Self-Image: What Is Your Value?

By: D. A. Slinkard

Do you ever feel like you are drifting about in life? Each day you are going with the flow and being reactive to what life throws at you? You do your best to get through each day; you do your best to make sure you give your best efforts. But the reality is that you know you have become complacent in living your life. Does this ever happen to you? Am I the only one? How does a person break out of this trap? –and, yes, it is a trap that catches many people. I have found the one way to escape this is to make the decision to create actions which will enable you to get out of your funk.

There are people walking around living their life, and they are in a funk and do not even know it. They get up and go to work; they come home and then go to bed, only to repeat the same process the next day. The wheel is spinning, and we are out of control when it comes to our life. Too many people fail to realize they are out of balance, and this leads many people to live life without any significant meaning to it.

Life is precious. Life is short. The Bible tells us in James 4:14, “…For what is your life? It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” Too many people never start living their life because they never make the conscious decision to make a difference in their own life. The biggest lie I hear people say is they do not have enough time. This is a convenient lie too many people try to use as their mantra for why they cannot achieve things in life.

Reality – We ALL have 168 hours in our week.  Reality – We ALL have 24 hours in our day.  Reality – How we choose to spend our time is up to us. If something is important to us, we will make it happen; if something is not important, we will make an excuse. Are you making things happen in your life or are you making excuses? My next question: When you think about yourself, what do you picture? If you had to describe you, what words would you use?

Our self-image plays a larger role than what we realize. I have seen people who had everything going for them, yet they had a poor self-image; thus they came up short. I have also seen the other end of the spectrum in which you see someone and think to yourself, how are they able to achieve success? Self-image is vitally important to a person’s success.

If you want to break the funk, if you want to make positive changes in your life, I would like for you to change the mental process of how you see yourself. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.” Take the time to change your thought process and you will take the time to change your life. Think positive and positive things will happen; think negative and negative things will happen. The choice is yours to make.

I want you to picture the self-image of who and what you want to be. Hold that image in your mind and start to concentrate on what actions you would need to take to become what you imagine. Make sure that when you do this, you have a pen and paper nearby because you are going to need to take notes. If you are honest with yourself, you will be able to properly identify who you are and where you are versus becoming who you want to be and where you want to go. The sad reality is too many people do not want to take the necessary time to mentally think about who they want to be.

This mentality is how and why someone begins drifting about in life. They get tossed in every direction but never go anywhere. This is how you stop that from happening. Take the time right now; picture who it is you want to be. Picture how you want to be. Really think about the changes you need to make in your life and then write these down. Be descriptive in the actions you need to take, and then take the actionable steps to make this self-image a reality in your life.

By: D. A. Slinkard

D.A. Slinkard would love your feedback. You can contact him at da.slinkard@gmail.com