Running Smoothly: Developing a Positive Self-Image

Personality vs. Personal Identity

To develop a positive self-image you must first understand the difference between your personality and personal identity. Personality is what makes you different from everyone else; it is the characteristics that make you unique. Personality is important when considering how to meet your needs, and plays a huge role in your mental and emotional health. Personal identity includes your interests, likes, dislikes, talents, values, beliefs, and goals. Your sense of self contributes to your personal identity.

Emotions

Emotions play a huge role in your mental and emotional health. In fact, your ability to make good decisions is based on how well you understand what your emotions mean. Specifically, your emotions enable you to quickly react to what is going on around you, and determine whether something meets your ultimate goals. Emotions are signals that tell your mind and body how to react, and cause different responses in both your physical and mental health.

For example, imagine you are working on a presentation with a partner. Initially, your partner seems excited to listen to your ideas and agrees with everything you want to do. As you meet more often, you notice that he only agrees with you, and never offers anything to the project. Your gut instinct tells you that your partner may be taking advantage of the situation, and is not excited by your ideas, but rather excited that you are doing all of the work. Your anxious response allows you to better evaluate the situation, and move forward in a different direction.

As is the case with the example above, emotions can help you evaluate anything that seems alarming to you. However, sometimes they prove to be false alarms. Therefore, it is important to analyze your responses to situations, and determine if your emotions properly steered your decisions. In this interactivity, you will explore several types of emotions. Click the player button to begin.

View a printable version of the interactivity.

 

Positive Self-Esteem and Self-Image

Your feelings of confidence and self-esteem are directly related to your mental and emotional health. If you have positive self-esteem, you are better able to accept challenges and be resilient when faced with failure. It allows you to have balance in everyday life, flexibility in certain situations, and healthy relationships with others.

Self-image is how you see yourself. It is what you see when you look in the mirror. Self-esteem and self-image are related because one affects the other. When you have a positive self-image, you will have increased self-esteem, and you will experience a higher level of mental and emotional health. In addition, having a positive self-image enables you to practice self-control when faced with peer pressure.

Developing a Positive Self-Image Review

Now that you have studied how to develop a positive self-image, review your knowledge in this non-graded activity. Click the player button to get started.