Daily Lift by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin

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"This, Too, Will Build My Self-Image"

Each and every day you will have many opportunities to build yourself and your self-image. Every positive thought, word, and action builds you.

When you see that you have behaved in a positive way, you can say to yourself, "This, too, will build my self-image."

If you have not behaved the way you would have liked, you can think about how you wished to have thought, spoken, and acted. Thinking about what you want to be like conditions your mind to think, speak, and act more in that way. You can say about this pattern of thinking, "This, too, will build my self-image."

[phkrause]

"This, Too, Will Build My Self-Image"

Each and every day you will have many opportunities to build yourself and your self-image. Every positive thought, word, and action builds you.

When you see that you have behaved in a positive way, you can say to yourself, "This, too, will build my self-image."

If you have not behaved the way you would have liked, you can think about how you wished to have thought, spoken, and acted. Thinking about what you want to be like conditions your mind to think, speak, and act more in that way. You can say about this pattern of thinking, "This, too, will build my self-image."

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If Someone Else Can Do It, I Can Do It, Too

We might think that we won't be able to do or accomplish something. But seeing that someone else can do it tells us, "If this person can accomplish that, I will be able to do it also."

The Sages (Pirkei Avos 4:1) define a wise person as someone who learns from every person. Develop the habit of interviewing people you meet to find out exactly how they learned to do what you would like to learn to do. What are the thoughts that go through their mind? What are the actions they take? What are their attitudes and mindsets? What are the mental pictures they see? What are the books they read? What are the classes and recordings they heard?

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Stop Thinking Thoughts That Lower Your Self-Image

A person creates a low self-image with his thoughts. Someone who constantly repeats demeaning self-talk will build a low self-image. The more he continues thinking and focusing on negative thoughts that lower his self-image, the worse he will feel about himself.

Being around an extremely critical person can be very distressful. But having a very active inner critic frequently criticize what you say and do without letup creates even more distress.

When you consistently think thoughts to build your self- image, these positive statements become stronger and stronger and the old negative ones get weaker and weaker. The neural pathways to the recent life-enhancing thoughts are enlarged and your mind will find it easier to travel this more beneficial path.

Keep in mind that every young child has immature ways of thinking, speaking, and acting. As people grow up the vast majority think, speak and act in more adult ways. Even though the childish ways of thinking, speaking, and acting are stored in the brains of adults, the more mature behaviors become automatic and spontaneous.

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People Who Make You Feel Good About Yourself

There are people who consistently make others feel good about themselves. When you are in the presence of someone who has a "good eye" and a "good heart," you see yourself in a more positive light. Such a person treats you with respect and makes it easier for you to increase your own level of self-respect. Such a person says and does things that bring out the best in you.

Remember how you felt about yourself after encounters with such people. Let those experiences build your self-image. Don't just look at it as, "I felt really good about myself when I spoke to this person." Rather, view these encounters as life-enhancing experiences that permanently build your self-image. Even many years later, you can allow these encounters to raise your view of yourself.

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Now is The Time

There is an old saying: "The past is no more, the future is not yet, and the present is as fleeting as the blink of an eye."

The present is the only reality and it is exceedingly short. Being aware of this can make it easier for you to live a virtuous life. You need do the right thing for only a short time -- that is, the present moments, which fly by exceedingly fast.

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Self-Mastery Builds Your Self-Image

Every time you have self-mastery in any way, you build up your self-image. "I am a person who is gaining more and more control over my emotions and actions all the time." Every time you have the emotional self-control to do something that you find difficult to do, you build up your self-image. Every time you refrain from saying or doing something, you build up your self-image.

Some people keep self-mastery journals. Writing down their successes and victories in exhibiting self-control improves their ability to exhibit a greater amount of self-mastery.

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Boasting Versus Sharing

It's important to differentiate between boasting and sharing your successes with people who sincerely wish you well and enjoy your success. Children especially have a strong need to show their parents that they have been successful. This is a way they build their self-image. Parents can encourage them to be grateful to Hashem for their success, building gratitude and balanced modesty.

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A Modest and Healthy Self-Image

A modest person with a healthy self-image will be a happier person. He doesn't have demanding expectations of life. Therefore he has greater satisfaction and appreciation for what he does have and less distress from disappointments.

A person with a modest and healthy self-image will get along more harmoniously with others. He will be much more at ease and he will bring out the best in others. He will be respected and liked. He won't arouse needless envy and antagonism. He will speak and act pleasantly. In general, he will be more balanced in all of his ways.

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Stories of Growing from Challenges

Whenever you come across a story about someone who has grown from a challenge, think, "Since I have read or heard this story of how someone grew from this challenge, I now have this pattern stored in my brain. My brain is always with me. So I can add to my self-image: 'I am a person who has read and heard about patterns of growing from challenges.' This will strengthen my own resolve to grow from challenges. Instead of worrying about potential challenges that I might face, I will keep thinking about how I will grow from any challenge that might come my way."

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Help People Identify With Positive Patterns

Every person has positive traits, qualities, and patterns, and every person has faults, deficiencies, and negative patterns. When someone identifies with his imperfections, he will feel worse about himself. Someone who focuses mainly on his shortcomings will have a lower self-image, which prevents him from being at his best. Help people identify with their positive patterns. When someone's main focus is on what he has done right already, he will continue to keep developing his good points.

