What do we mean by Success? – Blog 6: Your Self-Image?

The way that we see ourselves and why we do the things we do can play a major part in a persons life. The way that we feel about ourselves can have a dramatic effect on how we go about living our day to day lives but can we use it as a qualifier for being successful or not? This is what we are going to be looking at it in today’s “What do we mean by Success?” blog!

Hello and Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Today’s blog is the sixth blog in the “What do we mean by Success?” series! Today’s blog is going to look at our Self-Image and if we can use it to determine whether we are successful or not in life. This blog will take a similar angle that the Public Image blog took last week but will look at it from a personal perspective, looking at how we see ourselves and the effect that that has on whether or not we class ourselves as successful or not.

Our Self-Image is something that we find changes from time to time as we go through our lives. The way that we think and feel about ourselves is forever evolving and developing as we learn more and more about how we work and operate. A good Self Image can be a real asset to have going through life but conversely, if we have a bad self image, it can be a real hindrance on us going forward.

The way that we think and fell about ourselves should be something that every decides by themselves but it is heavily impacted by the environments in which we are in. The effects that our surrounding environment can have on our Self-Image can be good or bad, depending on what the environment is and how we feel in aforementioned environment.

So the question that I am asking today is, can we quantify our successfulness simply by our Self-Image? If we have a really good Self-Image of ourselves and we all think that we are great in everything that we do, does that make us successful? Conversely, if we have a poor Self-Image, does this mean that we are not successful or in some way a failure?

The questions above can be quite interesting questions if you really think about them. As I say in every blog in this series there is no right or wrong answer to the above questions, it is all down to a matter of opinion. If you feel like it is the determiner of whether you are successful or not then I would be quite interested to hear why you think that?

The image that we hold about ourselves differs from person to person. Some people are naturally confident and are born extroverts whereas others are quieter people who are more likely to be introverts. It is usually assumed that the person that acts confident in front of everyone is really confident when that is not always the case. It is important to remember that people can always put up a front if they want to or feel the need too.

So can we judge whether someone is successful or not based off of whether they are/ act confident? It is quite a tricky question to answer as the answer would more than likely differ based off of the scenario and the context in which it was asked.

I think again that the answer comes down to what success means to you. Do you define success by one or two factors or do you think that there are a lot more factors that contribute to whether or not we are successful or not in life.

Our Self-Image can also be affected by an array of different variable too, further complicating whether or not you should be using it as a determiner of successfullness. Variables such as bullying have a very large effect on a persons Self-Image and can have very long lasting effects.

Let’s take a look at somebody who was bullied for a long period of time. No matter how mentally strong and resistant you are, it will eventually start to get to you and will dramatically lower the Image you have over yourself, you could say lowering your Self-Image. What is sadly the reality of bullying id the person that is getting bullied will start to feel like they are worthless and do jot deserve anything in life, you could say at this point that their Self-Image is incredibly low.

Can anybody justify classifying whether or not someone is successful or not based off of someone’s Self-Image when their Self-Image is as low as it comes due to bullying? Is there any possible way in which people can justify that? Could we say that if a person has been bullied then they are not and can never be successful?

I obviously say no to the above question with a very strong opinion of it, based off of what I have gone through in my life. I fully understand that the above questions are an exaggeration of the topic to a certain degree but they are still questions that we need to think about properly. I don’t write blogs to lecture anyone or tell them what they should or should not be doing but they are still important questions and lessons to consider.

Success, as I always come back to, is a small word which meaning means something different to each and every person. The way that we define success is completely unique and there is no right or wrong answer to it. Whether we decide to determiner whether we are successful or not based off of one factor or more, it is something that can lead to a lot of interesting and topical debates in life!

That’s all I want to talk about in today’s blog! Thank you all for reading! What do you think? Do you think our Self-Image can be a determiner of if we are successful or not? What does success mean to you? Are there any other topics that you would like me to look at on the page? Let me know either in the comments below or through our Facebook page!

Thank you all for reading and I hope you have a great day!