“Waking up to who you actually are (Self Concept) requires you to begin letting go of whoever it is that you imagine yourself to be (Self Esteem).”

I’ve heard the statement “just be yourself” so many times throughout my life. It sounds like such an amazingly simple thing to do, but in all honestly, it's taken me YEARS to be able to fully understand what this means.

In my quest for answers I’ve found that it is very much possible to just be yourself. The person who is a jerk to others and the person who is afraid of social situations are, in actuality, not being themselves. Their real self is just being covered up with their pre-conditioned and fear-based thinking - of not being good enough at simply being themselves.

Our true self is who we really are when we let go of all of the stories, labels, and judgments that we have placed upon ourselves. It is who we naturally are without the masks and pretentiousness.

It is who we really are when we let fall to the floor the cloak of other people’s stuff that we have taken on.

Everything else that we claim to be when we say, “This is who I am!” is only a story.

What you've experienced throughout this course and what I'll also share in this video, are the steps, stories and lessons I've learned that have allowed me to uncover my real nature and authentic self, which was in no way what so ever, even mildly resembled the opinions I developed about myself over the duration and the extent of my lifetime so far .....

I close this course with one final story, I hope you find this insightful ;-)

How often do you not say or do something because you're worried about how it'll be perceived? For most of us, myself included, this happens more often then we'd like to admit.

We live in a culture that is starving for authenticity. We want our leaders, our co-workers, our family members, our friends, and everyone else we interact with to tell us the truth and to be themselves. Most important, we want to have the personal freedom and confidence to say, do, and be who we really are, without worrying so much about how we appear to others and what they might think or say about us.

Sadly, however, even though we may say we want to live in a way that is true to our deepest passions, beliefs, and desires; most of us don't and it's not that easy. We've been taught by our parents, teachers, spouses, friends, co-workers, politicians, the media, and others, that it's more important to be liked and to fit in than it is to be who we truly are. In addition, many of us assume that who we are is not good enough and therefore we're constantly trying to fix ourselves, or to act like others who we think are better than us.

However, as the famous 19th century poet Oscar Wilde suggested, "Just Be yourself, as everyone else is already taken!"

I know that this video will inspire you ...

If you don’t believe it yourself, don’t ask anyone else to do so!

It is virtually impossible not to transmit your doubts and insecurities to others through body language, tone of voice, inflection, word choice, and other subtle characteristics.

When you show by your actions that you lack self-confidence, other people also begin to doubt your ability to perform even the most insignificant of tasks. To gain the respect and confidence of others, begin by making a list of all the attributes that make you who you are, followed by the areas you could do with some work in! Make a conscious effort to build upon your positive strengths and simply improve on your weaknesses (if they're even important).

It may not be easy, but if you assess yourself objectively and persevere in your efforts, you will eventually prevail .... like my wife Karen, If in this video you think that she looks confident - I can guarantee you that she wasn't, but simply done what she had to do anyway.

Feal the fear and do it anyway!

Don’t look to the stars for the cause of your misfortunes: look to yourself to get better results.

There are many things you cannot control, but you can control the only things that really matter: your mind and your attitude. External forces have very little to do with success.

Those who program themselves for success find a way to succeed even in the most difficult of circumstances. Solutions to most problems come from one source and one source alone: yourself. Living life to the fullest is a lot like shooting the rapids in a rubber raft.

Once you’ve made the commitment, it’s difficult to change your mind, turn around, and paddle upstream to placid waters. But it’s the excitement and adventure that make it all worthwhile. If you never make the attempt, you may never know the depths of despair, but neither will you experience the exhilaration of success.

Human beings possess the unique ability to engage in emotional time travel, mentally fast forwarding through time to envision how they will feel in future situations.

Emotional time travel is not without its pitfalls. At the most obvious level, people may make inaccurate predictions about how they will feel in a situation because the situation unfolds differently than they expect. Yet, even if the situation people experience objectively matches the situation they imagined, people face a fundamentally different psychological situation when they experience an event than when they imagine it. The failure to recognise this can lead onto a wide variety and array of unwise and ill informed decisions.

People's predictions about how they will feel in the future shape many of their decisions, though under certain conditions people place surprisingly little weight on their affective forecasts in decision-making. Supporting the validity of decisions that are based on affective forecasts, most studies suggest that forecasts do reliably predict experiences.

I hope that you find this video enlightening!

For many people, emotions can be an inconsistent daily NIGHTMARE that we often just don’t know what to do with or how to handle.

So we turn to the only strategies we do know. If you’re a man, you might distract yourself by playing video games, building something new or even by going to the pub or the gym, and if you’re a woman, you might head to the shops or eat a whole load of chocolate!

Turning to these things occasionally is OK, but making them part of your regular coping repertoire might not be overly effective for you.

Emotions are valuable, and offer a number of benefits (even the bad ones). Once we’re able to process and cope with them effectively, we can learn a lot about our needs and ourselves. Emotions send us important messages and help us connect with others and also keep us on the ‘right track’ throughout life.

Using unhealthy strategies can sabotage our relationships, our careers and even our health, in fact, it’s been scientifically suggested that people who handle stress effectively even have far healthier immune systems!

All emotions fall into one of 4 categories: anxiety, sadness, anger and happiness. With anxiety, your mind lights up all the with “What if’s?” What if I lose my job? What if I don’t meet someone? What if I fail my test?

