
by I.M.Soni
You have been troubled by infereiority feelings which are often based on memories or on remarks made by others.
Your feelings lead to self-concepts that are flagrantly wrong, but as long as you believe in them, you are inluenced by them.
Threrefore, it is important for you for to keep telling yourself that you are a much better individual than you are made to believe by envious people.
If you accept this as a fact, it will begin to influence your life because what you do with your self life depends on your own self-concept.
Your self-concept makes real things happen to you. You may say, "I can do this" and "I can't do that" simply because of remarks that other have made about you.
You underestimate your own abilities. Your inherent abilities are much greater than those you actually use. No one ever gives his best, is not a joke. Henry Ford once said, "Everyone can do more than he thinks he can."
No matter what your abilities are, they can be developed only if you choose to develop them. It is up to you.
According to Prescott Lecky, every human being strives to be a consistentent whole. He rejects what he thinks contradicts his self-image. Sometimes, he rejects traits that would be greatly to his advantage, because in a thoughtless moment, someone has told him that he was very dull.
If he accepts this, it becomes part of his mental picture of himself, and from that time he behaves accordingly.
A poor speller, for example, can be turned into a good one by changing his idea about his ability. When he changed his idea about his opinion of himself, a high school student, who previously misspelled 55 words out of 100 and had failed in most of his school subjects, became one of the best spellers in his school and got a general average of 90. He overcame his ,"disability" and became proficient.
Self-concept may be compared to building houses. If a man, in a fit of alcoholism, builds up an image of himself that has no basis in reality, he's building a mental house of straw.
A daydream that has no follow-up can be blown away as easility as a house of straw.
You can build your mental house out of sticks, and it can also be blown down. If you build your self-concept on casual remarks made others, you are building it out of sticks.
If you build your mental house out of bricks, who can knowck it down? Bricks that build your self-concept show what you can do and achieve.
If you have personal experience in succeeding at something, small or big, you can build a house of your self-esteem on what you have done. Forget the failures you have met with.
Build your life and career on what you have already done successfully. Success breeds success.
Nietzche says, "Become what thou art!" He knew that if we only became as great as we really are we would be better than we dream.

















