Semester: I

UNDERSTANDING SELF FOR EFFECTIVENESS

Credit Units: 1

Course Objectives:
 Understanding self & process of self exploration
 Learning strategies for development of a healthy self esteem
 Importance of attitudes and its effective on personality
 Building Emotional Competency value

Module I: Self: Core Competency

Descriptors/Topics
 Understanding of Self
 Components of Self – Self identity
 Self concept
 Self confidence
 Self image
 BIG5 Factors

Self

In common discourse, the term self often refers to a warm sense or a warm feeling that
something is "about me" or "about us." Reflecting on oneself is both a common activity and a
mental feat. It requires that there is an "I" that can consider an object that is "me." The term self
includes both the actor who thinks ("I am thinking") and the object of thinking ("about me").
Moreover, the actor both is able to think and is aware of doing so. As the philosopher John
Locke famously asserted, "I think, therefore I am." Awareness of having thoughts matters.
Another way to denote these three aspects (thinking, being aware of thinking, and taking the self
as an object for thinking) is to use the term reflexive capacity (Kihlstrom, Beer, & Klein, 2003;
Lewis, 1 990). Rather than attempt to distinguish between the mental content (me) and the
aspects of the mental capacity of thinking (I), modern use of the term self includes all these
elements (Baumeister, 1 998; Callero, 2003; Kihlstrom et al., 2003; Markus & Wurf, 1 987;
Owens et al., 2010).

Self is perhaps the broadest term. It has been used in many different ways, referring to many
parts of a whole set of experiences and thoughts. Sometimes it is used to refer to the whole set.

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Some related terms are ego, identity, self-concept, self-schema. Because the term self has many
meanings, different theorists have used it in different ways, and this varying usage generates
some confusion. It’s not always safe to assume that what one writer means by “self” is the same
as what another writer means by it.

COMPONENTS OF SELF-SELF IDENTITY

Self Identity

Refers to the global understanding a person has of themselves. Self Identity is composed of
relatively permanent self-assessments, such as personality attributes, knowledge of one's
skills and abilities, one's occupation and hobbies, and awareness of one's physical attributes.
For example, the statement, "I am lazy" is a self-assessment that contributes to the self-
concept. In contrast, the statement "I am tired" would not normally be considered part of
someone's self-concept, since being tired is a temporary state.

The Self Identity is not restricted to the present. It includes past selves and future selves.
Future selves or "possible selves" represent individuals' ideas of what they might become,
what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming. They correspond to
hopes, fears, standards, goals, and threats. Possible selves may function as incentives for
future behavior and they also provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current
view of self.
Boundary

Your boundary is a much the same as the boundary lines of a property. It is the clear and
defined boarder that surrounds the house with all its treasures (your Self Identity can be
thought of as your house or property) . The boundary lines let others know how far the
ownership of the property goes. In a personal development sense the boundaries are more
difficult to see and be aware of. But in a nutshell your boundary is your preferences or

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rules you have about things like

1) What you will accept in behavior from and towards yourself

2) Your ability to say either YES and NO to events or statements.

For example.. You know someone who you enjoy being around socially but they
ocasionally do things that are a matter of a small illegal crime - a result others are hurt in a
small financial or emotional way. While your together they want you to help them out with
something that you know is illegal. Do you help them because you like them even if you
would not do this yourself? Are you able to be comfortable saying No to the request
World View

How it fit’s into the Character Building Model

Now, that we have a basic definition of the various components of your Character (Self
Identity, Boundaries/World View & Self Esteem); lets see how our model fits together.
Your Self Identity, (the core of who you are) is surrounded by your Boundary which filters
both outward and inward experience you have to the world. The resulting emotional
experience you have from a situation, person or event is then determined by how well you
managed the experience in relation to your world view.

