HOW SELF-IMAGE IMPACTS YOUR PERFORMANCE
By Dr Jill Ammon-Wexler
Transformational Psychologist and
Pioneer Brain/Mind Researcher
© 2007 All Rights Reserved

Many scientific studies have confirmed that the beliefs lying at the heart of our self-image have a direct effect on our performance in all areas of our lives.

Let’s review just one classic study. Picture this...

A teacher came into a primary-level classroom, and told her students that a new scientific study proved blue-eyed children are a lot smarter than brown- or green-eyed children.

The results were dramatic.

The blue-eyed children immediately began to outperform their brown and green-eyed classmates in all aspects of their studies.

Then two months later the teacher called a special classroom meeting. She told the students she’d made a serious mistake. She apologized, and said the scientific study had actually proven that brown- and green-eyed children were the most intelligent.

Again the results were dramatic and immediate!

The blue-eyed children lost their edge and began to under perform. The brown- and green-eyed children's grades, on the other hand, immediately soared to the “superior” range!

What did this prove? Simply this:

If you *believe* you’re smart, you act smart.
If you *believe* you’re creative, you act creative.
If you *believe* you’re a success, you act successful.
If you believe you’re excellent at something, you act excellent.

We each live up (or live down) to the image we hold of our self.

An Important Insight
Earl Nightingale, a prominent success philosopher and teacher,
spent a good part of his life studying the world's philosophical, religious and metaphysical writings.

Nightingale discovered one common belief: “We become what we think about.”

His finding underscores exactly what the classroom-study researchers found: If you think you’re bright and destined for success, guess what? You’ll be smart, and do smart things that will move you along on the road to success.

This has to be far better than thinking you’re dumb and destined to fail. Because then you’ll do dumb things, and ensure that you end up a failure.

How This Works
Here’s the rub. You’re just like those young children in the classroom.

Picture this: You’re 7 years old and want to learn to play ball. But you haven’t had any experience catching, throwing or hitting. You approach a group of youngsters playing sandlot ball and ask to join. They assign you the position of third baseman.

But by the time the inning is over, you openly demonstrated your lack of skill. Then when you came up to bat and struck out, that was the end of it. You were called a “hopeless dummy,” thrown off the team, and told not to come back.

Then suppose that night at dinner you told your Father what had happened, and he said something like: “I’m not surprised Son, you’re really NOT build for sports.”

The ANTs Have Invaded
Do you have some particular areas of life in which you seem to have some “natural” limitations? Look inside your mind and you’ll MOST likely uncover some image-damaging ANTs from childhood.

Such ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts) do not just go away on their own. They sneak around in your subconscious mind and send out limiting messages 24 hours a day.

Then if you even “think” about pursuing an activity with these ANTs attached to it, a whole army will start to march along your neural networks.

Suddenly you may then decide to “just forget it” because “I’m not any good at that anyway.” Sound familiar?

How to Stamp Out ANTs
To claim more of your TRUE potential for personal excellence, you’ll have to move those ant hills out of your subconscious mind.

There are a lot of techniques for “stamping out” ants, but the following exercise seems to work especially well.

While facing a mirror. Look straight into your eyes and repeat an affirmation. Get as much emotional feeling into it as possible.

If you want to overcome public speaking ANTs, for example, your affirmation might be: “I am an excellent speaker.” If you want to stomp out fear of failure ANTs, you might say: “In truth, I am fearless.”

Frequent repetition of your mirror affirmations will create new neural positive networks.

Don’t become alarmed if you begin to look remarkably different (even like a different person) while you repeat these affirmations. This is a very powerful exercise. Done over time, you will begin to get glimpses of a “truer” version of yourself in the mirror. This can get very exciting!

The author, Dr. Jill Ammon-Wexler, is the personal mentor to world-class leaders from around the world. One of the best ways to win out over your ANTs (Automatic Negative Messages) that hold you back is her popular (and very affordable) "Smash Your Limits" ecourse. Learn more here!

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