| by:
Steve Andreas
Brief Description, Table of Contents, Endorsements
Introduction
Chapter 9: Building a New Quality of Self-concept
Chapter 11: Changing the "Not Self"
Appendix: Perspective
Patterns
Introduction
Do you ever say,
or think to yourself, “I’m disappointed with myself; I thought
I could do that, but I really blew it,” “I wish I felt better
about myself,” or “I’m so mad at myself; I fall apart at
the slightest criticism.” How about, “I’m so frustrated
with myself,” “I’m my own worst enemy; I keep sabotaging
myself,” or “I wish I could get myself to do that”
(or stop doing that)?
Have you ever wondered
how you got into this unpleasant struggle between “I” and “myself,”
or how you can get out of it? You know that this struggle isn’t
necessary, because you also have times when you are very pleased
with yourself, satisfied with your decisions and actions. Both your failures
and successes often result from the beliefs that you have about yourself,
what is often called identity or self-concept. The book that you have
in your hands is a practical manual that can teach you how to strengthen
the qualities in yourself that you like, and change the qualities that
don’t like, so that you can have a much better and more satisfying
life.
Describing vs.
Doing
About ten years
ago I was invited to teach at a weekend drug and alcohol conference for
therapists and social workers. I was one of about two dozen presenters,
including several “big names” in the field. Although I was scheduled
for the last session, I attended the entire conference to see what I could
learn. I heard many different presenters talk about the importance of
self-concept and self-esteem in getting people to stop using drugs. But
in all their words there was virtually nothing about what self-concept
or self-esteem actually was, or how to help someone get some of it.
Finally on Sunday
afternoon I had my group, my little opportunity. I began by saying to
them, “I have been hearing from many presenters, for a day and a
half now, that a good self-concept and self-esteem are really important
in getting people to stop using drugs. Do you all agree with that?”
“Oh, yeah,” they all nodded their heads. I said “Good.
I have two questions for you. The first question is, ‘What is it
that you’ve been talking about that is so important?’ And my
second question is, ‘How would you go about helping someone get some
of it?’ ” When I asked those questions the room got very
quiet. Then I said, “Let’s pretend that I’m someone who
is hooked on drugs. Help me improve my self-concept, or give me some self-esteem.
Help me out.”
Someone said, “Well, you could use operant conditioning.”
I said “Great!
Condition me, now. Show me what you can do.” The room got
very quiet again. Then someone said something about healing past traumas,
and I said, “OK, let’s imagine that I was sexually abused as
a child. Show me how to heal that.” The room got very quiet again.
I kept that up
for about half an hour before demonstrating a few quick ways to work with
self-concept, because I wanted them to realize very clearly that I
was presenting something that was very different from what they already
knew. I also wanted to make a very clear distinction between being
able to describe self-concept, and being able to actually change
it. They had been speaking theoretically, but there really wasn’t
much that they could do.
As I was walking
down the hall after my presentation, a man walked along beside me, looking
very thoughtful. Then he said to me, “You know, I have been teaching
about self-concept and self-esteem for years, and I have even written
a book about it. But when you asked those questions, I had nothing
to say.”
Problems vs. Solutions
There are many
thousands of “self-help” books on the shelves of bookstores
and libraries everywhere. When I searched on Amazon books for “self-concept,”
I found 177 titles; “identity” turned up 6,593 titles, and “self”
turned up 32,000! Unfortunately, nearly all of them are focused on problems,
rather than solutions. Those books are full of descriptions of
problems—theories, examples, stories, and case histories, but very
little about how to solve them. The last book I read about self-concept
had 184 pages describing problems of self-concept, but only 7 pages at
the end discussed possible solutions, in vague and theoretical terms.
Psychiatry’s
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM IV-R
has 873 pages of descriptions of how people can be mentally ill, but not
a single page about how they could be helped! Imagine what it would be
like if a medical doctor were in this position—she has an 873 page
manual describing how someone can be ill, but not a single word about
how to treat illness! Sadly, that is the position of most psychology and
psychotherapy today—and most psychiatry, with its bias toward drug
solutions, is even worse.