Where Problems Arise

A gap can be defined as a hole in your boundary. It is a lack of a preference or rule you
have about yourself or your behavior or your place in the world. At a basic level, it is your
inability to say or hear the word ‘No’. For example, you might not be able to say no to a
family members request’s or allow them to get away with something unacceptable for you,
if done by someone outside of the family

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Controlling the Controllable

When you have a clearly define world view, one where your rules are known to you (and
remember not very many people have any idea of what their world view is) you can create
preferences or boundaries around yourself. Then as life experiences come around you
make decisions based on your boundaries, it increases your sense of self esteem and makes
a stronger character of who you are in your self identity. You are able to clearly define the
limits of the extent of your control.

For Example, If you’re in a relationship and you have an idea in your world view that trust
is important, but you are not consciously aware of how you know when you are able to trust
someone. There will be a gap in your boundary under the preference of trust. In this case
you may unwittingly play games with your partner, setting up little tests and attempting to
get feelings of being able to ‘trust them’ by seeing how well they do at your tests.

Recap
Your sense of who you are, is your Self Identity, it is your assessment of your personality
and attributes. Your Identity is who and what you present to the world through the
behavior you have according to your boundaries, in relation to your world view (rules you
have about leading a good and productive life). And how well you measure up to that
world view is reflected on your sense of self esteem. Each component works together, to
define your character.

The Benefits of Creating Character

When you have a solid, clear and concise awareness of your world view, you can
consciously make solid and clear preferences of what you say yes and no to (your
boundaries). You know who you are, and it becomes easier to act and behave in a way that
is in line with how you want to be (Integrity). With integrity you are controlling how you
act and feel about your actions.

How to Build your Self Identity

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 “Life is not about finding yourself … Life is about creating yourself”

Wisdom
This process is similar to wisdom. As you become more aware of your self identity, more
aware of your world view and your rules, your ability to say (and hear) the word “No” you
are gaining wisdom. You are building your character, that creates control on what and
when you do things and what is acceptable to you. This comes from life experience, it is
how our lives provide an opportunity for us to define who we are, and then live by that
definition.

Having Doors

Creating preferences and rules with openings in them (much like a door) with the door
handle on the inside under your control gives you flexibility. There will be times when
circumstances and situations will require flexibility and choice on your part, and times
when you can bend your rules, without it effecting your Self Identity or Self Esteem.

SELF CONCEPT

The self concept is how we think about and evaluate ourselves. To be aware of oneself is to have
a concept of oneself.

The term self-concept is a general term used to refer to how someone thinks about or perceives
themselves. It is an important term for both social psychology and humanism.

Lewis (1990) suggests that development of a concept of self has two aspects: -

(1) The Existential Self

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This is the most basic part of the self-scheme or self-concept; the sense of being separate and
distinct from others and the awareness of the constancy of the self” (Bee 1992).

The child realizes that they exist as a separate entity from others and that they continue to exist
over time and space. According to Lewis awareness of the existential self begins as young as two
to three months old and arises in part due to the relation the child has with the world. For
example, the child smiles and someone smiles back, or the child touches a mobile and sees it
move.

(2) The Categorical Self

Having realized that he or she exists as a separate experiencing being, the child next becomes
aware that he or she is also an object in the world. Just as other objects including people have
properties that can be experienced (big, small, red, smooth and so on) so the child is becoming
aware of him or her self as an object which can be experienced and which has properties. The
self too can be put into categories such as age, gender, size or skill. Two of the first categories to
be applied are age (“I am 3”) and gender (“I am a girl”).

In early childhood. the categories children apply to themselves are very concrete (e.g. hair color,
height and favorite things). Later, self-description also begins to include reference to internal
psychological traits, comparative evaluations and to how others see them.

Carl Rogers (1959) Believes that the self concept has three different components:

 The view you have of yourself (Self image)

 How much value you place on yourself (Self esteem or self-worth)
 What you wish you were really like (Ideal self)

SELF CONFIDENCE

Building Self-Confidence
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Preparing yourself for success!

From the quietly confident doctor whose advice we rely on, to the charismatic confidence of an
inspiring speaker, self-confident people have qualities that everyone admires.

Self-confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, yet so many people
struggle to find it. Sadly, this can be a vicious circle: People who lack self-confidence can find it
difficult to become successful.

