For the moment imagine an ordinary, average guy going through his ordinary, average life. And then let’s imagine also that this guy has, in his mind, a set of little mental pictures that sum up ‘who he is’.

There might be a little picture of him being confused at the world, and maybe a picture of him hiding himself in a crowd. Behind these mental pictures we can see little movies from his life that support and reinforce these pictures: being told as a child not to ‘show off’, that ‘good people’ know their ‘proper place’, and then lots of movies of times in the past when he turned down opportunities to achieve something.

We see that these pictures are a summary not only of the historic events and self-beliefs of this guy, but also of the expectations and projected beliefs about him received from other people. As he goes through life his Inner Mind is constantly checking against these pictures to see ‘what would I do in a situation like this,’ then ‘now what would I do,’ and ‘how would I react to this?’ In each case the Inner Mind uses these little pictures to generate appropriate responses. Every time it uses one of these little pictures to create behaviour the end-results will normally further reinforce the original picture. In a way the little pictures are like a ‘mental framework’ that the Inner Mind uses to quickly build day-to-day behaviours and thoughts around.

Generally this entire process of ‘behaviour generation and results feedback’ would go on purely automatically and out of conscious awareness - which would be all fine and good if these ‘little pictures’ were all bright and happy, full of resourcefulness, adaptability and good times. Sadly the opposite seems to be more prevalent.

So instead of wasteful pictures of confusion, of failure or disappointment muddying the waters of life let’s build something new. Let’s build some pictures of ourselves radiating wisdom, mindfulness and joyful assertiveness.

And now imagine what could happen when the Inner Mind looks at those pictures when deciding what behaviours and thoughts to bring into the world.

While the mind can cope remarkably well at creating lots of behaviours from just a few little pictures there will be some situations that require a little more 'depth' and complexity to the information that the mind has to work from.

Our intention is to purposefully give the mind all the 'raw materials' of this new resource / quality / capability and then use 'focussed questions' to guide the mind into organising all of these disparate elements into a robust, adaptable and self-motivating Inner Resource.

So far I've found this approach has been much faster and more resilient against setbacks when compared to the old method of wildly 'spamming' the mind with 'positive programming' in the hope that some of it might stick.

We are going to assume that you have spent a couple of weeks performing the basic mindfulness exercises. Hopefully you will have experienced a few minor positive changes / feelings - and are now ready to 'turbo-charge' the process.

The core of this 'organised resource', the actual 'thing' that all of the different bits of this new resource attach to and organise themselves around is a 'Self-Image' - an actual dissociated, 'standing over there', visual image of yourself. Yourself how you would look if you already had this capability or resource or quality.

Ask your Inner Mind questions like:
How would I look if I were perfectly mindful of my surroundings?
How at ease could I look?
How even more perfectly at ease could I look?

You might, while asking these questions, hold in your conscious mind an image of yourself looking as attentive, calm and at ease as you can.

Next, ask your Inner Mind questions like:
How would it feel if I were perfectly mindful of my surroundings?
What might it be like?
How could these feelings strengthen my new resource - even more?

You might, while asking these questions, hold in your conscious mind an imagined kinaesthetic awareness of your surroundings.

The purpose of this is to prompt your Inner Mind to run some mental movies that will act like memories of past successes - this can sometimes also be a kind of 'mental rehearsal' allowing the mind to expect and prepare for similar future successes.

Next, ask your Inner Mind questions like:
How would I look if I were perfectly mindful of my surroundings?
How at ease could I look?
How even more perfectly at ease could I look? How could my self-image be strengthened even more by these supporting movies and feelings?

Hold in your conscious mind an image of yourself looking as attentive, calm and at ease as you can.

This is basically the first step repeated, to increase its link with these other movies and stuff.

Next, ask Your Inner Mind questions like:
What sort of things might I do if I were perfectly mindful of my surroundings?
How calm and at ease could I look?
How even more calm and even more at ease could I look?
How could my self-image be strengthened even more by these supporting movies and feelings?

Hold in your conscious mind various movies where you see yourself - as if you were sat in a cinema watching 'you' playing a character in a film - going out and about in the world, looking as calm and at ease as you can, talking to people, doing things and so on.

The purpose of this is to prompt your Inner Mind to run some mental movies that will act like motivators. Your Inner Mind sees this 'movie' of the 'future you' walking around looking calm and at ease and it thinks 'I want to be like that' - and begins to make it happen.

Finally, return to the first batch of questions:
How would I look if I were perfectly mindful of my surroundings?
How at ease could I look?
How even more perfectly at ease could I look? How could my self-image be strengthened even more by these supporting movies and feelings?

Hold in your conscious mind an image of yourself looking as attentive, calm and at ease as you can.

It should also be useful to bring to mind actual examples of successful experiences of mindfulness from your past and integrate those into this self-image as well.

It might also be useful to bring to mind examples of other people who exemplify or otherwise display some of the traits or essence of 'mindfulness' - and integrate those into this self-image as well.

And there you have it. Take your time, pace yourself - and if the whole thing takes less than 1 hour then you are doing it too quickly - slow it down next time.

That basic framework can be used to create any 'Personal Resource' that you might need, to assist in any project or life situation. Just follow the general steps given above. I will write up another example at some point in the future.

On the subject of the 'motivator' movies: if your new self-concept is being built with the ability to 'just get on with it' and complete tasks that might not be enjoyable but need doing, then the movie should concentrate on how happy (or whatever) you look after the task is completed - so your Inner Mind can say 'Yeah I want to be happy like that - let's get this task done.'

Of course if the task / skill / ability involves doing things that are in themselves enjoyable or interesting then you can just see yourself doing the task well, enjoying it and being interested as you do so.

In general, motivation for internal (e.g. behavioural) change uses the 'dissociated' movies, while motivation for external changes (e.g. new car / job / relationship) is better done with 'associated movies'. Using too many 'associated' movies for a behavioural change could give the feeling that the change has already occurred without actually prompting the Inner Mind to make any actual changes, so someone might believe that they were 'good at their job / popular/ whatever' whilst actually being just as useless / unpopular as they always used to be. This is the same problem that affirmations can cause.

In contrast, using the 'dissociative' movies too often can have the opposite effect - giving the feeling that 'the good stuff is always over there' and being rather depressing. Good Goddess and Divine Ally work mostly uses the 'associative' style so doing the 'How good could it feel to be guided by my Divine Ally?' every day or so (which you are already doing, right?) would be a good way to rebalance things.

When using this 'self-image' format to help with situations where I would previously have had problems with nerves / anxiety / etc I've personally found that the 'dissociated' elements are more useful. In some cases I've discovered that too much 'association' can actually increase my feelings of being 'self-conscious' and ill-at-ease.

Also be aware that not all of the steps might be appropriate. If somebody were creating their Assertiveness self-image and using mental movies of defeating wild animals then all of these will be associated ('How would it feel...' not 'How would I look...') because they are supposed to be like memories of past successes.

If they made these movies dissociated ('How would I look..') then there is a possibility that the movies could become 'motivational' and this person could find themselves with the sudden urge to rush out and beat up random animals...

And remember to put the possibility of 'running away' in there as well...

Transforming Your Self by Steve Andreas

An in-depth discussion of the various elements of the structure of the self-image and how they might affect the resultant capabilites and behaviours in the real world. Useful if you've decided to explore and fine-tune self-images with more control and detail.