What tweak has made all the difference in your life? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Lukas Schwekendiek, Life Coach, Speaker, Writer. Published on TIME, Inc.com & Huffington Post, on Quora:
The biggest difference I have made in my life was to eliminate my low self-image.
Having a bad self-image causes many problems that will completely crush you and all you are attempting to do. You begin to self-sabotage without any hope of making it out. Here are the top four things that changed when I held myself to a higher standard.
Number 1: I dropped the negative people from my life. I realized that if I had to deal with the constant negativity they sent my way, that they had to offer me something of incredible value in return.
I love my family, that is something incredible they give me in exchange for all their negativity, but most of my friends did not do that, and I cannot deal with these negative people because I have better things to do. Having a stronger self-image makes you realize that you can do so much more and these people are just putting you down.
Now people come to me, try to entice me with value or with something that shows me that they are worth my time. Either that or they let me be completely by myself so that I can produce more value for the world.
Number 2: I began to hold myself to a higher standard regarding what I produced. I dropped so many negative and bad habits that I cannot even begin to list. For every single hour wasted on these bad habits I worked for an hour instead. This difference was minute at first, but over the course of the last year alone the difference has been gigantic.
Number 3: I stopped sabotaging myself. Having a low self-image doesn’t allow you to believe in yourself. You doubt whatever you start and never finish anything, which results in you trying to make this belief occur.
This is also known as a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” which results from us sincerely desiring to be right. When we make a claim we want it to be true, even if it is negative it is more important to us that we show integrity to our surroundings than it is for us only to make good choices.
If you consider yourself a smoker you will try to uphold this image no matter the cost, especially if you have a lot of positive experiences connected with it. This rang true for me concerning low self-confidence, shyness and my video game addiction.
When I changed my self-image, I realized instantly that all of these things were not me anymore. I couldn’t do them anymore because it was so against who I now was that I would feel sick to the stomach every time I showed low self-confidence, shyness or played too many video games.
Number 4: I started talking and behaving like who I said I was. Instead of going around trying to pretend to be someone rich, of a high-class, confident, charismatic or sweet, I started to portray everything I felt inside.
The way you perceive yourself reflects instantly to the outer world. We might be able to hide it from strangers, but this mask is hard to uphold, which is why our friends know who we are. When you have a better image of yourself you will instantly see the difference.
People will treat you differently because you behave and act entirely different. But it all starts with how you perceive yourself.
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