Let’s go deeper, shall we?

I mentioned that the beliefs you end up developing about yourself come from 2 main sources:

Your judgment.
Other people’s judgments.

When we break down this idea, we end up having 3 selves. Let’s explore them.

The Ideal-Self, The Actual-Self, And The Self-Image

We judge ourselves. And more often than not, we are too harsh at doing that. Other people judge us, consciously or unconsciously.

But for that judgment to happen, we need a standard. A benchmark. An ideal.

And that’s where what I call the ideal self comes into play.

We have an ideal self-image that we want to attain. How we should look like, how we should behave, what we should have, how and how much we should be loved or accepted, and so on.

Based on this ideal, we judge ourselves and others.

You judge yourself based on your ideal, and people judge you based on theirs.

I don’t think anyone’s ideal is 100% theirs. We influence each other. Social norms and communities affect people’s choices and actions. That is a good and a bad thing at the same time.

The first influencers you get exposed to are your parents and the environment in which you grew up.

And then we have what I call the actual self. Or at least, what we believe is the actual self. It’s who you are, how you actually behave, and how you actually look and come across.

We don’t see it, but we perceive it. This is extremely important. The healthier our perception, the clearer we see our actual selves.

In most cases, this is the most underdeveloped version of yourself. And in most cases, it’s not pretty, and that’s why self-awareness sucks. It makes you see this self for what it really is.

The great part about self-awareness, however, is that you get to suck less once you know how much you suck. And also, you sometimes discover cool things about yourself you never paid attention to!

(Side note: I believe most of the actual self will remain unseen by us. We might never be able to see the actual self as it is. But it’s OK. Self-awareness can never reach 100%, as with everything in life.)

We look at our actual selves, using our perception, and we measure it against our ideal selves. Other people look at our actual selves, through their perceptions, and measure them against their ideal to make their judgment.

What’s important — most of the time — is how we look at ourselves, not how others look at us. Sometimes our friends can spot thinking errors and have a more accurate way of looking at us. We need to listen at such times else we risk being blinded by arrogance.

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Problems happen when there is, or when we believe there is, a huge gap between our ideal self and actual self. That’s when the so-called “negative self-image” is developed.

To fix this problem, we need to work on our ideal self, actual self, and how we allow other people’s ideals and perceptions to interfere with our self-image. I will explain.

You work on your ideal by:

Questioning which beliefs have formed it.
Weeding out the unhealthy, unrealistic beliefs.
Having a healthy ideal that consists of things that you can control. (e.g. you can’t control how people perceive you or how they will respond to you. You can’t control certain aspects of your looks.)
Having smaller ideals. You want to be a millionaire, fair enough. But let’s start by making 2000 bucks a month. Keep your dream of being a millionaire, but break it down into smaller steps so that the gap between you and the next step isn’t overwhelmingly disappointing.
Accepting the fact that you will never reach that ideal 100% and/or 100% of the time.

You work on your actual self by:

Working on making your perception as healthy as possible (Read this article. It’s a must if you struggle in this area). We will always have perception errors, but the fewer the better.
Working on actual improvements. Sometimes, it’s not a perception error and we need to improve things.
Being able to differentiate between the previous 2 points.
Challenging the toxic beliefs you have about yourself.
Developing healthier beliefs about yourself. Allowing yourself to salute yourself. Allowing others to help and compliment you.

We work on the interference of other people’s ideals and perceptions by:

Learning to spot unhealthy ideals. First, in ourselves and then in other people.
Learning to spot unhealthy perceptions as well. First in ourselves and then in others.
Some perceptions and ideals are good and they are coming from people who care about you. Listen to them. You might not be living up to your full potential and someone who cares about you isn’t thrilled about that.
Ditching the unhealthy things as soon as we realize they are toxic/useless. Don’t let assholes define you.

Those are only suggestions. Take them as they are or develop your own rules based on the concepts behind those suggestions.

…

Sam has a lot of work to do. He needs to work on his “ideal”. It’s extreme and unrealistic and stupid. Even if he achieved that ideal, he would still feel empty within because it’s based on things that are outside of himself.

He, instead, should focus on the inside and feel worthy on the inside without the need to prove that to anyone.

He needs to work on his actual self (overcome social anxiety and hit the freaking gym!). He needs to solve his problems with his father. He needs to work on his emotional wounds caused by this parental relationship.

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He needs to work on his perception and see that he has qualities he refuses to admit. He is great in some areas but feels as though he doesn’t deserve that greatness.

He needs to work on the way he manages people’s opinions. His father and the “cool people” he is trying to impress. He should value his opinion about himself more than theirs (without being too arrogant to listen when someone points out a clear flaw).

Self-awareness is critical. It’s one of the cornerstones of emotional maturity in my opinion.

That, my friend, is what self-development should be for Sam, not a few tips and tricks that will help him get liked or achieve something to impress others.

While it’s an arduous journey, I wholeheartedly encourage Sam to take the first step and never stop. I also wholeheartedly encourage you to do the same.

Your journey might be different, but the decision to travel, endure the difficulties, and celebrate the wins is the same for everyone.

Take this decision now. No one will take it for you. No one is coming to save you. Become your own savior.

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I hope this was helpful

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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