Self-Concept:

Self-concept
is the umbrella term, the overarching term for who we think we actually are and
all the ideas we have about ourselves.  We are not born with this. At
approximately 18 months old, we develop a concept of who we are which comes
from a combination of feedback from others and our experiences.

Concept is
open to the influence of others. If people always tell you that you’re bad or
your naughty, then you will believe it. 
If you are only told a few times, you’re more likely to question it and mediate
those comments against the other experiences you have had so that you can
assess its validity.

 

 

Self-Image:

Self-image is
your idea, concept or mental picture you have of yourself.

Internally,
we can often turn these conceptions into factual and descriptive beliefs about
our physical attributes, what kind of person we are and what skills and qualities
we have. It’s really important that we help ourselves and other people have an
accurate self-image.  We have all heard
about people having bad self-image, which is when the reality and their
thoughts about their physical attributes become distorted. Conversely,
children who have spent their lives being told they’re amazing, clever and
beautiful by their primary care-givers and then go to school to find out
they’re pretty average, can have a very distorted self-image also. It can be
very upsetting for people when they find out that they are not who they thought
they were in terms of image.

 

 

Self-esteem:

Self-esteem
is how you rate or value yourself and how you feel about that i.e. How much you
care about it. For instance, it means nothing if you are an amazing Artist but
you don’t believe you are, or you don’t value art. 
Even if you were technically the best artist
in the world, your self-esteem wouldn’t necessarily be high.  It’s all about our judgements about ourselves
and importantly, how we feel about those judgements.
A high self-esteem in
itself is not a good thing.
Having healthy self-esteem depends on what it is
that we actually have self-esteem in and what we value.
If we value beauty, but
consider ourselves ugly, we will have very low self-esteem. 
If we value beauty and believe we have it, we
will have a high self-esteem. 
If we are
truly beautiful, but don’t value beauty, we may not have a high self-esteem.

 

Self-Efficacy:

Self-Efficacy
is your judgement beforehand on how well you think you will do in a task. These
thoughts are not necessarily facts.
They are beliefs about your own capability
or your own confidence in your ability to achieve something.
If you have high efficacy
you believe that you can achieve desired results, that you’ll find a way to
achieve and as a result, usually do succeed in attaining goals because your
belief of success is a high motivator, even when things get hard. 
I would describe these people as being ‘Efficacious’
which basically means ‘achieves desired results’. If you believe that you can succeed
in a given task, you have a much higher success rate even if you are not
actually very good at the task you are trying to undertake, as your belief in
your ability to achieve it is actually more what gets you to the successful
result as opposed to your ability to do it.

 

Perceived-self vs Ideal Self:

Perceived-self
is who you think you are.

The
ideal-self is who you think you should
be.

These
perception comes from others and what they say to you about what you should and
shouldn’t do and what you should and shouldn’t be.
If we know that we have bad
writing for instance and we know that we should have good writing, we will feel
bad about it.

If we were
told that we ‘should’ get a particular type of job and live a certain type of
life, but we end up doing something different, we may feel bad about it, as
there is a separation between what we think we are and what we think we should
be.

 

 

Self-Consistency:

This is when
someone has a set idea of who and what they are they try hard to protect that.

For instance
somebody may say ‘I’m no good at writing’ and therefore they don’t write
anything, and they will be unlikely to ever write.

This is not
a personality, although it looks like it is. So saying that ‘I am not good at
writing’ is not actually a fact.  What
would be a fact is ‘I haven’t learnt how to write well yet’. That would be the
fact.

A lot of
people resist changing and therefore can miss out on changing for the better
due to the fear of approaching something unknown, or something they think they
are not good at.

So if a
person’s self-consistency is not aligned to what they want to achieve, they are
unlikely to commence that activity.

 

 

 

All of the
things we have just mentioned; Self-Concept, Self-Image, Self-Esteem,
Self-Efficacy, Perceived-Self, Ideal Self and Self-Consistency cannot actually
be measured – at least not like we can measure height, weight or the symmetry of
our face.

They are
self-reported. We self-assess them. We self-disclose to others how we feel we
are measuring in these different areas. They cannot be assessed and nobody can
see or feel inside of us; they can only get ideas about all of these concepts.

 

How to change your demonic self-judgements

Pip Wilson
uses a visual technique to help apply ideas via images. One of these is known
as the Blob Tree.

View Blob Tree here

 

Image from www.blobtree.com

 

Metaphors
and stories in our teaching and training allows for all sorts of development
and healthy self-analysis. Using the tree allows you to understand or uncover
current levels of Esteem, Efficacy, Self-Concept and Self-Image.

You can also
use it for goal setting (which can lead to Efficacy) and therefore success when
people do achieve goals.

 

For Example
when using the Bob Tree we ask people to choose 3 blobs.

Another great exercise for building
your own Self-Efficacy, Self-Esteem, Self-concept as well as that of your
students is to do a story or a piece of reflective writing as if you are an inanimate
object.  This gets you talking and
thinking about yourself in a very different way.

 

For instance, you may say “I am a car
and I feel… “, “I am a window and… “

This will reveal expressions of who
you really are, what your blockages are and how you can increase Self-Efficacy.

 There are thousands of other techniques you can use to increase your own, or others’ efficacy and self-concept, which I will share with you in future posts.