An article by Giancarlo Merlo – Certified PSYCH-K®️ Instructor
Historically, our self-worth and self-image have been dictated by our environment. Nowadays, the stimuli that condition the perception we have of ourselves are extremely powerful: advertising, media, what you see displayed in store windows, how other people look, speak and behave.
Pause for a few moments and think how much energy and time is spent by so many of us in our society to meet the criteria that others have imposed. These apparent needs change rapidly and so does the time and energy we use to keep up with them.
We go through life looking to satisfy the cultural criteria about how we should look or behave, and there seems to always be a need for something else, nothing is ever good enough, and consequently we are never really happy.
Let´s consider some questions:
– Does being thin and wrinkle-free improve the perception about your body?
– Does wearing certain clothes and accessories boost your self-esteem?
– Does having a new car or a big house make you feel better?
Whereas the answer might be yes for these examples, the point is to find out what is the starting point, what is it that truly motivates and drives our behavior. Do we act based on a loving and accepting self-image and as a consequence we create a life of wellbeing or do we believe our joy and happiness depend on how we look, how much money we have or the things we can buy with it, as well as on the external/social approval we receive based on these?
Mother Nature is a beautiful source of inspiration with very simple and effective examples on how easy it is to create a joyful way of being: a mushroom would not dream of changing its colors to look more beautiful in the eyes of another mushroom, a cow would not think of losing weight to please a partner, and certainly you’ve never seen a dolphin want a speedboat to go faster in the water.
These considerations are an invitation to realize that over the course of your life you have involuntarily learned and stored in your subconscious mind a series of perceptions, behaviors, attitudes and habits from the people and environment around you. This automatically causes us to repeat these programs, often unconsciously, since many of them were interiorized in the first years of life when you were not yet able to choose and decide for yourself.
In other words, you are actually a series of programs that others have believed to be right for you, and now you run them automatically. Certainly, many of these programs are useful and functional for your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being, while others are at the root of your daily limitations, barriers and difficulties.
Here is a practical experiment, in order to recognize if you are running automatic programs that condition your self-image. Let´s think of the last time you bought new clothes, a new phone, or a new tv, and ask yourself some of these questions:
- Did your self-image improve? Did your life improve in significant ways? Are you satisfied with the time and energy you had to put into obtaining this? Did others change their perception about you?
If the answer was “not really”… then you know that the “need” for these items is a program, a way to fulfill our lack of self-worth through material things.
Here is how Mother Nature can provide us with the perfect antidotes to the lack of self-esteem, the distorted perception of ourselves and the feeling of not being enough, along with some of the Principles that make it such a wonderful example of sustainable success.
- Adaptability: recognizing when a change is necessary for us and being able to adapt in a natural and effortless way.
- Balance: the ability to use the masculine and feminine aspects of your life to achieve a balanced view of things, including the time devoted to work and to your personal life.
- More is not always better: being able to recognize that you already have enough and that you can make better choices by selecting quality products that last over time.
If you are ready to take charge of your life and change the subconscious programs that keep you from seeing yourself with the eyes of “I am enough” and “I love myself”, so that you can enter a new level of expanded awareness and sustainable wellbeing, you can consider choosing PSYCH-K® as a way to interiorize millions of years of Mother Nature´s wisdom.
Learn more by visiting psych-k.com, where you will find more information, our current workshop schedule, the list of Facilitators who offer sessions ALL over the world, as well as links to our YouTube channel and our Facebook page.