Make up your own damn mind!

Far from telling you what to do, I can let you in on a powerful truth that can transform your life and your self-esteem. Try this and I guarantee you’ll be amazed by the results of your own pre-programmed auto-suggestion. I’ve done it and it’s brought me most of the time to the brink of a self-fulfilled prophesy.

It’s simply this: make up your own mind “who” you want others to see you as, and then simply start to see them seeing you just like this person you’ve created. It’s the new “you.”

For example, if you want your supervisor to see you as diligent and trustworthy, why not simply start seeing them in your interactions as valuing you for these qualities. It’s amazingly easy to do this if you’ve got a healthy, positive self-esteem. (But you can’t get a healthy, positive self-esteem without some act of boldness toward it--just make a start.)

The truth is we do this without thinking anyway, but we invariably slate ourselves pessimistically thinking others are thinking negative things about us. And at least half the time it’s probably not true. In this, we can only set ourselves up to fail.

But, instead, we can start to dream up our own destiny by creating others’ perceptions of us. We just need to make sure these ‘scripts’ we’re designing and writing (i.e. bringing to habit) are good ones based on mutual benefit i.e. so that they will ‘stick.’

Making up our own minds as to how we want to be seen will inevitably give us the impetus to succeed in life because it will force us to reflect on who we want to be.

It’s your life! It’s yours to determine.

We must get to know ourselves and our passions; what we were made for. This is the essential starting point, for if we know the answers to these questions the other people in our lives (even our bosses) are just actors helping us bring our dreams into reality.

Again, I can’t over-emphasise… we create self-talk in a microsecond about what we think others are thinking of us; a massive percentage of the time we’re not even close to understanding the real thoughts of others (unless we’re expert psychologists or psychiatrists).

Rather than attribute their thoughts about us as negative, we can equally attribute these as positives--and therefore reap increased stocks of self-esteem and power to grow and ultimately contribute to broader goals through amplified influence.

Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved.