Your self image, you may recall, is the mental blueprint or mental picture you carry around. It is the self image that must be changed to gain or re-gain control of the power of your subconscious mind.

The self image consists of all thoughts, fears, phobias, actions, feelings, and behavior that you have accumulated and have been securely stored in your subconscious mind during your lifetime. From these various elements, your beliefs about yourself have unconsciously been formed. Your past experiences, including your successes, failures, humiliations, so-called constructive criticisms, and the way people have responded to us have all made contributions.

Much of what is stored in your subconscious mind was placed there in your early childhood, at a time when the frontal, reasoning part of your brain was not sufficiently developed to allow you to make decisions based on reason. By the time your brain was fully developed, you had formed many, many beliefs. It was from this sizable pool of beliefs that your self image (a picture or blueprint) was constructed. Over time belief after belief was added to this picture.

Remember, any idea, thought or image that is passed on to the subconscious mind becomes a belief, and any belief so formed, becomes your truth and is no longer open to question. Whether the belief is true or not, you simply act or re-act to your beliefs as if they were true!

Some of your beliefs grew out your personal experiences and include answers to questions like: Am I intelligent? Am I likable? Am I stupid? Am I a failure? Am I weak? Most beliefs, however, are internalizations of the judgments of other people, especially family, friends, and authority figures in institutions like schools and churches.

When you reached adulthood, there were hundreds or even thousands of infantile beliefs (truths) that had been added to your self image. During those early years, you were not encouraged nor allowed, in some cases, to use conscious reasoning as you negotiated your way through life. As a result, the self image took on more and more control of your thinking about and reactions to life.

Your self image had a reservoir of subconscious beliefs (truths) to draw upon in response to your life situations without your conscious involvement. It could simply repeat past responses to similar situations. These infantile beliefs are the truths that the self image used to control nearly every aspect of your life in adulthood. Its repetitive control gradually became deeply ingrained habit. Is it any wonder that life is such a struggle for you and most people?

As I have stated before, I believe the lack of a basic understanding of how the self image is formed and the control it exercises over our lives is the single greatest barrier to mastering your mind power and living more of the lives we desire. The self image, however, can be changed. New habits can be formed. You can change.

You are the most miraculous of all living beings on earth. You are the owner of a mind that is so stupendous, that as you truly begin mastering your mind power and consciously using it, there is no dream that you can dream that you cannot achieve.