"EXPLORING THE SELF"

"Psychological apparatus that allows an individual to think consciously about themselves"

REFLEXIVE CORE

• Experience

• Think

• Feel

• Regulate

SELF DISCREPANCY THEORY

The SDT was developed by Edward T. Higgins in 1987, and provides a platform for understanding how different types of discrepancies between representations of the self are related to different kinds of emotional vulnerabilities. Higgins sought to illustrate that internal disagreement causes emotional and psychological turmoil.

The SDT is based around the concept of the different domains of the self; different psychological representations comparing who we:

• Actually are

• Want to be

• Ought to be

Domains of the self: (Higgins, 1987, p.320-321)

• Actual self – your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) believes you actually possess

• Ideal self – your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) would like you, ideally, to possess (hopes, aspirations, wishes)

• Ought self – your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) believes you should or ought to possess (sense of duty,

• obligations, responsibilities)

As a young athlete it is very easy for a negative self-representation to be created leading to detrimental impact on psychological health. With social media being extremely prevalent in the lives of young people, often sending off such far-fetched messages of what life is like (e.g. music videos, instagram posts etc), young people create an image of a life infatuated with money and material objects. As teachers, coaches and parents it is important to promote comfortableness with one's actual self, whilst providing a good message as to what one's ideal self might look like.

We want to create a realistic gap between the actual self and ideal self, focusing on internal, intrinsic goal setting that will enhance the development of the individual.

SELF CONCEPT

• Self concept refers to how we describe ourselves

• A relatively stable description of personal attributes such as abilities in specific domains (i.e. physical competencies)

Self concept is a collection of beliefs about one's self that includes elements such as academic, social, emotional and physical

Self-concept is made up of one's self-schemas, and interacts with self-esteem, self-knowledge, and the social self to form the self as whole. It includes the past, present, and future selves, where future selves (or possible selves) represent individuals' ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, or what they are afraid of becoming. Possible selves may function as incentives for certain behaviour.

To change our self-concept we need to have an understanding of the different areas of our lives that we deem important. If we desire change in ourselves it is important to understand why - why do we desire change? Then we must understand what - what is it that we would like to change? Are we unhappy with our health and body image, do we want to be more successful in our work, do we feel we are not living life by the values we have for our self? Once we have deemed the what we must finally gain an understanding of the how - how are we going to alter our self-concept to be more like our future self we desire to be. To be conscious in our approach of achieving our new self we must take time to evaluate our how. This process can include writing down the changes we must make to achieve where we would like to be. For example, if we feel we are living life short of our values and philosophy, we can first start by writing down the key values that are important to us. From here we can identify how we plan to incorporate these in our day to day life. It may involve volunteering for an hour a week, or being more proactive in standing up for what we believe in etc.

It is important to note that we should always strive for a balance in the different elements of our self-concept. If we allocate too much time to one area and sacrifice other components then we can become overwhelmed, unhappy and burnout. Obviously, at different times in our life different components of our self-concept will demand greater energy than other areas, for instance as a young professional just starting a career, their work/academic branch may have a greater focus than their social branch. Nonetheless, it is important to develop our self concept as a whole, and thus we never completely forget about any branch!

Steps to ensuring that we are more comfortable with our self-concept:

1. Identify our current situation in the different components of our self-concept

• For example, an individual might think that they don't look good or have poor fitness, or they might think they are not doing particularly well in the social aspect of their self-concept being an unreliable partner or friend.

• By identifying your current beliefs of how you are in the different branches of your self-concept it provides a reference point, the beginning of a timeline.

• It is important to engage your mind and understand why you believe something to be this way. If you have the self-belief that you aren't happy with your body image, then why do you feel this way? What is it about your body image you are not happy with?

2. Identify your future self in the different components of your self concept

• Now you have already formed the basis of your current belief system in the different areas of your life, you can identify where you would like to be in the future, both short-term and more long-term.

• Where do the differences lie between your current self and future self. For instance, if it is body image then you may identify that there is a 5kg difference between your current self and where you have identified you would like your future self to be

• Or it may be that currently you are viewing yourself as a neglectful family member, and that you would like to become a more valuable member of the family.

3. Make a stage by stage plan of how you will become your future self

• There is no point in knowing that you want to be someone different, but not giving yourself the time to get to where you need to be. Wanting something in your head but not having the willpower or understanding of how to change can quickly take a negative toll on the psyche!

• If you have identified your future self to be a healthier, more physically fit individual then you must develop a plan of how you are going to address this

• For example, you are likely to be overweight due to one or all of two reasons: 1. Inactive lifestyle 2. Poor dietary habits

• To change yourself you must implement a plan that targets these areas; for instance getting a lifestyle coach who can educate you on how to exercise effectively and program exercise and nutritional habits that will ensure long term change.

4. Self Reflect

• To ensure we are constantly on a path to success we must take time out of our busy lives to self-reflect and evaluate the different areas of our self-concept.

• Once we have targeted an area and become more like the future self we wanted to be, we may have found there is another area of our self-concept that we would like to focus on more.

• For example, it is interesting as a young adult how I see peoples lives' dramatically change once they have had children, where there is a 20-30year period when the focus will completely shift from personal goals and achievements to ensuring that their children are catered for. Yet once the children have reached the age where they can fend for themselves the parents now have this sudden increase in both time and money where they are able to return to focusing on what they would like to achieve in life. Closely linked with this is the dramatic increase in masters athletes (older athletes who now have time to return to their childhood sport or focus on learning something new)

• I visited the Masters Games in Auckland last year and was amazed by all these extremely driven and committed Masters Athletes competing in all the different Olympic events.

• Regular self-reflection allows us to see what we have achieved, whether we are meeting our self-regulated standards for ourselves or whether we might be falling a little short.

I hope you have enjoyed this article, this is the first in a series of articles on "the self" and identifying how we can develop.

References

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory.

Leary, M. R., & Tangney, J. P. (2003). Handbook of self and identity

Zimmerman, J. B. (2000) Self-Efficacy: An Essential Motive to Learn. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 25:1 (82-91) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X99910160