I’ve done a lot of deliberate thought about my self-image, but I still found the four questions here helpful to work through. (If you haven’t tried them, try them!)
Among other things, it identified an action that both resonates and conflicts with my self-image, which I’ve been tracking for a while as a regular internal conflict.
Self-image related things I had altered before:
I used to see myself as someone who didn’t dance. I was in the cast of a play with a guy I wanted to impress, and we would have cast dance parties to blow off steam during rehearsals; I decided that I would be more impressive dancing poorly than not dancing, and so decided I was now the kind of person who danced.
I found intermittent fasting easy to adopt, because the only required change was deciding “I am not the sort of person who eats outside of noon to 8.”
I consciously decided that I would be friendlier to other people at some point, which was partially accomplished through self-image changes (but also appeared to be mostly driven by normal age-related empathy increases).
There are a number of things that I don’t do or don’t like primarily because I didn’t do them or didn’t like them; in particular, younger me had very narrow tastes. My tastes have actually changed with age, but many of my dislikes were cached- do I really not like pickles, anymore? I deliberately shifted my self-image to be more xenophilic in my tastes (but not all that far).
One of the observations I would make is that it’s important to keep in mind that self-image is a combination of self-constraint and self-perception. You have varying levels of control over various aspects of your self-image, and while some aspects shift best by a dramatic reset, others shift best by gradual movement. For example, one of the things I wrote down as an action that conflicts with my self-image is recharging emotionally in a crowd. Regardless of my preferences or goals, that one looks to be because my brain is not set up that way; I can still adjust my perception of crowds and social events quite a bit, but the range of possible values is smaller than, say, my range of possible dietary habits.
I’ve done a lot of deliberate thought about my self-image, but I still found the four questions here helpful to work through. (If you haven’t tried them, try them!)
Among other things, it identified an action that both resonates and conflicts with my self-image, which I’ve been tracking for a while as a regular internal conflict.
Self-image related things I had altered before:
I used to see myself as someone who didn’t dance. I was in the cast of a play with a guy I wanted to impress, and we would have cast dance parties to blow off steam during rehearsals; I decided that I would be more impressive dancing poorly than not dancing, and so decided I was now the kind of person who danced.
I found intermittent fasting easy to adopt, because the only required change was deciding “I am not the sort of person who eats outside of noon to 8.”
I consciously decided that I would be friendlier to other people at some point, which was partially accomplished through self-image changes (but also appeared to be mostly driven by normal age-related empathy increases).
There are a number of things that I don’t do or don’t like primarily because I didn’t do them or didn’t like them; in particular, younger me had very narrow tastes. My tastes have actually changed with age, but many of my dislikes were cached- do I really not like pickles, anymore? I deliberately shifted my self-image to be more xenophilic in my tastes (but not all that far).
One of the observations I would make is that it’s important to keep in mind that self-image is a combination of self-constraint and self-perception. You have varying levels of control over various aspects of your self-image, and while some aspects shift best by a dramatic reset, others shift best by gradual movement. For example, one of the things I wrote down as an action that conflicts with my self-image is recharging emotionally in a crowd. Regardless of my preferences or goals, that one looks to be because my brain is not set up that way; I can still adjust my perception of crowds and social events quite a bit, but the range of possible values is smaller than, say, my range of possible dietary habits.