Have you ever noticed that when you are feeling good about yourself, other people become very nice? Isn't it funny how they change! The world is a reflection of ourselves. When we hate ourselves, we hate everybody else. When we love being who we are, the rest of the world is wonderful. Our self-image is the blueprint which determines exactly how we will behave, who we mix with, what we will try and what we will avoid; our every thought and every action stem from the way we see ourselves. The picture we have of ourselves is colored by our experience, our success and failures, the thoughts we have had about ourselves and other people's reactions to us. Believing this image to be fact, we proceed to live absolutely within the bounds of this picture. Therefore, our self-image determines- * how much we like the world and how much we like living in it * exactly how much we will accomplish in life We are what we believe we are. Hence, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of the bestseller "Psycho-Cybernetics" wrote, "The goal of any psycotherapy is to change an individual's image of himself." If you see yourself as being hopeless at mathematics, you will always have difficulty with figures. Perhaps sparked by some bad early experiences, you will have developed an attitude that says, "No matter what, I can't do match." Therefore, you don't try. Generally, you will fall further and further behind. If ever you do succeed. you say it's a fluke." When you don't succeed, you say, "There! That proves I am hopeless!" Chances are that you would also tell others that you can't add up. The more you tell your husband and you neighbor and your bank manager that you are a hopeless case, the more you believe it, the more deeply embedded that self-image becomes. The first step toward a vast improvement in our results is to change the way we think and talk about ourselves. A slow learner can begin to become a fast learner as soon as he changes his ideas about his own capabilities. If your self-image says that your co-ordination is exellent, you'll pick up new sports easily. If your self-image says you are a klutz, then you wil spend so much time worrying about dropping the ball and succeeding in doing exactly that. So long as you see yourself as someone who is always broke, you will remain broke. If you see yourself as a financial winner, you will be prosperous. Our self-image is like a thermostat and we continue to perform within the prescribed range. It may be that Fred expects to be happy about fifty percent of the time. Therefore, whenever things are going extra well for Fred, he'll think, "Wait! Things aren't meant to be this good! Something is bound to go wrong any minute." When is does, Fred takes a deep breath and says, "I knew it couldn't last." What Fred may not realize is that there are other people in the world who are unhappy all the time, and still others who are happy nearly all the time. We create our own quality of life, based on our own happiness self image. What this means is that we decide on our own self-image. We decide on our own worth and decide how much happiness to expect.