A truth of life is that most people…not all, but most,…personally believe that they are inferior when compared to other people,…particularly when compared to other people of great accomplishment or who have achieved something of significance. It is their personal and individual unhealthy, low self image that is always placing them in an inferior position compared to others.

An individual’s personal income is a direct function of their self image….their own self portrait. The lower, more negative, and more unhealthy the individual’s self image, the lower will be his personal income. The opposite is also true. Those people possessing a high, positive, and healthy self image will always earn more personal income. The reason is quite simple,…the higher your self image the greater will be your standard of living and the related lifestyle that you require. If a person does not require much of a lifestyle to enjoy the manner and way they live, they will not put forth great effort and activity needed to produce large incomes to provide for their individual needs and style of life.

Permit me to further explain what I mean. Picture in your mind’s eye a set of graphical axes…horizontal and vertical. Using a person’s self image to be measured on the horizontal axes with a negative, unhealthy, low self image to the left of center and a positive, healthy, high self image to the right of center. Let us now put individual earned income on the vertical axes with the higher income levels to the top upper half of the vertical axes, and the lower earned income levels toward the bottom half of the vertical axes below the origin. The point at which the two axes intersect is known as the origin. A parabolic plane curve may now be drawn on the graph from left to right. The curve will start very close to and underneath the horizontal axes near zero income levels at the far left or negative low self image end of the horizontal axes. As the curve is drawn from left to right, it will gradually rise upwards as it nears the vertical axes., and cross the vertical axes at zero at the point of origin. As the curve progresses to the right it will begin to rapidly rise vertically up and away from the horizontal axes. As you near the far right high positive self image levels, the curve will actually rise at almost a 90 degree vertical rate. This drawn out curve is generally known as a parabola and, just as a check point, it can be likened to a curve that would best represent exponential growth.

So now let us think through what I have just told you. If it is truly your personal desire to achieve high levels of earned income,…if it is truly your desire to become financially independent,…if it is truly your personal desire to accumulate great wealth,…then make absolute certain that you first begin your journey to success by doing those things that help produce and develop a growing, positive, healthy, and high self image…or self-portrait!…How you actually see yourself in your own mind’s eye!

It will normally take a person at least the same amount of time to repaint his own self portrait as it did to initially paint it at the beginning of his or her life. Study after study has proven that it takes the average individual approximately five years to establish his own self image…self portrait…how he sees himself and feels about himself as he lives his life.

Your self image was originally painted in the first five years of your life. It was painted by artists who were the authority figures in your life; who were primarily responsible for helping you develop and employ your own value system and basis for your deepest thoughts and needs. These authority figures (painters) were first of all your parents, law enforcement authorities, school teachers, and any other close friends of your’s or your family who played an active role in your overall education, development, nurturing, and growing up.

Now to repaint your new self portrait, you, as an adult, need to use new and better authority figures to assist you in repainting your new self image.
Always leave room for God Almighty to intervene and to be used to help you reestablish a new self portrait. You need to use biblical characters and authority figures. Use God and His Laws as is recorded in The Holy Bible. Use personal mentors, counselors, coaches, and especially your personal church pastor from whom you draw guidance in whatever you are doing to produce income and live your life. Use those godly men and women with whom you come into contact on a regular basis. With all of this high caliber type assistance, you will surely be able to paint a new, grand, powerful, and highly positive personal self image!

Now please remember, your self image needs to be worked on daily. You should always be in the process of touching it up,…of freshening it,…of keeping it clean and presentable at all times. Remember, self image of the highest quality will form the foundation on which you will build your income earnings.

The person you will become five years from today depends upon the books you read and the people with whom you associate. These two things make up the majority of your mental environment. One thing we know for certain is that a human being will become a product of his own mental environment. We also know that a person will only go and do in their life those things on which they are mentally focused and that they think about most often. The Law of Harmonious Attraction as it is known attracts to one the exact material equivalent of that which one thinks about and mentally dwells upon most often.

So the key to developing and new highly positive mental attitude and related self image has everything to do with the people with whom you associate and the activities that they perform including how they conduct themselves and the books they read and discuss.

Author James Allen once said,…“you attract to you in life that which you are, not that which you want.” Such a statement is the absolute truth. Therefore it behooves you to insure that you are hanging around and regularly associating with the right, positive, and most upward mobile people you can possibly find…i.e. with those people who possess and portray the greatest degree of honesty, productivity, and integrity.

Here is another truth of life. You cannot succeed by being or by trying to be someone else other than who you really are. We are who we are, and we are not suddenly going to become some other person.

The other side of the coin is that we are not going to succeed by just being ourselves. We need to grow,…to become more than we are today.

The real secret, if you will, to this apparent dilemma is that we simply choose to,…and therefore we become,…the very best type person of who we really are! In order to accomplish this assignment of becoming the best of who we are,…we have to focus our total attention on our own personal and unique strengths, and areas of strength. In other words we have to use and further develop those personal attributes that we already possess and in which we have a reasonable use and application….to achieve our best results. These areas of strength, of course, will be different for everybody.

What you consider to be your greatest strength might well be my biggest area of weakness. It really makes no difference what your or my biggest strength is,…what is important is that we both utilize our greatest strengths together as a team so that we can achieve that which we are trying to accomplish! Working with a team (more than one) will always produce a greater reward than will working alone.

Remember, all successful leaders increase their personal success by building and becoming more than they are by using their strengths, not their weaknesses. Think about it for a moment. A professional football linebacker does not get better and improve his football skills by working on and practicing his synchronized swimming skills….does he?

You see, friends, your personal self image is built and worked on everyday. So also is your achieving personal success and greater wealth. Daily effort is required. No sabbaticals, vacations, holidays, or breaks are allowable. The Persistence Principle is always at work when one is in the process of achieving success.

So here is how it all fits together,…if you want to achieve much greater success in the shortest possible time frame, figure out what you are really good at doing. Then make sure you find roles where you can play to your personal strengths. Avoid assignments that only focus on improving your weaknesses. The best way to deal with weaknesses is not to focus on them, but rather, to work around them.

Build A Team

Leadership is a team sport, so make sure you have a team that compliments your own talents, strengths, purpose, and attitude. Then for all of those areas that are not areas of strength for you, i.e. for all of your own weaknesses,….bring in other outside people to your team who know how to handle, correct, build, and grow those same areas. Doing so will give you plenty of creative time to spend on those areas you consider to be your strengths. This is how you can become the very best you,…that you know that you are capable of becoming. This is how you put it all together and go forward to the achievement of your own personal success.

Leaders Gotta Lead……………..