“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Henry Ford. This month we’re talking about building a strong self-image because we can never create anything in our lives beyond our own self-image, but we can rebuild it. We can change it. We can reestablish it. This month we’re going to be focusing on the tools we need to have the life that we would absolutely love living. It starts with building a strong self-image. Let’s get going.

Welcome to the Unlock Your Life podcast, a podcast for highly successful visionary women who want more out of life. If you feel that ache of unfulfillment in your soul, you’re in the right place sis. Join life mastery consultant Lori A. Harris as she teaches you how to stop living for others and finally put yourself first. Let’s dive into today’s show.

So I’m talking to you this month about the prospect of bringing main character energy to your own life. The fact is, is that every day, all day long, we are thinking, we are creating images in our mind, and we’re playing out a script, a little mini movie.

Now, in order to have a life that you absolutely love living, you want to notice what you’re thinking. You want to bring your awareness to your thoughts because you’re setting in motion the life that you are living. So if we have this power why not use it for good? So we’re going to talk this month about bringing main character leading lady energy to our lives.

Now, when we are people that have enjoyed a lot of success that can be a really strong foundation. It can help propel us to keeping momentum and building a life that we love. However, as we get older, we get a little bit out of practice with doing new things, trying new things, and even allowing our imagination to run wild with possibility.

Now, having had some success in our life can be great because it’s evidence that we are successful. However, sometimes it can be a little bit of a sand trap. It can keep us stuck because it can create a block within us. Sometimes we get stuck because we don’t want to make a mistake. We can’t really imagine doing something different, trying something new. So we’re gonna talk about how we can change and build and create an even stronger self-image.

Maxwell Maltz was a famous plastic surgeon. He’s the author of psycho cybernetics and the magic power of self-image psychology. The new way to a bright, full life. Maxwell Maltz was famous as a plastic surgeon because he had the skill set to absolutely transform what had been deformities, birth defects, major injuries to people’s faces, and change damages that people had been suffering from. So he would do his very best work.

He started to notice something odd. He would take someone who had a major deformity and correct it and bring them back to a restored image, but he noticed that many of his patients couldn’t see it. They will look in the mirror, and they would continue to see that all self-image that had been physically transformed but still existed in the mind of the patient. It was all that they could see.

It made Dr. Maltz curious. He wanted to study what’s going on here. Physically, they’ve been transformed, but mentally they can’t go there. He started to notice and has shared with the world what he learned. We all have a self-image, and we cannot perform beyond our self-image. But the good news is we can change it. We can improve it. It all starts with awareness. So this month is going to be the month of positive self-image. We’re going to work on doing the kind of work that is going to set us up for having great success in all of our lives.

Now, visualization is a tool that many, many people use in order to build success. You can bring together an image in your mind that you absolutely would love, and then you start working on becoming and being the person that made the kinds of decisions, that made the moves, that did the things that the person in your image would do.

So I’ll give you a few examples. There’s this famous golfer that we all know, Tiger Woods. The story goes that he started learning to play golf as a toddler with his dad. He recounts a story where his dad helped him to understand how to putt more effectively.

Tiger says, “My dad didn’t know really how to convey distance to me. So we would break it down into smaller pieces. He would say just take a picture of this section and then move the ball to that section. Then take a picture of the next session and move the ball to that section. With that, I was able to make a mental image, a picture of where I wanted that ball to go. That’s how I learned to effectively putt.”

Now he shares the story, and he says, “When I’m out on the golf course, it may look like I’m super cool and collected, and I’m not nervous at all and sometimes that’s true. But sometimes I get really, really nervous. When I do, I just go back to the basics. The basics that my Pop-pop taught me when I was just three years old. I tell myself just take a picture, move the ball to the picture.”

Now, Tiger is not the only one that uses the power of visualization. Many golfers will practice a shot first in their mind before they ever take their hands to the clubs. They start to train their mind and then their body to collaborate and to cooperate to put that ball where the golfer wants the ball to go. It’s a skillset that most professional golfers use.

Now who else do we know that uses the power of visualization in order to make things happen and to control the power of their minds? Well, the famous ballerina, Misty Copeland, has shared many stories of how visualization has been an integral part of her success.

Misty never wanted to be just satisfied with being on the stage or being part of the chorus. She set her mind to becoming a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre. How did she do it?

Well, Misty says visualization works. In her book, she talks about how she traced the Marley floor with her pointe shoes and imagined herself on stage. Not as a member of the corps, but as a principal dancer, and it felt right. It felt like a promise. Someday, somehow it was going to happen to me, and then it did. She advises us to take time each day to visualize our own idea of success and know that that will help bring us closer to our own desired reality.

Another beautiful story that I’m familiar with, a teaching story from Misty Copeland, talks about after she became a principal dancer and was the featured star of the ABT, she was injured. With that injury, she had to endure surgery. Then, of course, a recovery period. There was a part of her that became concerned. Her mind wanted to run away and says to herself, oh, what if they replace me? What if I don’t recover? What if I take too long? What if, what if, what if?

