What Shapes the Self?
Our soul is not reflected through our body without deep intention. Let your soul be master of your body and do not let your body be your master.
Dr. Kevin Ham
The road to self-confidence, self-actualization and self-transcendence, the Fruits of Self, come from three Self Inputs, the Roots of Self.
Every self is shaped by three foundational inputs. I lacked these three self inputs and only saw myself through the lenses of others’ and my environment. I was the second shortest in my grade, a minority, feeble-minded although bright, and didn’t have any dreams or purpose in my life. That started to change when I started asking myself important questions about life and my role in it. It changed even more when I made my misfortunes take on meaning and purpose. When I was bedridden in the hospital with an autoimmune disease, I decided that I was going to be a doctor of medicine to help other unfortunate people like myself.
These three Self Inputs started to reveal the deep core of my soul and spirit in my diseased and weak body.
Self-Perception
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.
Joseph Campbell
Self-perception is how you view yourself. It is the story you believe about yourself and it dictates how high you dream, how deeply you love and how boldly you live.
Where Negative Self-Perception Comes From:
Most of your negative self-perception comes from:
Childhood labels, experiences, especially traumatizing ones and early conditioning. These play in repeating patterns both silently and actively with dependency, neediness, blaming, complaining, excusing, compromising with situations and peoples.
Unresolved failures mistaken as identity. Failures do not equal who you are. They are a byproduct or process on the way to learning and figuring you out. With every failure a seed of growth can be planted and redemption and wisdom gained. Edison said he failed 10,000 times before he could find the way to invent the light bulb.
You should ask yourself some important questions about your Self-Perception and understand the deep fundamental truths about yourself.
Do I align with my potential or with my past? In other words, do I constrain myself because of my past or can I have limitless possibilities because of my future?
What truth about myself do I believe? What lie about myself can I live with?
Practices:
Clarify who you are and who you wish to become. Write a “Who I Am Becoming” vision statement.
Reframe your past, good and bad, including the hardest failures, as preparation, learning rather than disqualification and unworthiness. Be honest with yourself.
Self-Talk
Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.
Viktor Frankl
Your self-talk is the words you speak about yourself and believe. What you say, you reinforce. These repeated words then become your self-identity, which dictates how you think, speak and behave. This is then reflected into your outer world.
Negative self-talk comes from unclosed loops and perceived gaps between your present critical self and your future aspired self as well as what others tell you about these seemingly large gaps.
The criticisms from your esteemed ones, authority figures or peers echoing in your head like a perpetual pinball machine.
Subconscious repetition of old emotional scripts and trauma that has not healed.
You should ask yourself:
What stories am I repeating and living that no longer serve me?
How would I speak to myself if I truly believed I was becoming who I was meant to be?
The purpose of questions is to explore, to provide clarity and hopefully define you, your true deeper self more fully.
Practices:
Begin each day with a truth-based affirmation about yourself. All things are relative and there are only levels in every direction.
Interrupt internal criticism with compassion, clarity and curiosity. Explore its deep roots and see if you transform or transplant them into healthy soil for purpose or meaning or learning.
Self-Environment
We must let go of the life we have planned so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
Your environment is not neutral. It either nurtures your self-actualization to become who you are or normalizes your excuses and binds you to your past, preventing your future.
Your negative self-environment comes from staying in environments out of habit, familiarity rather than alignment to your purpose. It is the city or country you grew up in, your friend groups, your families, your language, your customs. It is also bound by your cultural, familial, religious and social systems that resist non-conformity, that do not let your soul stand out as unique.
You should ask yourself:
Who consistently reinforces my highest identity?
What do I need to step away from in order to be freely me?
Practices:
Deeply curate your content, community and commitments. This is 80% elimination and 20% addition.
Design your mental, physical and relational space to support your future self.
Roots to Fruits
You alone determine and establish your roots. And your roots determine the fruits you share with the world.
Dr. Kevin Ham
When your three Self Inputs (Roots) align:
Clear Self-Perception
Consistent and authentic Self-Talk
Supportive Self-Environment
The three Self Outputs become your Fruits:
Self-Confidence
Self-Actualization
Self-Transcendence
One Life-Changing Question
In the final analysis, the question is not what we expect from life, but what life expects from us.
Viktor Frankl
What does the future You expect you to allow in today?
Final Thought
We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey
Dr. Kevin Ham
You don’t just shape your habits. You shape your Self and your Self will shape the world you touch. Shine and Smile.
Choose your three Self Inputs with deep intention.
Next week: The 7-Self Framework: the Transformational Journey of Self
From Self-Perception to Self-Transcendence
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
