By Danny L Churchill
How you see yourself determines your worth. And your self-worth helps determines how successful you will be. So how do you see yourself? Way too many people let small, insignificant, petty little things, and people determine their self-worth. But your self-worth shouldn't be determined by anyone other than yourself. A good definition of self-worth is: the opinion you have about yourself and the value you place on yourself. How you see yourself seems to be governed by how others see you. But David J Schwartz tells us in his book the magic of thinking big, that "the price tag the world puts on us is just about identical to the one we put on ourselves". So it is that your own personal sense of self-worth is simply being reflected back to you by those around you. They are simply reflecting how you see yourself.
Does that sound correct to you? Do you consciously see yourself as successful, mediocre or struggling as others see you? Do we always have to see ourselves as deserving, or resigned to our place in life? How you see yourself is reflected in your environment as well. When we resign ourselves to living how we are and living where we are we cap our self-worth and settle into our own personal comfort zone. It isn't fulfilling or happy, although we do have our moments. But accepting our value based on where we are at this moment is short-sighted. We are today an accumulation of all that we have thought and felt about ourselves up to this point. If we keep thinking how we're thinking, we'll keep getting what we got. But what we have isn't who we are, it's who we have been and who we've settled for being. Making the decision to no longer settle isn't easy, but if we want more we have to.
How Do You See Yourself
David J Schwartz talks about a young man in his book that has very little money in the bank, a dead-end job, an older car and lives in a small apartment on a hamburger budget."But professor" he says "I'm determined not to let what I haven't got stop me." There is an amazing amount of growing self-worth, determination and realization in that sentence. What he realized is that we all have this bad habit of looking at this moment in time and judging it to be a reflection of our value. And he decided to stop looking at himself in that limiting way. He also was beginning to understand that how you see yourself living next week and next month and next year will determine just how you will be living next week, next month and next year. As you begin to think bigger and further out into your future you will see and feel each new step toward your dream. Each time you do this will be another boost in self-worth. That boost in self-worth will fuel another step forward, and so on.
We have to think bigger than we are. Constantly reliving how we got here is only going to keep us here. We have to stretch, we have to grow. We have to push beyond our comfort zone. How do you see yourself 12 months from now? Take that first step by writing down just 2 dreams you would like to achieve by this time next year, just two. Make them big or make them small, but make them. Write them on cards or stickers or in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, somewhere, anywhere that you will see them every day. Try to keep the description to just one sentence each. Remember to write down just two dreams. Live with them for a week or so then sit down with each dream individually and flesh it out. Write it out in detail, a sentence, a paragraph or a page, whatever it takes.
Where to Start
We want to keep this first step easy and do-able. Because how you see yourself achieving these two dreams will determine if you ever get started on them. Here are two things to think about when deciding the steps you want to take to fulfill your two dreams. The first is that 12 months is a long time, it is 365 days with lots of hours in each one of those days. There are a huge number of little things that you can do each day that will have an unbelievable total effect on your journey toward your dreams. DO NOT try to achieve everything at once, break it down in to really small pieces, you have 365 days to get it all done. And the second thing to keep in mind about the 12 month time frame is that, ironically, you will no sooner turn around and it will be a year from now! You will wake up one morning not too long from now and realize another year in gone, then 5 years and then 10 years. Start now! Don't wait for the time to be right, because the time will be right when YOU decide it is. Decide now, make all the little steps necessary over whatever time it takes and achieve the dreams you want to live. How you see yourself living 12 months from now comes from deep inside you, it is you. Stop waiting, the time is right, go get it.
I am Danny L Churchill and I host an article/blog site called:
http://myworld-myway.net exploring many of the ways and means available to improve my life, my thinking, my happiness, my world and my success.
There are many resources available to us: books, tapes, CDs, videos, webinars, seminars, video conferences, personal communication, all with something to teach us and I have a life time to learn all I can.
Many areas of our lives could use some improvement. This article focuses on Life in general and how our living is reflected in our thinking:
http://LIFE.MyWorld-MyWay.net