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So why aren't you making tons of money? Why isn’t your business going ahead in leaps and bounds? What’s holding you back?

If you start telling me about your customers or your staff I will pull out a big mirror and thrust it in front of you. And what will you see?

Let’s start there
William Shakespeare said: "The answer dear Brutus, lies not within our stars but within ourselves." Was he right? The one thing that can hold you back from huge success more than anything else is your own self image. The image you see in the mirror. When you look what do you see?

Do you see a person with sloping shoulders, leaning a little forward with the weight of the years, not much of a smile, and somewhat tired looking, how do you feel when you look at that image? Is that the person you dreamed of being a few years ago?

What you see is your self image. The image of you that you have created in your own mind. It controls as much of your life as your heart beat. It’s up there with oxygen!

I want to suggest that most of us wear ourselves out because we go through life missing the point. When we’re starting out, say to set up a new business, or we run into difficulties along the way, our first response is to look at the event or circumstance and blame that for how things are deteriorating. e.g. Not making the sales.

That’s missing the point. If Shakespeare was right and the answer does lie within ourselves then the circumstances that we live with are merely a reflection, a manifestation of how we have been thinking these past few, weeks, months, years.

If you believe that idea, then you are taking responsibility, you are empowering yourself to change things. If you want to blame circumstances then little will change. You will continue to do what you’ve always done and you will continue to get the same results.

The only real change exists between our ears
Any attempt to change the circumstances of our lives without changing the way we think will bring only exhaustion and disappointment and ultimately failure. So if our self image is so important where does it come from? Here are the four key sources of self-image:

1. Our history: My need to be loved unconditionally as a child. My childhood perceptions. (These are often never updates, even in adulthood.)
2. My self-belief: Everything I do to manage my history and take charge of my life.
3. My Support Network: My ability to attract and maintain healthy, affirming relationships.
4. My Achievements: The things I do to build my ego and a sense of being worthwhile.

Right now I’d like us to focus on #2: My self belief. That is, all the things I do to become self-aware and sensibly manage my history ( regardless of how lacking it might have been) and take charge of my life. I become a self-directing person. I’m in the driver’s seat!

So, my self-image that predominantly took shape when I was a child grows up with me. I don’t leave it behind. I don’t live today as though it were yesterday. Someone went so far as to explain self image as the ability to have compassion towards yourself. Wow, that’s powerful.