When books do set
forth worthwhile goals or solutions, they very rarely tell you what you
can actually do to achieve them. If a medical text were like that,
it might tell you that the solution to a certain illness is to remove
the diseased tissue, but without telling how to do that—all
the details of the surgical procedure, use of scalpels, clamps, sutures,
antiseptics, anesthetics, etc., that you could use to accomplish that
useful goal.
Preaching vs. Teaching
and Training
The difference
between preaching and teaching is not widely recognized,
particularly in the area of education and personal change. Preaching
can set forth worthwhile goals, and that can be a useful first step that
orients you toward a solution. However, teaching is what you can
use to actually achieve those worthwhile goals. A further distinction
can be made between teaching and training. Training includes the
“hands on” practice that transforms good teaching into practical
skills.
Some 2,000 years
ago Christ preached the importance and value of reaching forgiveness with
someone who has harmed you. Although he demonstrated forgiveness amply,
he apparently wasn’t able to teach or train others how to actually
reach forgiveness.
It is only recently
that we know how to teach someone to reach the compassionate understanding
that we call forgiveness. About ten years ago, my wife, Connirae, and
I developed a method to rapidly teach someone how to reach a congruent,
full-body experience of forgiveness. This process usually takes less than
an hour, and we have trained thousands of people how to teach others to
do this. (4, 7) A few years earlier we developed a similar effective method
for teaching someone to resolve their grief, and transform it into an
experience of gratitude for having known the lost person. (1, 2, Ch. 11)
This book has similarly rapid processes that you can use to become
the kind of person you want to be.
Self and Society
In most traditional
societies there isn’t much interest in self-concept, because society
defines who you are right from birth, and the culture offers no
alternatives to that definition. Every traditional culture has its beliefs
about humanity, and its place in relation to their gods and the rest of
the universe, so almost no one questions it. As Tevye says in Fiddler
on the Roof, “Because of our traditions, every one of us knows
who he is, and what God expects him to do.” In a traditional culture,
individual identity is simply a small and unquestioned part of the shared
identity of the larger society.
It has often been
said that “A culture is the accumulated wisdom of a group of people.”
But culture also contains the accumulated stupidity of a group
of people, and our own culture is no exception. It is a little easier
for us to examine our own mistakes, because of the immense variety of
cultural models that we are exposed to.
About thirty years
ago, I lived in Moab, a small town in southeastern Utah with 13 different
churches serving a population of about 5,000. About 55 miles south, another
small town had only one church for nearly as many people. Moab,
with its religious diversity, had many more people interested in
self-exploration and questioning, trying to figure out what it meant to
be a man or a woman, and what a healthy human being really is.
If you have only
one world-view, it’s very difficult to even think about asking those
kinds of question. And if you do manage to think about asking them, it’s
even harder to find someone else willing to think about them and discuss
them with you!
Modern society
tolerates a great many different religions, world views, and lifestyles,
so either we have to pick and choose between them, or invent our own.
Many of us are in the process of trying to discover what a human
life is, while in most traditional cultures that decision has already
been made. You might disagree with a culture in which men own and control
everything, and women are the property of their fathers or husbands (just
as it was in the US a scant hundred years ago), but people within the
culture simply accept it, and the unhappiness that it creates, because
they don’t even consider alternatives to it.
The scientific
world view also plays a part in the recent upsurge of interest in the
self, since science is a way to question and discover how things work
through experimentation, rather than just accepting a description provided
by a prophet or ancient scripture. Although science started by questioning
nature, the same process can also be directed toward asking questions
about the questioner, and about the society or culture in which s/he lives.
Beliefs About World
and Self
For a long time,
people have realized that our beliefs about others and our surroundings
are often self-fulfilling. Someone who believes that the world is a dangerous
and threatening place finds a world filled with fear, unhappiness, and
disappointment. Someone who believes that the world is filled with vast
opportunities and wonders to be experienced finds the very same world
filled with endless variety, richness, and satisfaction.
Even more important
than these beliefs are the beliefs that you have about yourself,
because your self-concept goes with you everywhere, and affects everything
that you experience. If you believe that others are mean and stupid,
you can retreat to the solitude of nature and be nourished. But if you
believe that you yourself are mean and stupid, there is no escape—except
the temporary ones of overwhelming stimulation, mind-numbing drugs, or
sleep. On the other hand, if you believe in your own kindness and intelligence,
these beliefs can sustain and support you, even when events and people
around you are very difficult.
