Steve Andreas > Articles > Transforming an Uncertain/Ambiguous Quality

Introduction

Up to this point I have asked you to explore a quality that you know is true of yourself, and that you like. That specifies that it is a quality that is solid, and is in alignment with your values, so you already have a fairly extensive and effective database of examples, with relatively few counterexamples. This is the simplest situation for learning about the various process and content aspects of self-concept. Of course, what feels “solid” to one person might feel “very shaky” to another, so we have still encountered quite a range; some of you had considerably more counterexamples than others. Some of your “solid” qualities were actually somewhat ambiguous because of the large number of counterexamples, or because of the way that you represented your counterexamples.

Now I want you to choose a different aspect of yourself, one that you feel ambiguous or uncertain about. Again I want you to pick a quality about which your values are clear; you know how you would like to be. For instance, sometimes you think you're considerate, and sometimes you think of yourself as inconsiderate--or perhaps most of the time you are simply unsure about whether you are considerate or not, but you know that you would like to be considerate.

When an aspect of yourself is ambiguous, that indicates that there is a roughly equal number of positive examples and counterexamples, and because of this, you can't come to a firm conclusion. There could be a lot of each, or only a few of each. A more disturbing ambiguity will usually have many examples, or more intense examples on both sides. It is also possible that you have only a few counterexamples, but the way you represent them creates ambiguity because of the resulting intensity.

Since you are unsure about this quality in yourself, it is unlikely that you feel good about it, so it probably doesn't contribute much to your positive self-esteem. However, if you think that you should manifest this quality unambiguously, the fact that you don't could result in low self-esteem.

The last thing that we did with counterexamples was to group them, find the worst one, and then process that one in order to transform the group into positive examples, and then return them to your positive database. There are only two important differences between that situation and working with an ambiguous quality. One is that the ambiguous quality probably has a greater number of counterexamples, so it might take somewhat longer. However, if you know how to mow one lawn, you also know how to mow three lawns; it just takes longer. The other difference is that the positive side of your ambiguity may not already be in the form of a positive quality for you. Simply putting the database of that ambiguous quality into the form of the positive template will make it more convincing.

The first thing that I want you all to do is to take a few minutes to examine how you represent this ambiguous quality in yourself. Find out how your database for this ambiguous quality is organized.