These pieces fit together to build a sense of self — who you are now, what you want to be, and how effective you are at achieving your goals.

You can probably already start to see where some of the vulnerabilities in this sense of self may lie — an identity that doesn’t reflect reality (I’m a good cook!), setting goals that don’t really meet your needs (I’ll feel safe if I get an A in math), or designing goals that don’t make sense given your abilities (I’ll meet my need for love through my cooking).

Each of these “modeling errors” create instability in our sense of self — it creates an opportunity for us to run into the walls reality with a crash rather than a slight bump. We all make these errors, but the larger the errors, the more vulnerable we become, and the more unstable, unpredictable and stressful our lives feel.

In the next chapter we’ll talk about how our model of self can get out of whack, and then talk about how we might fix it.