“Your appearance impacts people’s perseverance”.
Your image plays a vital role in determining the world’s perception of you. These judgments are on the basis of your presentation of self which comprises your communication skills, personality, and appearance. Here, I’m going to describe the importance of managing your image.
Building an image becomes essential to improving self-image, and self-confidence. A good image will influence other people through your actions and communication skills. The image-building concept relies on building intelligence, knowledge, efforts, and authenticity. These skills are built through a lot of self-evaluation which may exhaust and confuse people cognitively.
We often hear the statement that “the first impression is the last impression”. This saying is proved by hundreds of researchers through large-scale experiments. People generally make assumptions based on limited information in various forms. This phenomenon is known as the halo effect. The Halo effect is a phenomenon that judges people based on the first impression. It is a perception distortion that makes us believe in a certain way. For example, most of the time people assume a good-looking person to be a well-mannered and decent person. These qualities are initial expressions of an individual.
The judgment is just not solely based on appearance, but if you tend to show qualities like communication and mannerisms. People might think you are educated. And that too without being interrogative or having former knowledge about your educational background. Due to this, a lot of people end up being judged based on what they wear, show outside, and behave. But this effect is predominant to one’s advantage to establish a good image at places you visit.
One doesn’t have to dwell for years to build a positive self-image. But, there are a lot of skilled image management coaches that help you build an image suitable for you. These coaches are professional and have gained experience from years of practice. As an individual, it’s difficult to comprehend minute details of your habits. Because of this, so many habits were not recognized which may lead to a negative image build-up. We live in a society that praises you for positive habits but never gives you constructive feedback for bad habits.
Knowingly we may be doing positive things that make us nicer people but unknowingly we make mistakes that can be unrecognized. You may hear this negative feedback in the form of rumors. These coaches catch all your positive and negative actions, and habits and help you build up a nicer self-image.
Image management is a longitudinal process that needs synchronization of your actions, and words and constant re-evaluation of your self-image. Image building starts from the first few days of your visits to your office, school, etc.
Initially if one can make a positive impression, the other person will have a biased judgment about that person. This way one can make positive impressions throughout their life and wherever they go. This way you can control to an extent how you want to look like a person.
Though you cannot make-believe or manipulate people as you want using the effect, you can only create a biased judgment about yourself.
Top 5 Importance of Managing Your Image
So, here are five main reasons for you to take up building your self-image seriously. These are the reasons that make your belief system stronger.
1. Creating your own identity
Identity refers to an individual value present to this world. This includes a portrayal of values, ideas, and thoughts. A person’s identity is crucial because it is the overall impression of an individual, through which a person is known. If we understand it more, a person’s identity is not limited to the name but to the emotion, personality, and thoughts that the person carries with them. The aspiration, achievements, and social intelligence that a person shows make his identity more valuable.
Now, why it’s important to create one’s identity is because for influencing an individual, one has to stand out from the crowd. By following your rules for life and principles you are defining your standards and, in this process, creating your identity.
In life, you will encounter several people in your life but it’s your charm of personality that makes people remember you and your presence. Hence the creation of identity helps you gain that confidence and boosts your social presence.
2. Presenting Yourself
Presentation is a crucial part of image management; the image management coach helps you build your personality through presentations. A presentation is a form of art, one who knows how to present themselves has won half of the battle. Branding of the self-presentation starts with the idea of self-image.
Goffman in his research has explained optimal identity. He explains the process where an individual matches one’s self-image and others’ preferences to make an optimal identity of his own. Further, he added that in this process the individual tries his best to control the impressions that others are talking about them.
Through this, we can understand that an individual has an ideal self and a real self. The ideal self refers to what a person wants to become and the real self is what he is really at present. And people continuously try to congruent these two ideas.
