1.1 Who Are You?

You may like to explore your beliefs about yourself right now by completing the following exercise:

Head a piece of paper “Who Am I?’ and divide it into two columns with subheadings as shown below:

Who am I?

I am… I would like to be…

Find yourself a comfortable place where you will not be disturbed for 20 minutes or so.

Ask yourself the question – Who am I?

Write down your answer – however silly or meaningless it may appear to be.

Ask the same question again, and continue to write down your answers until you run out of space or time.

Now look at what you have written.

For each statement you would rather not believe about yourself, write a more empowering statement under the heading ‘I would like to be…’

If you are not sure what makes a statement ‘empowering’, just say it to yourself and notice how you feel.

Here are some examples of I am statements from SHAPE participants, together with their corresponding I would like to be’s:

I AM

• depressed

• lonely

• a failure

• a mother

• empty

• tired

• clumsy

• unemployed

• ignored

• poor

I WOULD LIKE TO BE

• happy

• in a relationship

• a success

• a better mother

• fulfilled

• full of energy

• co-ordinated

• working

• taken seriously

• wealthy

You have just created your own list of ‘useful beliefs’, and you may like to copy them all onto another piece of paper, head it “I AM”, and pin it on the wall beside your bed so it is the first thing you see when you wake up each morning. Repeat these statements to yourself every day, as often as you can remember.

Repetition with belief is one of the master keys to successful personal development. It is stressed by all the principal writers on the subject of ‘positive thinking’ in all its guises, and is based on the observation that we are creatures of habit. Learning new ‘thinking habits’ lays the foundation for changes in ‘behaviour habits’. Simply chanting statements, or ‘affirmations’ as they are also called, as you might speak a shopping list aloud is not going to produce a useful result.

You may wonder how you get to believe something which is contrary to the evidence of your senses. Consider how many things you already believe without being able to see, hear, smell, touch or taste the evidence.

Here are a few examples:

• The earth is spherical and travels through space at around 60,000 miles per hour.

• The light from the sun takes about 8 minutes to reach us.

• Your entire physical make-up is encoded in strands of DNA which are invisible to the naked eye.

• Bats fly safely in the dark by emitting high frequency signals which are inaudible to the human ear.

• Pigeons can find their way home over hundreds of miles of unknown territory.

We happily accept these and many other ‘facts’ at face value without first-hand evidence, even when (as is the case with the first example) they are in conflict with the information from our senses: do you have a sensation of moving at 60,000 mph right now?

Empowering Questions

How could I find new ways to enjoy being my true self?

What must I do to feel good about myself?