Anxiety comes from the thoughts you have about the future where in turn you choose to base your emotions upon something that hasn’t even happened yet.

With sadness, you will be focusing on negative memories and thoughts about the past.

With anger, your thoughts are focused on how you or your values have been attacked, and with happiness, your thoughts are focused on what you’ve either gained or already achieved.

In the following two video’s, I’m hoping to be able to enhance your understanding of exactly how your emotions work, where they come from, and in turn how you can manage them more effectively.

I've also made them available in MP3 format for you download and listen to again as often as you need to.

Your self concept (or self image) is the sum total of all the knowledge and information that you currently have about yourself - it's the person you know you can be, could be, ought to be and want to be.

It includes things like your gender, name, personality, physical appearance, race, likes and dislikes, beliefs, values, social history, nationality, schooling, family, career, accomplishments, failures, skills and talents.

Your self-concept also includes who you think you might become and what you believe you were like in the past. It is an idea or image of yourself that comes from what you know about yourself and what you believe others think about you.

Your Self Concept answers the all important question: Who am I?

Your self concept includes the information about yourself that only you know, such as your motives, your agenda's, your achievements and your failures. Your Self Concept incorporates your values and plays a fundamental role in determining how you really feel about something (in spite of what you do or say) and what your intentions are when doing or saying something. No-one else could ever possibly know these things but you.

Your self esteem is whether you believe that all these things add up to something good, bad, worthy or unworthy. It's how you rate what you know about yourself.

It is sometimes called your self-evaluation and will always determine how it is that you feel about yourself and whether you believe that you are OK or not.

Your Self Esteem answers the question: Am I good enough?

When you know that who you are is bigger than just the set of ideas you hold about yourself you begin to see that you can change these ideas.

You can change ideas (and actions) that result in poor self esteem, to ideas (and actions) that strengthen self esteem. When you bring your actions, thoughts and emotions into alignment your self esteem grows still further.

Your current self image is just a collection of ideas and thoughts that you've had over the years that have led you to a conclusion about whether you are good enough or otherwise. How you rate these ideas (self esteem) is entirely up to you.

In this video, you'll learn the difference between self esteem and self concept and also, how in turn you can use this information to make progress in your life, for the rest of your life.

Every day of our lives, we are being constantly programmed (taught, influenced, impacted and conditioned) by the world alongside everyone and everything that lives in it.

Our beliefs are always being moulded and manipulated (for better or for worse) by other people in their attempts to have us ‘join their team’ without us even being aware of it. Most of our beliefs are formed over many years, which is why they can become such a firmly entrenched and non-negotiable part of our mental and emotional DNA. And a lifetime of being taught a certain message or philosophy can makes it extremely difficult for us to consider any other degree of reality other than the one we have already accepted to be true.

When considering to believe anything else other than what we already do, (another version of truth, an alternative option, a new way of living, thinking, seeing or believing) we’ll often need to question what it is that we’ve believed for however long we’ve been believing it - and this can really take us out of our comfort zones!

As a therapist and counsellor I’ve worked with people who can become very angry when I question or challenge whatever it is that they believe. I’m not suggesting for a moment here that I’d ever criticise their beliefs; however I do ask very practical, logical, thought provoking and intelligent questions that require some serious reflection time. For someone to even contemplate that the beliefs they’ve held onto for years may be inaccurate, is to completely rattle this person’s entire state of personal existence. And this will often hurt. And this will always invoke some form of reaction (usually anger).

I'll be talking about how we understand our emotions more effectively in a later video though!

Would you like to experience a deeper clarity of who you are and peace and freedom for within, even in the midst of what may be highly challenging circumstances?

The Inside Out Revolution offers an understanding of how life works in a way that turns more traditional forms of psychology on its head. This revolutionary approach explains where our feelings come from (whether good or bad), and how our experience of life can change for the better within only a few moments.

Understanding these principles allows you to tap into the deeper intelligence behind life, access your natural wisdom and guidance, and unleash your limitless creative power. You'll be able to live with less stress, greater ease and a sense of connection to the larger unfolding of life.

The content of these three video’s have been adapted from the books; The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill, and The OZ Principles, by Roger Connors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman.

Are you ready to begin part 2?

Is there anyone occupying a space in your head that they haven’t paid any rent for? If your peace of mind and your achievements in life are dependent upon someone else’s actions, that person is in complete control of you and you have freely given them your power.

The same principle applies to our expectations of money, materialistic possessions and promotions at work, status, rank or our achievements and failures. How many environmental circumstances and situations play a frequent role in determining your emotional wellbeing?

Because we’ve been conditioned from birth to believe in the myth of an outside-in world, we assume the path back to well-being and joy and peace of mind must be through getting a better job or a better partner or working on becoming a better person.

The irony is that the harder we work on changing ourselves in order to change the way we feel, the more distant we become from our true self, and the more important it seems to work on all those things on the outside of ourselves. As a result, the more lost and insecure we become.

So, regardless of what ‘problem’ we think we have, our only real problem is feeling cut off from the truth about ‘who we ACTUALLY are’. And the moment we reconnect to that fundamental truth, our problems stop being so problematic and we become able to move forward in life on a whole new level.

The formula is simple: your thoughts lead to your feelings, your feelings lead to your actions and your actions produce your results.

The content of these three video’s have been adapted from the books; The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill, and The OZ Principles, by Roger Connors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman.