Читать книгу Becoming an Invitational Leader - William W Purkey - Страница 17

As we’ve seen, self-concept is a complex, continuously active system of subjective and learned beliefs regarding our personal experience. It serves as a reference point for behavior and enables us to assume particular roles in life — we act in accordance with the ways we have learned to see ourselves. From a lifetime of studying our own actions and those of others, we acquire expectations about that which seems to agree with our self-concept already in place. As mentioned earlier, if a new perception is consistent with past experiences already incorporated into our self-concept, we easily accept and assimilate the new perception. If the new experience contradicts those already incorporated, we will probably reject it.

The nature of self-concept is a continuously active system that dependably points toward the “true north” of a person’s perceived existence. This guidance system not only shapes the ways a person views him- or herself, others, and the world, but it also serves to direct action and enables each person to take a consistent “stance” in life. This consistency is perhaps most important in relation to internal dialogue — the ways we bolster our self-concept through conversations with the “whispering self.”