After all, most people are reluctant to back a project that's being pitched by someone who was
nervous, fumbling and overly apologetic.

On the other hand, you might be persuaded by someone who speaks clearly, who holds his or her
head high, who answers questions assuredly, and who readily admits when he or she does not
know something.

Self-confident people inspire confidence in others: their audience, their peers, their bosses, their
customers, and their friends. And gaining the confidence of others is one of the key ways in
which a self-confident person finds success.

The good news is that self-confidence really can be learned and built on. And, whether you’re
working on your own self-confidence or building the confidence of people around you, it’s well-
worth the effort!

So how confident do you seem to others?

Your level of self-confidence can show in many ways: your behavior, your body language, how
you speak, what you say, and so on. Look at the following comparisons of common confident
behavior with behavior associated with low self-confidence. Which thoughts or actions do you
recognize in yourself and people around you?

Self-Confident Low Self-Confidence

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 Doing what you believe to be Governing your behavior based on
right, even if others mock or what other people think.
criticize you for it.

Being willing to take risks and go Staying in your comfort zone,

the extra mile to achieve better fearing failure and so avoid taking
things. risks.

Admitting your mistakes, and Working hard to cover up

learning from them. mistakes and hoping that you can
fix the problem before anyone
notices.

Waiting for others to congratulate Extolling your own virtues as

you on your accomplishments. often as possible to as many
people as possible.

Accepting compliments Dismissing compliments

graciously. “Thanks, I really offhandedly. “Oh that prospectus
worked hard on that prospectus. was nothing really, anyone could
I’m pleased you recognize my have done it.”
efforts.”

As you can see from these examples, low self-confidence can be self-destructive, and it often
manifests itself as negativity. Self-confident people are generally more positive – they believe in
themselves and their abilities, and they also believe in living life to the full.

What is Self-Confidence?

Two main things contribute to self-confidence: self-efficacy and self-esteem.

We gain a sense of self-efficacy when we see ourselves (and others similar to ourselves)
mastering skills and achieving goals that matter in those skill areas. This is the confidence that, if

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we learn and work hard in a particular area, we'll succeed; and it's this type of confidence that
leads people to accept difficult challenges, and persist in the face of setbacks.

This overlaps with the idea of self-esteem, which is a more general sense that we can cope with
what's going on in our lives, and that we have a right to be happy. Partly, this comes from a
feeling that the people around us approve of us, which we may or may not be able to control.
However, it also comes from the sense that we are behaving virtuously, that we're competent at
what we do, and that we can compete successfully when we put our minds to it.

Some people believe that self-confidence can be built with affirmations and positive thinking. At
Mind Tools, we believe that there's some truth in this, but that it's just as important to build self-
confidence by setting and achieving goals – thereby building competence. Without this
underlying competence, you don't have self-confidence: you have shallow over-confidence, with
all of the issues, upset and failure that this brings.

Building Self-Confidence

So how do you build this sense of balanced self-confidence, founded on a firm appreciation
of reality?

The bad news is that there’s no quick fix, or 5-minute solution.

The good news is that building self-confidence is readily achievable, just as long as you have the
focus and determination to carry things through. And what’s even better is that the things you’ll
do to build self-confidence will also build success – after all, your confidence will come from
real, solid achievement. No-one can take this away from you!

So here are our three steps to self-confidence, for which we’ll use the metaphor of a journey:
preparing for your journey; setting out; and accelerating towards success.

Step 1: Preparing for Your Journey

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The first step involves getting yourself ready for your journey to self-confidence. You need to
take stock of where you are, think about where you want to go, get yourself in the right mindset
for your journey, and commit yourself to starting it and staying with it.

In preparing for your journey, do these five things:

Look at what you've already achieved:

Think about your life so far, and list the ten best things you've achieved in an "Achievement
Log." Perhaps you came top in an important test or exam, played a key role in an important team,
produced the best sales figures in a period, did something that made a key difference in someone
else’s life, or delivered a project that meant a lot for your business.

