Melissa Poepping Self Image Workbook

A PREVIEW OF

BEFORE BEAUTY

Copyright © 2017 Melissa Poepping | All Rights Reserved.

the first step

MELISSA POEPPING

E X PA N D YOU WILL NEVER OUT-PERFORM THE SELF-IMAGE YOU HOLD OF YOURSELF.

The only limits in our life are those we impose on ourselves.

BOB PROCTOR

The way you feel about yourself, at this moment, has set a boundary for the

person you can become. You can’t see that boundary but you can definitely feel it. It’s a restriction you are imposing on your own life, a limit for the best you can be. No matter how far you WANT to go, the way you actually see yourself sets an unbreakable boundary.

So how DO you reach your goals if the boundary falls short of the vision?

You expand the boundary, not diminish the vision. Most people go about this the wrong way. You WANT the goal, you WANT the dream, but you forget about the most important factor: YOU.

To reach your goals, you need to increase the value you hold of yourself and

expand the boundary you’ve set. Are you ready? Take a deep breath. This first part won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.

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BEFORE BEAUTY

You need to be very raw and very honest when you do this. Get quiet with yourself and write this down:

What are the character traits you do NOT like about yourself.

Now, how do you THINK OTHERS feel about and think of you?

All of these things you THINK you feel about yourself and you THINK others

feel about you are all based on past experiences, along with things you gather around you in the present, like social media and friends. These are limitations you have accepted, that don’t belong to you. When you spend years letting other people tell you what you cannot accomplish, you start to believe it.

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It is CRITICAL to your success that you change the way you think about

yourself AND the way you think others feel about you. Your thoughts set up

FALSE circumstances, giving you a FALSE personality, and imposing FALSE limits. These past experiences, these limitations, these belief systems of others that you have absorbed as your own, are re-enforcing the image you hold of yourself. What’s worse is that every time you think about YOUR goal, you

immediately cycle back to this FALSE image you are holding of yourself and it throws you directly into the very place you don’t want to be. Can you see that this is a vicious and dangerous cycle?

Let’s look at this for a moment and really rip it apart. We need to identify each negative modifier on your list. Take out your highlighter and mark each

negative word you wrote down. Re-read it and make sure you got them ALL! Words like: can’t, won’t, doesn’t, fat, slow, horrible, disrespect, not, none, trying, drama, hate, weak, terrible, dislike, alone, and so on.

Did you know the brain cannot discern between fact or fiction? It’s true.

What -you tell yourself, you will believe. How many years have you been brainwashing yourself into believing you are less than you really are?

(Wait, let’s not actually tally that time wasted. Onward and upward.)

Take a look at that self-image statement again. I’m confident that everything you wrote is exactly what life has delivered to you. “Woe the thing I fear has come to visit upon me.”

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BEFORE BEAUTY

When I did my self-image statement, I looked at the final words and sat in

pure disgust. It took me back to such a dark time in my life when I had nobody who believed in me. Over and over I would hear “you can’t, you won’t, you

could never, you don’t deserve.” I remember being five years old and hearing these exact words told to me: “nobody loves you, nobody wants you here.”

To say I had a massive self-image statement overhaul is an understatement.

It has taken me years to find strength and validation in everything I do. To rise up out of self-worthLESSness to total bossbabe conviction is proof that you can do the same.

Stay with me. I want you to write down 10 things you intended to accomplish last year but didn’t.

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Now, go back and look at each one. Ask yourself, on a scale of 1-10, how

CONFIDENT were you that you could obtain that goal with no fear, doubt or

worry. Chances are you didn’t score very high. Isn’t it amazing what fear can keep you from? I’ll “black and white” that for you: I T K E E P S Y O U FROM LIVING THE LIFE YOU DESERVE! How did you ever expect to meet any of those goals if you didn’t fully believe you could get there?

For the past three years I was POSITIVE I’d reach the top rank in my company.

But I always came up short of the goal. Why? Because I couldn’t see myself

there. I was too worried about how others would react. Would they celebrate with me? Would they be happy for me? The looming weight of envy and

disharmony was too overwhelming. I settled for less to keep the peace. Turns

out, the peace couldn’t be kept anyway. I could have won my race and ended

up with the same relationships. Except, I would have been where I deserved to be for my family and my legacy. I just wanted validation and harmony. And it

cost me. A lot. Lesson learned: validation and harmony are false hopes. Pursue your dreams. The right people will support you.

What is the the biggest thing holding you back from living the life you deserve?

Bob Proctor says it is our “weakness of attention and poverty of imagine.” In my case, I failed to imagine my life EXACTLY the way I wanted it. Or did I?