3. Self- Actualization and Ideal Self
“What a man can be, he must be”, are famous quotes that define a person’s desires and capabilities that have been submersed down. Every person on this planet has some other potential, some are good at solving equations, some are good at painting, and more but what if a person is not aware of his full potential and denies and paints themselves with a negative self-image. That could be the worst thing for mankind because in this way no future talent and creativity will evolve.
Hence self-actualization is to know your full potential for something one needs to know themselves better, and that can only be done through building a positive self-image that benefits them in terms of knowing about their interests.
Some people at a young age tend to crave attention and love, they are love deprived, and in the future, this is possible that they may end up building a wrong self-image about themselves like “they are not enough” or “they don’t deserve love” and this way they end up making a negative perspective of themselves and others.
4. A Professional Presence In the Workplace
Professionally image development becomes essential, and corporations have huge responsibilities in terms of attracting clients and pursuing people to complete a certain task. An individual with a professional presence shows great communication skills, grooming abilities, and pursuing abilities.
Making your social presence solidify controls your image in peers and management of your skills. A person’s brand helps them gain the social status they always want and keeps professionalism at most.
5. Social Growth and Personal Growth
People with mesmerizing personalities are way more successful in comparison with people who are doomed to their world of self-reliance, and no networking zone. In recent studies, it has been suggested that people who show a greater capacity for social networking are more likely to be successful because of their nature of pursuing people in one go.
These people have wonderful networking that helps them grow from one position to another. Hence managing image becomes essential to building a healthy social relationship with people around you.
These were the five crucial reasons for you to build and manage your image.
This is a fact one likes or not but people will still judge you based on what you present to them. The kind of values, social status, and professionalism you show imply directly how you are built up. Not only behaviorism but your dressing sense, presence of mind, and body language make the most important element of your personality that people perceive and absorb first handedly. Dressing well, and choosing apt clothes makes it clear you are already aware of the importance of the gathering. In the business arena and your office, if you tend to wear informal dresses it makes a bad image of you. terming you as unprofessional at times.
Another important aspect of managing your image is how you manage your time. Time management is an authentic way to make you a time investor, one who tries to get life on track. Hence making a positive impact in your life.
In today’s time, anxiety and ambiguity about oneself are common, we often get confused and try to find out why? And how? We are the way we are; it simply exaggerates anxiety and bolsters a negative perspective of oneself and society. Social awkwardness being the next undesired trait, keeps you away from people. Self-confidence and building the right set of communication skills help you tackle this social awkwardness.
Most importantly, managing your positive image is vital, if you are making a positive gesture, it leads to a healthy and happy life. Whereas if you are indulging in addictions, an unhealthy lifestyle, and more you deter the positivity in you, and through this more people will feel discontented.
It is obvious that people only connect to people who they term as ideal or someone who they can find influential, a greater number of people attract the fact that you tend to give positive feedback. Having a positive mindset becomes crucial for it. A positive mindset nourishes
self-image. And image management coaches help you attain that positivity. They make you realize the importance of managing your image, and keep you intact with the ongoing processes.
As image building and improvement is not a one-day process, it requires a large number of meetings to produce and be congruent with your ideal self. These coaches help you find your real image which is the current one and the ideal image that you are aspiring to. The coaches help you get both of these in congruence with each other, by taking daily meetings, grooming your dressing sense, personality, time management, and more.
The main focus of these coaches is to make you a better version of yourself.
At last, managing one’s image at the office, at school, and upgrading your status in society. It keeps you grounded and deters your social anxiety. It also improves your self-esteem and makes you realize your true potential. Building a positive image enhances a positive environment and upgrades your social skills. Having a positive environment increases your productivity. A positive self-image makes you reach the heights of your blissful life.
Hence managing one’s image in one’s life is so important in every term. Your image directly affects the way you think and implies directly your future life too. In other words, it simply means to be more purposeful, conscious, and focus on your wellbeing.
As you now get to know the importance of managing your image, So, don’t waste your authenticity by just following what others are doing, play your magic and stand out for yourself. Let yourself self-shine from every direction.