Train the Mind, Not the Brain Podcast

Discovering Your Full Potential by Strengthening Self-Image

Gregory Hunt Jr

Do you ever wonder how your self-image might be holding you back from achieving success, cultivating meaningful relationships, and reaching your goals? Would you like to learn how to strengthen your self-image through reading and association with successful individuals? Join us in today's episode as we delve into the powerful impact self-image has on our lives and how we can take control of it to become the best version of ourselves.

We'll discuss the importance of having a strong, positive self-image and explore the story of two wolves, emphasizing how what we feed will ultimately win. Furthermore, we'll tackle the age-old question of whether it's more crucial to be admired or liked in relation to self-approval and the approval of others. By the end of this episode, you'll have a better understanding of how to lead your own life, grow your self-image, and harness the power of consistency, positive action, and positive self-talk for lasting success. Don't miss this opportunity to transform your self-image and unlock your full potential!


Book Reference

  • The Magic of Thinking Big
  • What Do You Stay When You Talk to Yourself

Stay in the Hunt!

Greg Hunt:

Welcome, welcome, welcome back to train the mind, not the brain, podcast. I'm your host, Greg Hunt, and I have a great topic to talk about today and it's about self-image and how reading can help strengthen your self-image. This is a huge topic because, to me, self-image is everything and how we view ourselves. More support, because the way we look at ourselves affects a lot of things that we do. It could affect us to success. It could affect us when it comes to failure. It could affect us when it comes to relationships. Self-image is a really important thing that you want to have, a good, positive self-image that you really want to have, especially to have success in life in general. In my opinion, one of the biggest reasons why some people make it or don't make it is because of their self-image. It's because what they believe in themselves, or maybe what somebody told them, and they believe that and it might not be accurate information, it may not be true, but they take it on as if it was true and they don't have the success that they want. So we're going to really dive into talking about self-image and how reading can really help support your self-image and grow your self-image, because reading can really help raise the level of your self-image by some of the books that we may read, because it's things about you that you may never share with anybody else. But as you read books and you find yourself, you start to have more confidence in yourself because you start to get information that gives you that belief that you start to think to yourself you know what I can do it, i can make it, i can have things that I want because of your self-belief. One of the toughest things we have to deal in life is that thing, that brain, that 12-pound brain. That's one of the toughest things that we have to deal with in life because of the way we program myself and we program our self-image to believe certain things of our self, either good or bad, and that, like I said before, can really affect our success, our relationships, our goals, our dreams because of our self-image.

Greg Hunt:

Now, if you've been at the same place or same position for a while, you are probably exactly where you should be based on your self-image, and your self-image is dictating where you're going to be at in life, and that's why it's so important that you want to have a strong, positive self-image of yourself, because your productivity, your success, all of that, that's a connection or reflection of your self-image that they tie in together. I can tell when I look at somebody or I have a conversation with somebody by the things that they say and the way they may do things or say things. I can tell them right away if they have a strong self-image about themselves. Now I want you to understand this. I want you to understand two important things that you need to know about self-image. One self-image that controls you. Self-image can control you. By number two, you have the power to control your self image, and that's where you're going to start to see growth, where you understand that you have the power to change the way that you believe about yourself.

Greg Hunt:

And one of the ways that you can help strengthen your self image is through books, through association. There's some great books out there that can help you with your self image. One come to my mind is what do you say when you talk to yourself? by Dr Shad Hamsteller. That is a phenomenal, phenomenal book. How do you recommend reading that? And also, association Being around successful people. As we all heard before, birds of a feather flock together. Successful people hang around successful people. Broke people hang around broke people, but you never see a broke person teaching somebody how to be successful or how to be wealthy, because they can't. They only can teach you from where they at. So association is key, reading is key, and we're going to talk about a little bit later how you put those two things together so you can have growth.

Greg Hunt:

Now, in my opinion, those are the secrets, or part of the secrets, in strengthening and growing your self image. Why? Because they have the power to influence your self image in a positive way, because what you're putting into your mind As they're all saying, garbage in, garbage out, so you put good stuff in your mind, good stuff going to come out, and which that creates an environment for you to take control of yourself image instead of your self image taking a control of you. Now, when you hear people say, well, i don't need a read book, i don't need to associate with people, those people probably needed the most And I probably will stay away from those people that do not want to continue to educate themselves, because they probably have a low self image of themselves And that's why they don't want to continue to educate themselves or continue to be around somebody, somebody that's going to stretch them or challenge them in a positive way, so they can, so they can take control of their life and they can have the self image that they need to have whatever success that they want.

Greg Hunt:

So let's take a step back and talk about, just like, the definition of self image And what I found it says what you believe about yourself, the attitude and expectation you have of yourself that influence your behavior. And that is so true And, like I said in the beginning, it's all about yourself, belief, what you believe in yourself, and we're going to talk about some things that you can do to help grow your belief in yourself and have great expectation and great positive attitude about yourself. So which that can influence your behavior. Because if you look at any great athlete, i would bet that they had a great positive self image, a strong self image about themselves, which allow them to then do some of those phenomenal performances on the field or on the court because of the self image, because they believe in themselves. They believe in themselves as winners, they believe in themselves as they the best that's out there. They believe in themselves that, no matter what they're going to win, and that's because of the self image that they have And that could come from a lot of different ways to grow yourself image, and we're going to talk about that.

Greg Hunt:

We'll tell you how this all come full circle when you have a positive belief about yourself, a positive expectation about yourself, because your image, that attitude, change your expectation and then your attitude and expectation affects your actions, which then affects your self image. So, based on what you do in that circle, you can actually circle up, spiral up or you can spiral down. But it's based on what you do in that circle and if you're not doing the things you need to do or reinforce the positive self image of yourself, you can easily spiral down and spiral out of control. But also, on the flip side, having a strong self image, a strong belief in yourself, a strong attitude, strong self talk, a strong belief, you can easily also spiral up in a positive direction. Now what I found the?

Greg Hunt:

the original source of self image usually come from some type of programming, and programming could come from different places. For example, your programming could come from your parents and their expectations of you, the teachers, your family, your friends, your community, even comparing yourself to others. Well, if you know, truth be told, there's no comparison, there's no need to compare yourself with others, because everybody has been made uniquely for themselves, for their life, to do what they need to do for their life and not necessarily have to compare themselves to others. You are made as your own individual, but it also could be from your environment who you're hanging out with, your experiences in life some success, some failures, and the book The Magic of Thinking Big. The author talked about Dr David Schwartz. The author talks about the fear of failure, the fear of success, like all of these things can actually affect your self image. But I want to talk about some things that can also help yourself image, because one of the most important things when it comes to programming is the belief that you can or the belief that you cannot, and either way you're gonna be right. But things that you can do to strengthen yourself image is just kind of recapping reading reading positive mental attitude, books, associating with the right people, a positive self-talk, because you know meditation. It's a lot of different ways that you can do to strengthen your self image. I remember this.

Greg Hunt:

This question was asked to me one time from this very successful gentleman that I know and he said to me would you want to be admired or would you want to be liked? and I had to think about that for a second because he explained to me. He said if you want to be admired, you value self-approval. If you want to be liked, you value the approval of others. And then when he said to me, i really sat back and thought about that to be my, to be liked and to be my, you just you know that. You know your worth, you know your value. You don't have to necessarily have to have somebody else tell you you are worthy, you are made for greatness. You already had that self-approval versus want to be liked, that people like you, and trying to please everybody. So if you want to have success, you want to be admired. Now I know sometimes you know people worry about what someone else may think or what somebody else might say. But you got to ask yourself are you gonna be led as a self led? or, let me rephrase it, are you gonna be self dictated led? What I mean by that? Are you gonna lead your own life or are you gonna allow others to dictate your life?

Greg Hunt:

I will highly recommend that you want to be self led, that you want to be self dictating of your life and you have the power and the choice to do whatever you want, especially when it comes to all your self image. And it's more about who you're gonna listen to. Are you gonna listen to that positive side or the negative side? I'll tell you this quick story. It's about a story about the two wolves, and we had a good wolf, a bad wolf. And a bad wolf is just destroying everything. Negativity want to just kill off everything. The good wolf is positivity, preserving life. And I remember the one gentleman asked his grandfather between the two wolves, which one wins? and the grandfather said the one that you feed the most wins. So what are you feeding? Are you feeding that positive wolf or that negative wolf? And I hope you're feeding that positive wolf because you had the choice to dictate your life, or automatically you allow somebody else to dictate your life, and your life is too important to allow someone else to have control over your life, And that's why you want to grow your self image or leave in yourself, because you are worthy, you are somebody, somebody believes in you, you are made for greatness.

Greg Hunt:

So your self image controls you, but you can rise above that. You can control your self image because your success will never surpass the level of your self image. And we repeat that your success will never pass the level of your self image. And if you want to make some changes in your self image self image you got to make the changes. Nothing change until you change. And we know people that have a high level success movie stars, athletes they have a high level success but they all come crashing down because their talent and ability they get them to a level but their self image and character cannot sustain And most people were even salad and tired their success to stay in that comfort zone. Instead of growing that comfort zone, growing your self image, so they can have the things they want in life, they can have the success. Now nothing, and I mean nothing, cannot keep you or deny you from getting to whatever level you want to grow your self image. You just got to get out your comfort zone. You just need to do the things that you need to do.

Greg Hunt:

Your actions does affect your self image. But I heard I heard this message one time from somebody's very successful. You say your self image is in parallel with your consistency. The consistent action and a pursuit of a worthwhile goal enhances emotional stability and strength. Now, in that, strength and stability comes with along with that consistent action that allows you to create that space to build and grow your self image. So understand how important that is and that's why I talk about.

Greg Hunt:

You know, reading. Reading is one part of going yourself image, but you can't do that alone. Action is another part of going yourself image by doing some positive things, by saying positive self talk. That's another part of it, but you have to do it together to grow yourself in, because if you do it together, you have that action. You're reading books. You will grow yourself in image tremendously and self image, to me, is one of the key elements to anybody's success and if they really want to change their life, change yourself image, change the way you look at yourself, change your belief system, because you can do it. You are worthy of anything that you want. You just got to believe that you can have it. You just got to change the way that you think about yourself that you are great, and I know it might take some time, but keep believing it will work out for you and the best is yet to come. Hey, i just had a couple thoughts on self image. I hope you enjoyed that. Keep on keeping on and until next time, stay in the hunt.