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BEFORE BEAUTY

I saw my success creating a shit show. And it did. I saw jealousy and

disharmony. And that’s what I got. But guess what? When I began to “see it the way I wanted it,” life shifted. I started to see winning as a

celebration, a way to empower many. I saw it as women lifting one

another up. Whatever winning is for you, picture it exactly the way you want it.

It’s just not enough for you to WISH for what you want or to SAY what you

want. You have to BELIEVE it to really RESONATE with it on a much deeper level. Just look at that self-image statement. You resonated with that. You resonated with EXACTLY that which you DO NOT WANT! You thought

about ALL the things you didn’t want and THEN you became emotionally

involved with them! And BAM! That’s where you, too, end up with your shit

show with everything seeming as though it is falling apart! Now go back to a

vision of winning as a celebration. Can you see yourself in that place? Can you FEEL the emotion and excitement of celebrating with your friends this way?

THAT, resonate with THAT. Get emotionally involved with THAT feeling every day. What we need to do is focus on what you REALLY desire and deserve.

YOU DESERVE to win. YOU DESERVE a tribe who will hold you and let you

shine. YOU DESERVE unwavering support. YOU DESEVE unconditional love.

That list of 10 things you wanted to accomplish but didn’t . . . that’s the list that haunts you.

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If your lack of accomplishment is making you mad, that makes me happy.

It shows me that these desires really are in your heart and it’s how you

WANT to see your life. These are things you truly wanted for yourself and on some level, you saw them in your life. But you also let doubt creep in

through the back door. See it the way you want it. Can you see those things

in your life THIS year? Can each and every single thing on that list bring you pure joy and excitement? Can you SEE and FEEL yourself in the EXACT

possession of each one of them? Perfect. Then the journey is totally worth it!

This self-image statement exercise is so critical to your success in life.

Chances are you’ve been setting goals while feeling no worth for yourself.

My friend, it doesn’t work that way! Your self-image is exactly how you

are talking to yourself every single day and you are absorbing each word, like a sponge absorbs water.

Let's talk about goal setting for just a second here because I need you to

understand why this is so important and why it's a major hot button for me.

When you go out there and try to set a goal while you still don't have any

self-worth, you are wasting your time and creating chaos. When I conduct my leadership programs, I won’t allow goal-setting until the very last day.

True story. Attendees can’t set goals or write vision statements until we get through self-image. There is just no way that I’m going to let anyone set a goal if they have any bit of doubt left in themselves. And here's why: your subconscious mind isn’t filtering the paradigms.

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BEFORE BEAUTY

All senses play a role in your thoughts. These thoughts, true or false, when formed, enter through the conscious mind (your logic center) where our education and experience form the “reality” we choose and from there, it

moves into the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind (your emotional center) accepts whatever reality you feed it and attracts to you exactly what you ask. And there’s the key: what are you asking for? You already wrote it down in that self-image statement. #lightbulb

You need to develop a stronger filter to change what flows into your conscious mind (and then into your subconscious mind), because this becomes the

voice in your head. When you set a goal with that little voice saying, “it’s going

to be too hard, you don’t have time for this, the kids need you more, that’s a lot

of travel, you aren’t ready for this, nobody will support this, things like this don’t work out . . .” You get the idea. It’s all those little voices that speak up the

INSTANT you have an idea, the moment you want to do something, that will make you feel you can’t. That little voice feeds doubt. So, you stop. You stop right there with the goal, and you give up because the mind fully believes

what you just fed it. If you’re not hitting your goals, if you’re not reaching your dreams, if you’re not living the story you wrote for yourself, this is why.

Your filter is clogged.

So all those little itty bitty shitty committee groups going on in your life that

have told you you’re not good enough, that you don’t deserve it, that you can’t achieve it, you MUST quiet them so that you can go back, reset the goal, reset 8

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the plan while saying “YES I CAN, YES I WILL, YES I DO.” You have to believe

that, feel that, and resonate with that as if it were already so. If you can believe it as such a truth so that you wake up tomorrow thinking “wait, ummm . . . did that

actually happen?” then congratulations, you are doing it right. THAT is how real it is in your heart! My friend, He won’t put a dream in your heart that you can’t hold in your hand! He just won’t!

y Are you already feeling more empowered, unstoppable, and confident?

Want to keep going?

Do you want to rewrite your story, and start living like the queen you are, worthy of the crown?

Let’s journey forward together in my book, Before Beauty.

xo

Melissa

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When a woman becomes her own best friend, life is easy.

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG