Write down all of the traits you don’t like about yourself or that hold you back in some way.
- Anything that makes you feel less than your best self.
- Ex. You have a tendency to set yourself up for failure in certain area of your life.
Create your anti-self character.
- Draw what he or she looks like
- We all have one or even several of them.
- These are the sides of us that get triggered by negative things like our fears and our anxieties.
- The point of the exercise is to get to know you anti-self characters and what makes them surface, so that you can keep them in check.
- You don’t want to end up with your anti-self running the show.
Ex. The side of me that has the over-the-top potty mouth vengeance is “Road-Rage Regina”
- Other than sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, what else brings Regina out of you?
- Any time you have been fed up, just taking it and taking it, but you can’t take one more second of whatever is frustrating you.
- Have you ever made that link before? That this aspect of your personality rears its head any time you are feeling fed up?
- Realize that you can probably do things to prevent it from happening.
- You can probably have a discussion with whoever is bothering you sooner than later instead of stuffing down the feeling until you blow up.
From that lists of traits that you don’t love about yourself, is there another anti-self character that you can create?
- Ex. She goes inward, gets self-conscious and just clams up.
- Whenever she is in a new territory, or feels inexperienced, she shuts down.
Now that you know what triggers her/him, do you feel like you can keep her/him at bay?
- By being able to identify, and give him or her a face and a name, suddenly you can gain power of it.
- You may feel like you have been holding on to the past in some weird way and letting it rule you?
- Now you are back in control and you don’t have to let him or her take control of you again.
Identifying your anti-self character is a profound exercise; it can change your life.
- Go to unimaginable new heights in all areas of your life by stop allowing your anti-self to stand in your way.
- It has much less of an influence when you know what to watch for.
- It’s much better than just labeling your issues.
Come to your own conclusions and create a character within yourself you can fully understand, so that you can keep him/her from interfering with your life.
- Since life is constantly evolving, it is unrealistic to think that you can act from within your best self 100% of the time.
- Instead the idea is simply to reduce the amount of time you spend in your anti-self.
Imagine the anti-self as trying to sabotage us, doing anything it can to keep us from being our self.
- It keeps you from enjoying the journey of life.
Re-source: Reflections
: often obscure or indirect criticisms
Identify your anti-self traits. Write down traits that you consider to be your character flaws.
- Do you harbor unforgiveness towards yourself or others?
- Are you quick to anchor?
- Do you often unknowingly make unhealthy choices?
- Are you impatient much of the time?
- Do you act like a know-it-all?
- Do you often give up before accomplishing a goal?
- Do you believe you are not good enough?
- Do you let people walk all over you?
- Do you often act selfishly?
Think about the last time you acted in a negative way when afterward you thought, “Man, I really wasn’t myself at that moment. I didn’t handle that well.”
- Perhaps it is not as obvious but is like a bad feeling that lingers.
- It could be that you don’t like the person you become when you speak to certain family members.
- Something happens, and you get triggered.
- Another example is when people in a relationship begin to create a false narrative due to their partner’s behavior.
- You can go deeper and deeper into the story that you have created and begin to believe it.
- that is the anti-self in action
Anything that you don’t like about yourself should go on this list. This list is actually much easier to create than your best self list.
- Eventually, you are going to flip the script and improve your life.
This is only for you to see, so set aside any feelings of guilt or shame.
- Burying our head in the sand and remaining in denial about certain aspects of ourselves actually gives those aspects power of us.
- Remember, things appear scarier when shrouded in darkness, so let’s shed some light.
It’s healthy to be able to laugh at ourselves, if at least, only a little.
- If we are so tightly wound up that we can poke fun at ourselves at times, then we are just taking ourselves too seriously.
- Also, the over-exaggeration of our traits helps us remember them.
- Thus when we think our behavior a certain way, we can stop and assess, “Am I acting out of my best self or my anti-self?
- And we have powerful imagery attached to both.
Common anti-self traits to consider
- Write down anything about yourself that you consider to be a negative attribute.
- Is your anti-self a particular gender? An animal? A mystical creature? A character inspired by a book or movie?
- Does your anti-self have a tag-line?
- Does your anti-self move, walk, dance in a specific way?
- Does your anti-self behave in a particular way when someone is being kind to you?
- Does your anti-self behave in a particular way when you are feeling threatened?
- What does your anti-self believe about you?
- What does your anti-self wear?
- Write a full description about you anti-self in your journal.
- Name 5 recent offenses or situations where you know your anti-self was taking charge of the situation. Write that down as well.
- Then sketch a drawing of your anti-self. Get as detailed as you can.
- Take a moment to assign a name to your anti-self and write it at the top of the image that you’ve created.
- Now ask yourself, how would you have handled those situations if you are acting as your best self? What would your best self tell you differently if he or she were in charge instead?
- Dig deep and really look at yourself.
- Do you see a pattern here?
craving and resource from “Best Self” – Be You, Only Better – by Mike Bayer