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Respect For Other People

Your respect for other people comes from your deep awareness that they are created in the Almighty's image. Therefore you never treat anyone else condescendingly. You never belittle anyone. You realize that everyone has something you can learn from. You realize that you need to respect everyone you encounter. This way of interacting with others is an expression of humility.

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Write Notes of Praise and Admiration

Written positive feedback notes are more effective than verbal statements. When someone speaks or acts in especially positive ways, write short notes to that person expressing your admiration for what he said or did. This is especially valuable for parents, teachers, spouses, and mentors to do.

People have saved self-image building notes for ten, twenty, and thirty years. Imagine how you would feel if you knew that an image-building note you sent would be a cherished memento even thirty years later. At the very least you will bring a smile to someone's face.

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Let Positive Stories Add To Your Self-Image

People love stories. The stories you read and hear about great people are stored in your brain. You become a bit greater yourself with each positive story. Knowing how great people spoke and behaved makes it more likely that you will speak and act with similar patterns. Of course, we won't immediately act exactly like every great person we read and hear about, but we will improve.

The elevating and inspiring stories you read and hear about are part of the process of building your self-image: "I am a person who has added another story about positive thoughts, words, and actions into my brain and mind."

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Progress

Every single human being you ever met, heard about, or read about started his life as an infant. Regardless of how much knowledge anyone has gained, he didn't have it when he was one day old. He needed to learn it piece by piece. Regardless of how much anyone has ever accomplished, he wasn't born with the skills and talents to accomplish anything.

How much progress have you already made from the time you were one day old?

Your progress has made you into what you are now. The progress that you will make from now on will create the rest of your life. May you continue to make more and more progress each day of your life.

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Not Speaking Against Others

Some people try to build themselves up by speaking against others. They believe that talking about the faults and limitations of others makes themselves seem better and more elevated than those people.

It is a total illusion to think that you are actually building yourself up when you put others down. Speaking against other people is a violation of the Torah commandment to refrain from speaking lashon hara (negative speech). Someone who speaks against others without a practical and constructive purpose is lowering himself by doing so.

Every time you control what you say and don't speak against others, you become a higher and more elevated person.

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Do Things Daily That Are Difficult For You To Do

Each and every day, say or do at least one thing that you find difficult to say or do.

Every time you say something that is difficult for you to say, you build up your self-image: "I am a person who can speak up and say things even thought I find them difficult to say."

Every time you do something difficult, you build up your self-image: "I am a person who can do things even though they are difficult for me to do."

This is a highly empowering self-image booster. This way you will keep saying and doing things that you need to say and do, and you won't be stopped by the thoughts of, "I find it difficult to say or do, so I won't say or do it."

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Resilience: The Art of Bouncing Back

Build up your ability to be resilient, your ability to bounce back after a fall. As it states in Mishlei (24:25), "A righteous person will fall seven times and rise up." Everyone can fall; the main thing is to get up again.

When you think in terms of building your self-image, you will focus on the fact that you rose up after you fell. Of course, it would be best never to fall at all. But since falling is part of life, build your self-image by keeping your focus on what you are doing right. And when you fall, keep your focus on what you need to do to bounce back.

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Help Others With Their Worries

A person who is worried is depressed. Therefore, when speaking to that person, use positive words of consolation in order to put his heart in a state of joy.

It is a great act of kindness to help someone alleviate his or her feelings of worry. Look for opportunities to help someone overcome worrying.

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Easier Than You Imagined

You probably have things you currently feel are too difficult for you to learn or to do, just because of the way that you are looking at them. If you find a totally new way to look at what you are going to try to learn, you will find that it's much easier for you to learn than you had ever imagined. The new way of looking at things doesn't go against your limiting self-image.

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Life Isn't a Competitive Game

Each human being is unique and one of a kind. We each have a unique purpose in life. We each have our own unique ability to connect with our Creator. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses, virtues and faults. We are not meant to be an exact clone of anyone else. Therefore, life isn't a competitive game. We each are meant to serve the Almighty with our unique character, temperament, and personality based on our unique life situations and circumstances in the past and present.

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Staying Calm Under Pressure

I asked a person I once met how he became so skilled at staying calm under pressure. He said, "I pretend that everything that happens is on a large video screen. Every person I interact with is part of the scenery. I'm the only person that is alive and real; everyone and everything else is just what I see on the screen of my mind.

"My choices of thoughts, words, and actions are like a game I am playing on the screen. I always maintain self-respect and respect for others, but nothing anyone says or does will intimidate me.

"If someone raises his voice and yells at me, I imagine the clown on the screen acting like he has lost his temper. I don't have to worry as long as I'm not in physical danger.

"I keep asking myself, ‘What would be the wisest thing for me to think, say, and do now?' Because I keep calm, I am able to think more objectively."

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Get High on Appreciating Life

A person who has mastered the attribute of appreciating what he has, is constantly in a state of emotional high - just as someone who is inebriated during the height of a party!

Today is a wonderful day to increase appreciating all that you have. If you can do this naturally and spontaneously, great. If you find that you need to make an effort to do this, that's good, too. The important thing is to practice mastering this quality.

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Ask Advice Before Giving Up

If you are in a situation in which negative consequences appear to be inevitable, don't give up. Rather, consult others for advice. Even though it might seem there is no escape, someone else might think of an idea that will save you.

Today, think about situations when you were under the impression that negative consequences were inevitable, but the reality turned out better than you had imagined. Let this serve as a resource not to giveup prematurely in the future.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Thanks for posting these "tidbits", pk. I enjoy reading them. :smile: