Steve Andreas > Articles > Building a New Quality of Self-concept

Building a New Quality Outline

1. Content. Identify what quality you would like to have as a stable part of your identity. This pattern will work best with a capability or quality of intermediate chunk size: tenacity, loyalty, dependability, intelligence, etc.

If you want a more specific behavioral ability (such as the ability to drive a car or fly a plane) that requires learning specific behavioral skills, that�s not appropriate, since it�s not useful for you to believe that you can do something that you have not learned to do. However, if you already know how to drive a car and want to be able to do it with a particular quality, such as smoothness, or alert attentiveness to the surroundings, etc., that is appropriate.

2. Congruence check. Do you have any objection to having this quality? Check carefully in all modalities, and satisfy any objections carefully, usually by modifying your definition of the quality.
3. Testing. Be very sure that you don�t already have a database for having this quality. Proceed only when you are sure that you don�t already have a negative or ambivalent self-concept that would conflict with the positive quality that you would like to have.
4. Positive template. Elicit the structure that you use to represent a strong positive quality that you like. This will include both a summary representation that serves as quick reference, and also the database of specific examples that support the generalization. The database will most often be primarily in the visual system, but may include any (or all) of the other systems. If the database is primarily kinesthetic, be sure that it is composed of the tactile and proprioceptive kinesthetics, and not just the evaluative kinesthetic emotions and feelings. (This is what you have already been doing.)
5. Tune-up. Use all that you have learned to improve what you already do, to make your representation of this quality even better, by adding future examples, other perceptual positions, integrating or processing counterexamples, etc. (Again, you have already been doing this.)
6. Build the new quality. Using the positive template as a model, find appropriate memories to use as examples in a database for the desired new quality, and assemble them into the form of the positive template. When you are done, create a summary representation of the quality. Be sure that the new quality has all the �tune-up� elements we have been working with, such as future examples, etc.
7. Testing. Imagine someone asking you, �Are you___?� and notice your response, with particular attention to the nonverbal. If your response is ambivalent or ambiguous, back up a few steps, and gather information. The most likely difficulty is that your testing in step 2 did not detect a preexisting negative or ambiguous representation. While there are effective ways to deal with this situation, you haven�t yet learned the skills you need for this.
8. Congruence check. Do you have any objection to having this new quality? Again, check carefully to be sure that this new quality fits with all your other qualities. Satisfy any objections.