The Haphazard Development
of Self-concept
Our identities
were formed through a fairly random process of trial and error, somehow
putting together the various experiences, good or bad, that we have had,
along with what parents and others have told us and taught us. Despite
the best intentions of parents and teachers to shape our self-concept
in useful ways, this process is pretty haphazard and accidental. Some
of us got lucky and developed a self-concept that works reasonably well,
while others weren’t so lucky.
As a result, many
people are operating with a self-concept that works very poorly, one that
lets them down when they need it most. Yet even the luckiest among us
has a self-concept that can be greatly improved. I have worked with some
exceptionally capable and successful people, but every one of them was
able to learn how to improve their self-concept substantially. I have
not yet found anyone whose self-concept was more than about 2/3 as effective
as it could be. The people that I have worked with taught me a wide range
of useful skills that I had never thought of, and this book presents them
all, organized so that you can check through them, and add the skills
that you don’t already use.
What This Book
is NOT About.
This book is not
about “the problem of consciousness,” which philosophers have
been struggling with for hundreds of years in ivory towers, nor about
logical, cognitive or mathematical theories of self-concept.
This book is not
about the neurology, biology, chemistry, etc. that underlie the capacity
for consciousness and self-concept, nor about the various physical and
biochemical pathologies that can affect or destroy someone’s self-concept.
This book is not
about the history of different philosophical and religious thinking about
self-concept, nor about the role of religion, morality, politics, culture,
society, and family on the development of self-concept.
Too many of those
books have already been written. And while some of them are interesting,
and some are even useful for other purposes, they are mostly completely
irrelevant to what this book is about.
What This Book
IS About
This book is about
your own personal experience of your own self-concept, and how you can
learn how it works, strengthen it, and change it when you want to, so
that you can live a more successful and satisfying life. It is a very
practical guide that teaches you the skills to rapidly make your
self-concept stronger, more resilient, and more aligned with your values
and goals. Learning these skills avoids the unpleasant pitfalls and consequences
of a poor self-concept, and they enable you to continually improve your
life as you respond to unfolding events.
The Workshop Training
Format
Most of this book
has been edited directly from transcripts of 3-day trainings in which
participants explored different qualities of their self-concept in a sequence
of guided exercises, followed by opportunities for asking questions and
clarifying discussion. After discovering exactly how their self-concepts
functioned, they learned how to strengthen and change them in a variety
of ways.
I have retained
a workshop training format in this book for a number of very important
reasons. To make learning easy, the workshop is carefully planned to introduce
only a few understandings or distinctions at a time, along with exercises
designed to transform teaching into training. Then we gradually
assemble these understandings and skills into larger wholes of meaning.
If you pause in your reading to do the exercises, you can have much the
same training experience as if you were in the seminar. Since I organize
my thinking and training in this way for easy learning, it is easiest
for me to present the material in this way.
But much more important,
this training format provides you with a window into what I actually do,
and how you can actually learn. I can’t tell you how many
times I have watched demonstration sessions that bore almost no resemblance
to the author’s written descriptions of what they thought they did.
A transcript presents what I actually say when I’m talking with real
individuals in order to teach them how to learn and change. Participants’
comments show the wide variety of what they find as they explore different
aspects of their self-concept, and their questions raise important issues
that clarify how you can use the information and processes in this book.
Reading this book
invites you to embark on this same journey of exploration and experimentation,
using what you learn for your own personal change and development. Those
who work as psychologists, therapists and counselors will also learn how
to teach others to improve and change their self-concepts to make them
more functional and satisfying.
Background Foundation
I began discovering
how people think about themselves over twelve years ago, using understandings
and methods from the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a field
originally developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the early
1970’s. This field continues to grow and develop, as these methods
are used to discover even more about how our minds function, and how to
use these discoveries to help people change. I have done my best to write
this book in a way that anyone can understand, even without any NLP background.