Put these into a smartly formatted document, which you can look at often. And then spend a few
minutes each week enjoying the success you’ve already had!

Think about your strengths:

Next, use a technique like SWOT Analysis (explore personal SWOT Analysis here) to take a
look at who and where you are. Looking at your Achievement Log, and reflecting on your recent
life, think about what your friends would consider to be your strengths and weaknesses. From
these, think about the opportunities and threats you face.

Make sure that you enjoy a few minutes reflecting on your strengths!

Think about what's important to you, and where you want to go:

Next, think about the things that are really important to you, and what you want to achieve with
your life.

Setting and achieving goals is a key part of this, and real self-confidence comes from this. Goal
setting is the process you use to set yourself targets, and measure your successful hitting of those
targets. See our article on goal setting to find out how to use this important technique, or use our
Life Plan Workbook to think through your own goals in detail (see "Tip" below).

Inform your goal setting with your SWOT Analysis. Set goals that exploit your strengths,
minimize your weaknesses, realize your opportunities, and control the threats you face.

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And having set the major goals in your life, identify the first step in each. A tip: Make sure it’s a
very small step, perhaps taking no more than an hour to complete!

Start managing your mind:

At this stage, you need to start managing your mind. Learn to pick up and defeat the negative
self-talk which can destroy your confidence. See our article on rational positive thinking to find
out how to do this.

Further useful reading includes our article on imagery – this teaches you how to use and create
strong mental images of what you’ll feel and experience as you achieve your major goals –
there’s something about doing this that makes even major goals seem achievable!

And then commit yourself to success!

The final part of preparing for the journey is to make a clear and unequivocal promise to yourself
that you are absolutely committed to your journey, and that you will do all in your power to
achieve it.

If as you’re doing it, you find doubts starting to surface, write them down and challenge them
calmly and rationally. If they dissolve under scrutiny, that’s great. However if they are based on
genuine risks, make sure you set additional goals to manage these appropriately. For help with
evaluating and managing the risks you face, read our Risk Analysis and Management article.

Either way, make that promise!

Tip: Balanced Self-Confidence

Self-confidence is about balance. At one extreme, we have people with low self-confidence. At
the other end, we have people who may be over-confident.

If you are under-confident, you’ll avoid taking risks and stretching yourself; and you might not
try at all. And if you’re over-confident, you may take on too much risk, stretch yourself beyond
your capabilities, and crash badly. You may also find that you’re so optimistic that you don’t try
hard enough to truly succeed.

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Getting this right is a matter of having the right amount of confidence, founded in reality and on
your true ability. With the right amount of self-confidence, you will take informed risks, stretch
yourself (but not beyond your abilities) and try hard.

So How Self Confident Are You? Take our short quiz to find out how self-confident you are
already, and start looking at specific strategies to improve your confidence level.

Step 2: Setting Out

This is where you start, ever so slowly, moving towards your goal. By doing the right things, and
starting with small, easy wins, you’ll put yourself on the path to success – and start building the
self-confidence that comes with this.

Build the knowledge you need to succeed:

Looking at your goals, identify the skills you’ll need to achieve them. And then look at how you
can acquire these skills confidently and well. Don’t just accept a sketchy, just-good-enough
solution – look for a solution, a program or a course that fully equips you to achieve what you
want to achieve and, ideally, gives you a certificate or qualification you can be proud of.

Focus on the basics:

When you’re starting, don’t try to do anything clever or elaborate. And don’t reach for perfection
– just enjoy doing simple things successfully and well.

Set small goals, and achieve them:

Starting with the very small goals you identified in step 1, get in the habit of setting them,
achieving them, and celebrating that achievement. Don’t make goals particularly challenging at
this stage, just get into the habit of achieving them and celebrating them. And, little by little, start
piling up the successes!

Keep managing your mind:

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Stay on top of that positive thinking, keep celebrating and enjoying success, and keep those
mental images strong. You can also use a technique like Treasure Mapping to make your
visualizations even stronger!

