Imagine this: There’s a friend who is struggling. She is in debt and frustrated with life. She lacks energy and is starting to fight with her partner and she calls you up this week to share that her car needs $300 worth of work and she has no idea how she will come up with the money. Think of a second friend, now. This friend is working for a company he loves. He just met someone he has fallen completely in love with who is also successful (they met on a plane) and he calls you up stating he just got a promotion he wasn’t expecting.
Here’s the question: Is this luck? Fate? Is one friend destined to failure while the other one is destined to blind luck through no fault of their own? NO! There is no such thing as luck (at least not long-term in life). I appreciate how Earl Nightingale put it: “Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity, and opportunity is there all the time”
While you’re reading these words think of someone you know who is wonderful in so many ways yet has difficulty seeing it. Success and Joy in life have very little to do with luck and very much to do with self-image. Self-image is actually a lot like a thermostat. Whatever setting the self-image is programmed to keep, it will keep within a limited range. Here is an example:
I have a client who, when she came for my help, didn’t see herself as worthy of time or energy or investment. Over the course of my 6-month coaching program she began to see just how incredible she really is. She had a business that had not grown in the 3 years since beginning and now has started to grow. She also has a beautiful goal: to make enough money within a year to allow her husband to retire if he so chooses. At the beginning she struggled to see that she was worth spending money on (for my coaching services) and now is willing to budget a certain amount of money each and every month for her own development. What has changed? He beliefs about herself. That’s all. And yet that’s everything. This same client is now having a fantastic impact on her extended family as they see the changes in her and her kids will be growing up seeing their own value in a very different way than most children and will achieve so much more in life. When this wonderful human being succeeds in retiring her husband she will have many people around her talk behind her back saying “She’s so lucky… she get’s all the breaks in life while we struggle on with life”. When her children succeed at an early age others in the home town will most likely say “Look at all the opportunity they were given in life compared to my kids”. This has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with a massive change in one person’s self-image.
Why do some people inspire just by being around them? Why do you attempt to escape others because a few minutes with them will throw your whole day off? This all has to do with self-image! When you see yourself in a certain way you will impact others around you just as my client is impacting those in her daily life. The question you must ask yourself: Is the impact I am having positive and life-changing or negative and life-strangling (for both yourself and others)?
Self-image is not seeing yourself as better than you are or worse than you are… it is simply seeing yourself as WHO YOU ACTUALLY ARE. The crazy thing is most people don’t err on the side of seeing too much of themselves! Here is another question to leave you with, today: Have you been seeing yourself as who you are with all your gifts and challenges, or have you been erring on the side of seeing your abilities and worth far less than is accurate? I’m really excited about helping you, in future posts, discover how to change your self-image if it is currently inaccurate and holding you back from life!
