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

Further Discussion

Now that you have all had an experience of doing this, do you have any questions or comments?

Sam: I�m feeling something similar to what Peter described. It�s like having a whole new focus that I didn�t have before, looking at myself in a whole different way, a quiet knowing where there was just a kind of vacuum before.

Al: What I noticed most was the change in how my physical body felt. My new quality is one that is particularly evident in posture and movement, and my body feels longer and straighter, more flowing and soft.

Fred: I did it with something that I was mildly ambiguous about at first, but it worked fine anyway. There weren�t many counterexamples, and they weren�t very intense, so they didn�t get in the way.

Melissa: I created a new balanced quality, and I love it. I used to be on the end of a teeter-totter, always up or down. Now I have a wonderful feeling of standing right on the pivot point, where I can shift a little from one side to the other, yet still stay in that stable middle zone of balance.

Ann: Even though we thought we had tested really well to make sure that there was no negative belief already there, when I started to build a new quality I had a feeling of being torn between the new quality and its opposite. So we backed up and dismantled what we had done. Then I picked another quality to build, and that went smoothly.

Good. When an ambiguous or negative structure is already there, it�s a little more complicated, because you have to deal with a significant number of counterexamples to the new quality. Soon you�ll have the skills to deal with that situation too.