However, since this book is an outgrowth of NLP, I occasionally refer
to NLP terms, methods, and understandings that are beyond the scope of
this book. When I do that, I provide specific references, which you can
use if you are interested in gaining a broader understanding of these
topics. There is also an online encyclopedia of NLP (14) which you can
consult.
Learning about
self-concept has been a challenging journey in which I learned many processes
that I did not expect. What I discovered often worked much better than
what I had expected to find, and that was a good sign that I was discovering
what was actually there, not just “rediscovering” my own assumptions
and preconceptions.
An Overview
This book is sequenced
very carefully, beginning by briefly offering you some general understandings
about self-concept, values, and self-esteem. Then I discuss some of the
reasons for the extraordinary power of self-concept, and some important
criteria for how a healthy self-concept that is aligned with your values
can function to create the kind of person you want to be. (Chapters 1,
2, 3)
Then come structured
discovery exercises in which you can personally experience different aspects
of your self-concept, and learn how you can make the positive qualities
of your self-concept stronger by making small but sometimes profound and
far-reaching changes in how you think of yourself. (Chapters 4, 5, 6)
Next is discovering
how you can use the times when you made mistakes to make your self-concept
even stronger and more effective, and then learning how to transform
these mistakes, so that the next time life presents you with a similar
challenge you can spontaneously respond the way you want to. (Chapters
7, 8)
Then you will learn
how to build an entirely new quality in yourself—choosing a quality
that you want to have, and making it into part of who you are.
(Chapter 9)
Next we will take
a quality in yourself that you are uncertain about—sometimes you
think you are, and sometimes you think you aren’t—and change
that unpleasant ambiguity into a calm certainty, a quiet knowing that
fits your values. (Chapter 10)
Then we will investigate
the dangers in comparing yourself with others and thinking of yourself
in terms of what you are not, and how to avoid the serious problems
that this causes. (Chapter 11)
Next you will learn
how to transform a quality in yourself that you don’t like into one
that you do like, one that expresses what you really want in life. (Chapter
12)
Then there is a
shift in focus as we explore the boundaries of your self-concept, and
how to change how you respond to events by having boundaries that flexibly
protect you from the opinions, beliefs, and intrusions of others. (Chapter
13)
Next we explore
how to adjust the boundaries of your self-concept to make it easier to
connect with others in shared intimacy, while maintaining a secure sense
of yourself. (Chapter 14)
Finally, I present
some closing comments summarizing how you can use all that you have learned.
If You Like to
Browse
Because I want
you to learn how to put the information in this book into practice,
the sequence of chapters in this book has been very carefully planned
for easy learning. Each chapter presupposes and builds on understandings
and skills that have been taught in previous chapters. Without these previous
understandings, parts of later chapters will be confusing. Because of
this, I highly recommend that you read the chapters in sequence.
But if you would like to start with some shorter pieces for samples of
what this book offers you, I have some suggestions:
Chapter
9 presents a verbatim transcript of a session which demonstrates
teaching a man how to think of himself as lovable, including follow-up
interviews with him and his wife that describe the widespread impact that
this had on his marriage and his life.
Chapter 13 presents
another very direct application, how to change your boundaries in order
to protect yourself from the opinions, influences and intrusions of others.
Chapter 4 begins
the process of exploring the structure of your self-concept, and learning
how to strengthen it and change it.
The Appendix
is another place to experience rapid changes through simple processes
called “Perspective Patterns.” The ability to view an experience
“in perspective” is a widely useful ability, and it is also
one of the fundamental processes underlying your self-concept.
After you have
sampled one or more of these chapters, I hope that you will go back to
the beginning and read the book in sequence, to maximize your understanding
and personal benefit. I invite you to join me and the training participants
on this journey, to learn how you think of yourself, and how to rapidly
change that so that you can become the kind of person you would like
to be.
Some Questions
Before we begin
this exploration into your self-concept, I want you to consider some very
basic and important questions that this book will answer in detail:
What is a self-concept?
What is it for?
What is it made of?
How does it work?
What makes it so powerful?
How can you change it?
What is the difference between self-concept and self-esteem?
What is the relationship between individual self-concept and religious
or mystical experience?
If you would like
to know the practical answers to even a few of
these questions, read on.
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