And on the other side, learn to handle failure. Accept that mistakes happen when you’re trying
something new. In fact, if you get into the habit of treating mistakes as learning experiences, you
can (almost) start to see them in a positive light. After all, there’s a lot to be said for the saying
“if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger!”

Step 3: Accelerating Towards Success

By this stage, you’ll feel your self-confidence building. You’ll have completed some of the
courses you started in step 2, and you’ll have plenty of success to celebrate!

This is the time to start stretching yourself. Make the goals a bit bigger, and the challenges a bit
tougher. Increase the size of your commitment. And extend the skills you’ve proven into new,
but closely related arenas.

Tip 1:
Keep yourself grounded – this is where people tend to get over-confident and over-stretch
themselves. And make sure you don’t start enjoying cleverness for its own sake…

Tip 2:
If you haven't already looked at it, use our How Self Confident Are You? quiz to find out how
self-confident you are, and to identify specific strategies for building self-confidence.

Self

This does not necessarily have to reflect reality. Indeed a person with anorexia who is thin may
have a self image in which the person believes they are fat. A person's self image is affected by
many factors, such as parental influences, friends, the media etc.

Kuhn (1960) investigated the self-image by using The Twenty Statements Test.

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He asked people to answer the question 'Who am I?' in 20 different ways. He found that the
responses could be divided into two major groups. These were social roles (external or objective
aspects of oneself such as son, teacher, friend) and personality traits (internal or affective aspects
of oneself such as gregarious, impatient, humorous).

The list of answers to the question “Who Am I?” probably include examples of each of the
following four types of responses:

1) Physical Description: I’m tall, have blue eyes...etc.

2) Social Roles: We are all social beings whose behavior is shaped to some extent by the roles
we play. Such roles as student, housewife, or member of the football team not only help others to
recognize us but also help us to know what is expected of us in various situations.

3) Personal Traits: These are a third dimension of our self-descriptions. “I’m impulsive...I’m
generous...I tend to worry a lot”...etc.

4) Existential Statements (abstract ones): These can range from "I’m a child of the universe" to
"I’m a human being" to "I’m a spiritual being"...etc.

Typically young people describe themselves more in terms of such personal traits, whereas older
people feel defined to a greater extent by their social roles.

Ideal Self

(what you'd like to be)

If there is a mismatch between how you see yourself (e.g. your self image) and what you’d like
to be (e.g. your ideal self ) then this is likely to affect how much you value yourself. Therefore,
there is an intimate relationship between self-image, ego-ideal and self-esteem. Humanistic
psychologists study this using the Q-Sort Method.

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A person’s ideal self may not be consistent with what actually happens in life and experiences of
the person. Hence, a difference may exist between a person’s ideal self and actual experience.
This is called incongruence.

Where a person’s ideal self and actual experience are consistent or very similar, a state of
congruence exists. Rarely, if ever does a total state of congruence exist; all people experience a
certain amount of incongruence. The development of congruence is dependent on unconditional
positive regard. Roger’s believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they must be in
a state of congruence.

Michael Argyle (2008) says there are four major factors which influence its development:

 The ways in which others (particularly significant others) react to us.

 How we think we compare to others
 Our social roles
 The extent to which we identify with other people

References

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Argyle, M. (2008). Social Encounters: Contributions to Social Interaction. Aldine Transaction

Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: Freeman.

Kuhn, M. H. (1960). Self-Attitudes by Age, Sex and Professional Training. Sociological

Quarterly, 1, 39-56.

Lewis, M. (1990). Self-knowledge and social development in early life. In L. A. Pervin (Ed.),
Handbook of personality (pp. 277-300). New York: Guilford.

Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or
fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 213–225

Morse, S. J. & Gergen, K. J. (1970). Social comparison, self-consistency and the concept of self.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 148-156.

Rogers, C. (1959). A Theory of Therapy, Personality and Interpersonal Relationships as

Developed in the Client-centered Framework. In (ed.) S. Koch, Psychology: A Study of a
Science. Vol. 3: Formulations of the Person and the Social Context. New York: McGraw Hill.

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