How the Self Image is Created and How the Mind Uses it to Create your Reality

If you’ve ever watched documentaries on the African Lion, you may have learned that you must never run if chased by a lion. The reason, apart from the fact that you’ll never out run a lion, is because chasing is part of their genetic make-up; they know no other way.

The genetic make-up or imprint seen on all of nature’s creatures is an automatic process, and it’s created like that as a survival mechanism. The lion becomes hungry, seeks out prey, chases the prey and then consumes it.

We humans also have a genetic make-up which at the primal level performs the same function (sleep, eating, reproduction etc). But in addition to this, which I explained in my first article, we have a self-image at the sub conscious level, much like a software program, and its purpose is to keep a persons environment (reality) in check with the self-image.

When someone declares something at a conscious level but believes the opposite at the sub conscious level, the belief will always win. For example, after attending a seminar on wealth creation you declare you’re going to become wealthy, but at the sub conscious level you are saying ‘but I could never do that, I have always been broke, I’m not smart enough….’, and as such, you’ll stay the way you are.

The reason is because there are systems in our brain which perform the role of keeping us within our comfort zone; a zone created by the self-image. These systems influence a person’s choices, actions and behaviours in such a way that the outcome will always match the sub conscious belief, regardless of the conscious declaration.

One system filters out over 99% of all the information we absorb every second, through the eyes, ears, nose, skin etc, to retain only that information that is important to us. Unfortunately, if you have a poor self-image, any information presented to you that would be classed as an opportunity to some, would be missed by you; not your senses. The opportunity was always there and your senses picked it up, but the system in your brain filtered it out because it didn’t match your self-image.

Another system notices discrepancies between the conscious and the sub conscious. Using the seminar example again, if you declare your intention to become rich, but you’ve never saved a dollar before in your life, as soon as you try to save money your brain starts to release chemicals that create discomfort, simply because at a conscious level you are trying to do something that is not in line with your sub conscious self image. This is also known as moving out of your comfort zone. The discomfort makes you create excuses as to why you can’t save and how you aren’t smart enough to become rich.

Our self-image is created from a back drop handed down to us by evolution (survival mechanisms), our parents (and their parents to a lesser extent and so on), and through our own experiences after we are born. How we perceive things and create our beliefs about the environment, our place in this environment and ourselves shape who we are and ultimately our reality. If you were brought up by parents who believed they were victims of life and you took this on board to be true for most people including yourself, your self image will also be one of a victim of circumstances.

The sub conscious mind was created to automate the process. Exactly the same way a lion instinctively knows what it has to do when it gets hungry, as soon as you are forced out of your comfort zone (i.e. you try to become something you are not at the sub conscious level), your mind does everything in its power to pull you back in, and will do it in the most efficient and automatic way.

To change your results in life you have to change yourself at the core; which is to change your self-image, so that when you are forcing yourself into a new level of existence (i.e. becoming something you’ve never been before), you’ve prepared your mind to accept it.

There is no other way. To try and become something you don’t believe possible (according to your self-image), you are fighting a survival mechanism that has been created by nature herself over millions of years. Change the information being fed to the sub conscious enough, and then you create change.

In the next article we'll look at how our lives and our environement are by-products of our body's addictions to our thoughts and how one more system of the brain is interlocked with the body.