What if I told you there is a direct link between your self-perception and how much you earn. Whether you hit your goals. Your ability to form connections. And whether you’re likely to be promoted, invested in or have people buy from your business.
I often hear the idea that the only difference between someone who is successful and someone who is not is that the successful person didn’t give up. And there’s definitely an element of truth in that. But there’s also something bigger that has way more of an influence and that’s your identity. Your self perception, how you see yourself.
Self-perception determines success
And numerous studies have found again and again that there is a direct correlation between self-perception and success. One study identified the link between poor self-perception and achievement inequality. Another that it is a predictor of life satisfaction. And yet another that self-perception is a significant influence on whether we achieve our life goals. And yet, despite its huge influence, self-perception isn’t something we ever get taught to interrogate. Which means we often just think its fixed and don’t realise it can be changed.
What is self-perception?
Self-perception is what you believe the most to be true about yourself. What you’re capable of, who you are and the characteristics you have. Crucially, it’s not necessarily just what you consciously believe – and I think that’s often the element we miss out. Because you can tell yourself all the positive things consciously but if you’re harbouring beliefs about not being good enough or being an unlucky or incapable person unconsciously then that’s going to inform your self-perception too. In fact, it’s going to keep you stuck in what might be an unhelpful and out of date perception of yourself if you’re not aware that’s where it’s coming from.
And it’s crucial because whatever is in your self-perception is determining how you live your life every day. If you believe yourself to be an unmotivated person, for example, that’s how you will behave. It’s as simple and straightforward as that. And I think that’s what a lot of us don’t realise.
You can force discipline and consistency on yourself till the cows come home but if you don’t see yourself as someone disciplined and motivated it won’t last long. Your self-perception will shove in and push away anything that doesn’t align with it. Because who you see yourself to be is how you will think, feel and behave. And how you think, feel and behave determines your entire experience of life – as well as your outcomes.
Self-perception is why we fail at change
Maybe you’ve had the experience of continually trying to make some kind of change for yourself and never quite getting there. You always sabotage at some point and then feel shit about yourself. Maybe you start criticising yourself with words like lazy or inept. The problem here isn’t that you’re capable of change but that you’re starting in the wrong place. You’re starting by trying to change your actions instead of what’s actually driving them. What’s behind everything – your definition of you.
There are basically two ways to make change happen in your life – one is process based change, which is essentially changing what you do. So that’s your habits, your actions and the systems you have in place. The other type of change is called identity based change and that is changing who you believe you are i.e. changing your self-perception.
Identity based change
Identity based change is why you can do something like resilience coaching and that big shift you’ve been trying to make for years seems to happen overnight. It’s not some kind of magic or manifestation it’s just because you start to see yourself as the person who does those things – and then your thoughts and emotions line up behind that. And as emotions drive action, you start to behave like that kind of person too and the change becomes inevitable.
One of the reasons I really like this approach to change is because it focuses on who you are rather than traditional goal setting which is just about what you do. I don’t think traditional goal setting really works for everyone, especially anyone even slightly neurdivergent. In my experience, changing your self-perception gets better outcomes without the pain and shame that can come with trying to manage the process of goals.
While conventional change focuses on results, identity-based change focuses on the person you want to become.
One of the reasons this works so well is because it’s so much easier to maintain habits when they feel like an expression of who you are rather than a restriction on your life .
You can change what you believe about yourself at any time and that’s really powerful – and something we do in coaching a lot.
The unconscious part..
As I said, not all of self-perception – or identity whatever you want to call it – is conscious. So, the start of this process is getting a really clear picture of your current self-perception so you know what you’re working with. So, What are the stories that you tell yourself the most about who you are and what you’re capable of? That will show you what you’re conscious perceptions are. And then look at the language you use and how you talk about yourself because that’s going to point us to what you unconsciously believe.
For example, “I could never start my own business” might indicate an unconscious belief that you’re not a capable person.
The stand out point here is that whatever your current self-perception is YOU created it. Which means you are also the one who is capable of changing it.
And the simplest way to do it? Just pick some new stories to tell yourself about yourself.
You’ve made up your current one so why not make up a different one that actually serves you? For example “I’m a confident person.”
The next step is to start acting as if that new made up story is true.
Practising identity based change
If you want to put this into practice then challenge yourself to do at least two things every day from today that align with your new perception of yourself as confident (or whatever story you choose). So that you can prove to yourself – giving your brain that evidence – that it is in fact the truth.
What can get in the way
Something else that is worth thinking about when it comes to self-perception is what can warp this. I’m not sure that many people really see themselves clearly. Ego can warp it. Shame can warp it. And for so many people there is this constant focus outside of ourselves – you know, that obsession that is so common – what other people think of us. What they might be thinking. The judgments they might be making. Whether they think we’re good enough. All of this is, I think, driven by a fear or not fitting in. Of being rejected from the pack.
But the big issue with looking outside yourself constantly like this is that you have no internal guidance mechanism. Instead of your self-perception being driven by solid, consistent internal truths, it’s derived from what someone else MAY think of you based on an action that MIGHT indicate their true thoughts or feelings. Self-perception that is linked to other people is on shaky ground. It means your self-worth is entirely determined by what you think others think.
So, the big shift with self-perception is to make sure that the way you perceive yourself is drawn from your own internal data and that you’re not basing it on others views or judgments – or what you think those might be ESPECIALLY because most of the time these are just assumptions.
Self-perception can be changed at any time
The good news is that you can change your self-perception at any time using the steps I’ve already mentioned. What’s slightly harder is overcoming what is often in the way of that. A strong inner critic, a lot of shame, resistance to internal authority because of something like people pleasing. But removing those things is far from impossible. It’s what I do all the time with clients. And the rewards are huge. Confidence, audacity, self-belief, nervous system regulation, progress in life – in short, success.
What does success actually mean to you?
If you stop and think about what success means to you, what really matters? What does a successful life look like? Personally I don’t think it relates to status or stuff or income – I think it’s more about being able to wake up every morning and like the person you’ve become. We have so many sad examples in our society of people who have all the external signs of what we define as success but they didn’t have that basic self-love and so they didn’t truly feel successful. Or even good about themselves.
I think the really great thing about this is that anyone can change how successful they feel, and become, whenever they want to.
Regardless of your childhood, your resources, where you are right now you can change so much simply by changing how you see yourself.
Just to be clear, I’m not denying that resources and support and not being affected by inequality and having a stable childhood don’t create enormous advantages because they really do. But if you don’t have those things you’re not out of the game. You’ve got the tools to create a brand new self-perception for yourself and that’s going to ripple out into how you feel about yourself, which will determine how you behave – and that’s going to start changing your outcomes really fast.
Ready to begin? Let’s chat.
