Openness to learning, new possibilities, feedback, and untapped potential does not begin with technique. It begins with a person’s relationship with themselves.
For coaches in particular, this matters. A coach who operates from a solid sense of self naturally creates a different kind of presence: one that is grounded, open, confident, and less defensive. That presence can influence the quality of the coaching relationship and create an environment where clients feel safer to explore, question assumptions, and discover new possibilities.
So, what creates a solid sense of self?
The foundations can be found in the principles introduced through Meta-States and Accessing Personal Genius. Four elements are especially important: owning personal powers, developing competence, practising self-acceptance, and establishing unconditional self-worth.
1. Own the Powers That Are Already There
A solid sense of self begins with recognising and owning one’s innate capacities. These include the ability to think, feel, learn, respond, communicate, make choices, develop relationships, and take responsibility for actions.
Without recognising these fundamental capacities, it becomes difficult to develop a healthy and vigorous sense of self. A person may continually look outside themselves for reassurance or believe that circumstances determine what they are capable of doing.
Owning personal powers does not mean believing that anything is possible. It means recognising that there are internal resources available for responding to what happens. This creates an important foundation: “I have the capacity to respond, learn, develop and make choices.”
From there, a person can begin trusting themselves enough to develop their abilities and take greater responsibility for their life.
2. Turn Potential into Competence
Innate abilities are only the starting point. A stronger sense of self develops when potential is translated into actual skills and competence. Through practice, experience, learning and feedback, people discover what they can genuinely do. Competence then becomes the foundation for self-confidence.
Instead of confidence being based on positive thinking alone, it grows from evidence: learning something difficult, solving problems, developing skills, recovering from mistakes and handling challenging situations. Over time, this creates an inner attitude of: “I can learn. I can cope. I can figure things out.”
It does not mean knowing everything or succeeding every time. It means no longer approaching challenges from a position of helplessness.
3. Accept What Cannot Be Controlled
A solid sense of self also requires recognising limits. There will always be things a person cannot do, circumstances they cannot immediately change, and constraints that exist regardless of effort or intention. This is where self-acceptance becomes essential.
Human capabilities are powerful, but they are also fallible. People make mistakes. Decisions sometimes produce unexpected results. Skills have limits. Circumstances can change. Acceptance means mentally and emotionally acknowledging reality as it currently exists.
It is not resignation.
It is not giving up.
And it does not mean approving of everything that happens.
True acceptance simply begins with the ability to say: “This is what is true right now.”
From that position, a person is better able to distinguish between what can be changed and what must first be accepted.
The Wisdom of Imperfection
Trying to create a perfect self is an impossible project. Human beings are inherently fallible. They misunderstand situations, make poor decisions, overlook information and sometimes fail despite their best efforts. When imperfection is treated as evidence of personal inadequacy, every mistake threatens identity. But when imperfection is accepted as part of being human, mistakes become information rather than verdicts.
A person can acknowledge: “I made a mistake,” without turning it into: “I am a mistake.”
That distinction creates a much stronger form of self-acceptance—one that allows people to examine their behaviour honestly without needing to defend their worth.
4. Separate the Person from the Performance
Perhaps the most important distinction in developing a solid sense of self is separating who a person is from what a person does.
Behaviour, performance, skills, decisions, achievements and experiences are all conditional.
They can improve.
They can deteriorate.
They can succeed.
They can fail.
They are influenced by effort, learning, circumstances, feedback and experience.
A person’s fundamental human worth, however, does not have to rise and fall with those conditions.
This distinction separates:
- Self from behaviour
- Self from performance
- Self from mistakes
- Self from experiences
- Self from other people’s opinions
- Self from success or failure
Once this distinction is established, a person can choose to attribute unconditional value and dignity to themselves simply because they are human. They do not need to earn the right to have worth. Achievement can still matter. Improvement can still matter. Standards can still matter. But none of them has to determine whether a person is worthy.
Moving Beyond “High” and “Low” Self-Esteem
People commonly speak about having either high or low self-esteem. But both ideas can unintentionally imply that self-worth is something that rises and falls depending on performance, approval, success or circumstances.
A more stable approach is to make self-worth unconditional while allowing behaviour and competence to remain conditional. In other words: Worth remains stable. Performance remains open to evaluation.
Someone can therefore say: “I value myself as a person, while still recognising that my behaviour needs improvement.”
This makes it easier to receive feedback, acknowledge weaknesses and make changes without turning every criticism into a judgment of personal worth.
Why This Creates Greater Openness
A solid sense of self creates an important psychological freedom. When personal worth is no longer constantly being defended, a person becomes more capable of being curious about feedback.
They can ask:
Is there something useful here?
What can I learn from this?
What could I do differently?
Instead of protecting identity, attention can shift toward learning and development.
For coaches, leaders and facilitators, this can be particularly powerful. Their presence communicates something before any technique is applied.
Someone who demonstrates self-acceptance, confidence and openness makes it easier for others to explore their own thinking without feeling that every mistake threatens who they are.
Putting It into Practice
Building a solid sense of self is not simply an idea to understand. It is something that has to be practised repeatedly until it becomes familiar.
A useful starting point is to work through four questions:
1. Own personal capacities
What abilities, choices and resources are already available?
2. Build real competence
What skills need to be developed so confidence is supported by capability?
3. Practise acceptance
What realities, limitations or imperfections need to be acknowledged rather than resisted?
4. Separate worth from performance
Can behaviour be evaluated honestly without turning the evaluation into a judgment of the person?
The goal is not to stop improving. Quite the opposite. When people no longer have to prove their worth through every achievement, they often become more willing to learn, experiment, receive feedback and change. That is the ground of openness.
A solid sense of self provides the centre from which a person can explore new possibilities without constantly protecting an identity. From that foundation comes greater courage to learn, greater willingness to acknowledge mistakes and greater freedom to discover capabilities that may still be waiting to emerge.
And that is where the deeper adventure begins: becoming more open, more resourceful and more fully engaged with life.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Meta-Coaches] 2026 Morpheus #40 THE GROUND OF OPENNESS – A Solid Sense of Self by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
