#self-concept

#self-concept

Are there people you wish you could be more like? You have goals, such as to speak up more, to stop and breathe when you get angry, or to listen with more curiosity before declaring your opinion. You set these self-improvement goals and then find reasons for not changing now, or you simply forget them. Your desire to transform is real, but your brain is sabotaging your goals.

It's hard in stressful times to truly know ourselves, apart from habits, transitory feelings, and reactions to other people. Emotional pain and relationship discord result from losing touch with the core self. When that happens, we're likely to try, in vain, to regulate our emotions by controlling other people. If you or your partner ever felt needy, enmeshed, manipulated, or controlled, you can benefit from strengthening elements of your core self, including your:

Here is the beginning of an answer. At least for some people, some of the time, loving someone means altering the shape of one's identity to include the beloved. That is, the beloved becomes part of one's identity. Among the many ways one thinks of oneself-as someone with a certain profession, a certain taste in music, or in art-there's also seeing oneself as someone's partner.

Both times, bungee jumping had presented itself neatly packaged, properly regulated and entirely safe, and I declined with little-to-no hesitation. Zambia, on the other hand, met me differently. On a warm, windless day over the Zambezi River, standing in front of a rickety platform with little to suggest international safety compliance, I found myself ready to jump. Not metaphorically-genuinely, wholeheartedly ready. I would have done it too, if not for the people with me urging otherwise-and that says something.

When a person's self-concept is impaired, the 'self' is always vulnerable. Moreover, those with a vulnerable self-concept may misperceive the actions of others and attribute malicious intent where none exists.

At the heart of this dialogue are three of the most influential words in the English language: I, am, and can—statements like 'I can change' redefine our self-perception.