Steve Andreas > Articles > Transforming an Uncertain/Ambiguous Quality

Summary

You have learned how to transform an ambiguous quality of self-concept into a positive one, using two major processes. One is to place the positive examples into the form of the positive template, which may require changing the modality of the examples. The other is to transform counterexamples, so that they become examples of how you want to be, and then add them into the positive template. There are several steps in this process of transformation. You group counterexamples, transform the worst one of the group, check the rest of the group to be sure that they are also transformed, and then place them into the positive template.

The very same process can be used to transform a negatively-valued quality into a positive one. Although this is often the most difficult kind of self-concept intervention, it is also the one with the most profound benefits.

But before we do that, I want to explore a different and much simpler kind of negative self-concept, in which the representations of the summary and the database are negated. In what I have called the “not-self,” someone defines themselves by what they are not, rather than by what they are. This is very different from the negation of not liking how they think of themselves. The “not-self” can be either the easiest, or the most difficult to change, depending on how extensively someone has become embedded in it.