She caused herself to pause and to say, no, that’s not what I want. So while she wasn’t able to go into the studio or onto the stage and practice her rehearsals with the company, she didn’t allow that to stop her. She continued to practice and rehearse while she was at home. Whether she was sitting on the couch or sitting in the bed or thinking about anything, she would cause herself to remember her dance steps, her dance routine, the choreography for the ballets that she was scheduled to perform.

She would go through each movement in her mind. She trained her muscles to remember oh, yeah, we do this. This is what we do. Her mind and her muscles work together to heal, and she found that her healing and recovery was much quicker than the doctors had predicted. When she returned to the stage, while she had some challenges, she came back faster, and he came back stronger than anyone would have predicted. She attributes that to incorporating visualization.

Now, does it only work for celebrities and superstar athletes? Well, of course not. In my practice when I work with my clients, it works with them as well. So you know that I’m a whole life coach. I want my clients to have the best of everything. That what they desire, what their dream is, to build a life that gives them life.

A couple of years ago, I had the awesome opportunity and challenge to work with someone who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, let me tell you, it was a little bit scary. I have to be honest with you. But I reminded myself to stay in service. Sometimes we have those moments where we think back to ourselves. My friend, Jennifer Rapo who’s a speech coach and actor says—and she too has recovered from cancer. She says, “What would I do if I had a little more time? What would I do if I have a little more courage?” I think these are important questions to ask ourself.

So when I was working with my client, she was dealing with some health challenges. This is a woman who at 52/53 was diagnosed with breast cancer. But breast cancer had been lingering around the edges since she was 16. Always some kind of little scare, threatening her and threatening her life. Now it was here.

So when we worked together, we talked about building a vision for health. It’s not enough to want to be healthy. We want to know what are you gonna do with this one precious life? What are you going to do with this good health that you so desperately want? What will you do with this life?

My client thought and it took her some time to allow herself to dream. But it became crystal clear to her what she really wanted. She wanted to travel. The image that came to mind first was she wanted to be in Paris for Bastille Day. So that’s an image we can work with. So we continued to work with that. We continued to work on the idea of building great health, and my client did get healthy. My client did experience a complete recovery and is doing well having gone through her surgery and gone through chemotherapy and is now on the other side.

But what happens when one gets a crystal clear picture of what they would absolutely love? What happens when one allows themselves to feel a burning desire? Well, what happens is you start to notice new opportunities, new ideas come to you. Then when these ideas and opportunities come to you, you conjure up that little bit of courage. You conjure up a little bit of faith, and you start to act on that faith. You start to act on that courage.

So you don’t have to take the whole journey all by yourself, but you confront those ideas that come to you. When they are not in alignment with the life that you are dreaming of, that you would love, you talk them down. You say yes, I’m doing this thing. You don’t continue to entertain ideas that nothing good ever happens to me. Every time I try to do something, the cat get sick, the car breaks down. I’m never going to be able to fulfill my dreams. No, you continue to work on that idea.

You hold it in your mind. You see yourself packing your bags, you see yourself getting on the plane, you see yourself arriving, you see yourself celebrating Bastille Day near the Eiffel Tower. You allow yourself to dream, and then you continue to work with that image.

So not only did my client recover from cancer scare and cancer treatment and surgery, but she went on to apply for an opportunity sponsored by the United States State Department to travel to Paris, France. She is the first of the staff of her workplace to be selected who was not a traditional faculty member. She’s the first. So she will be going on an all-expense paid educational trip on behalf of the United States to Paris. What’s the cherry on top? She will be there doing Bastille Day.

So what can happen to you, over to you, if you allowed yourself to bring that main character energy to your own visualizations? What would you do with that? Truthfully, right now, you might not yet have a positive self-image, but you can create one. You can build one. In the show notes, I’m going to provide an exercise for you to work with so that you can bring main character energy to your life.

Now, the first thing we do in every session that I do with my clients is we recalibrate our energy. We recalibrate our vibrational tone. We remind ourselves of what’s good, what’s already working. That is part of our gratitude practice.

The next thing we do is we go over to the win column. We make note of our wins. So when we are working towards our dreams, we don’t take them in big giant boulders and try to bite off the whole thing whole. We break everything down into little, tiny inchworm pieces. We remind ourselves to celebrate those wins, those progress. Because with that we build a new self-image. We build a new foundation. So this month we’re talking about bringing positive self-image to our own psychology. We are bringing main character leading lady energy to the work.

Now, over to you. If you would love to bring main character positive energy to your life, check the show notes. I will have an exercise and worksheet there for you so that you can start to practice what it’s like to get that kind of main character energy in your life. You can do this exercise for 10/11 days and see how it works. This stuff works if you work it. I would love for you to take the opportunity to try it out. Try it out. Try me now.

So this has been episode 48 of the Unlock Your Life podcast. If you are enjoying the show, what I would love is if hey maybe you can take a screenshot of yourself enjoying the show from your mobile device and tag me on the gram. I’m LoriHarrisESQ, LoriHarrisESQ. Show me that you are listening to the Unlock Your Life podcast.

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Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast. If you want more information on how you can transform your life and do it quickly, visit loriaharris.com. See it on the next episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast.