Self-image: unless you see yourself doing it… you won’t do it.

Sounds simple, right? self-image means: how you see yourself… but nothing internal is as simple and as straight as that?

The way scientists, medical practitioners, diet-cults, pharmaceutical companies work is called linear reductionism… ¹ and it is a cognitive bias.

A cognitive bias refers to a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion.

Illogical, inaccurate, leading you and everyone who is run by a cognitive bias to stupidity.

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

Linear reductionism is the main cause of stupid decisions, stupid choices, and because every single article, every single book, every single video is reductionists to some degree… you are prevented from ever seeing the big picture… even if you can hold the image in your random access memory (short term memory).

Self-image, an important distinction I like to work with is like that. Complex. Not simple, not complicated; complex.

We have it, in the culture of linear reductionism, that your self-image is a linear or maybe two dimensional phenomenon.

But, like everything else in reality, it is a 360 degree phenomenon, like a sculpture, and it even has a time component to it… much like a trapez artist show with 10 artists jumping and swinging, simultaneously… and none is missing a trapez.

I have checked, and teaching lacks dimensions… because why complicate something if you can teach a lie? Right?

So this may be your first exposure to your world, your inner and outer world, that is complex, and yet, as long as you don’t forget that it’s complex, you can work on the quasi linear components of it.

This is what “Peak” the book teacher, and this is what I teach. The art of finding linear elements that can be improved, tweaked, and the whole system improves as a result.

My visual, or mental representation is something that is a little bit simplified, but as a model it will work: pick-up-sticks… the game.

So, let me return to Self-image.

The theory is that self-image is what dictates what you will and what you won’t do… And because actions are the creator of success, your self-image will determine your level of success.

In the previous article we saw that there is

the way you see yourself on the plus side, the way you want to be, or fancy yourself being (delusion)
the way you see yourself on the negative side, the way you are afraid that you are… the other extreme of delusion
the way others see you
the way you think others see you
the way your results show that you are.

You see yourself in one way… and then you see yourself, nothing else changed in another way. And your actions will be consistent with either…

Or you see yourself as you THINK other people see you… and then your actions will be a reaction to that… but it is still a dance.

And you can see yourself as you are, you can see yourself as others actually see you, or could see you if they looked.

And then you can see yourself standing in the gap between how you are and how you’d like to be.

So which self-image gives you your actions?

All of them. You see only one image of yourself at any one time, not two.

Even when you are in the gap between two self-images, you need to turn your head to see either extremes… you are always seeing one if you observe life and yourself from behind your eye balls. And which one you see will be the one that gives you your actions.

I know this is too complicated for most of you.

This is why cognitive biases were born, to require no thinking, no looking, no intellectual and spiritual capacities.

You know the result all too well: everyone can fool you into thinking things are this way or that…

This is the basis for cults, diet cults.

This is the basis for every fad you have ever tried to get yourself thinner, younger, smarter, richer, happier.

Summary: self-image is a complex issue, and when you simplify it, you are duping yourself into believing that just because you make something simple… therefore it is simple.

In articles to come I will talk more about self-image… what you can do to alter your self-image on one hand, or alter your actions to match your self-image… depending which version of the self-image we are talking about.

I have great hopes to these methods: they may make the difference between a life lived in quiet desperation, and living the good life.

1. 
   reductionism
   [ri-duhk-shuh-niz-uh m]

   noun
   1.
   the theory that every complex phenomenon, especially in biology or psychology, can be explained by analyzing the simplest, most basic physical mechanisms that are in operation during the phenomenon.
   2.
   the practice of simplifying a complex idea, issue, condition, or the like, especially to the point of minimizing, obscuring, or distorting it.
   

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven

True empath, award winning architect, magazine publisher, transformational and spiritual coach and teacher, self declared Avatar View all posts by Sophie Benshitta Maven