Your Picture of You

How do you see you? What do you think of yourself in your heart? What picture do you have of yourself in your mind's eye? The answer to these questions determine to a large extent what your life turns out to be like. It affects everything that concerns you and this is why having a good picture of yourself is necessary. You can never outperform the picture you have of yourself. There'll always be a synergy between what image is on the inside and the action produced outside.
Firstly, your picture of you determines your relationships. Like begets like, and we unconsciously attract people like us. The people around you paint the picture you have of yourself. If you could at this very moment sweep through your friends list in your mind, you would find out that you chose them because there was some sort of bonding between you two which resonated from your inside. And these relationship have at some point influenced certain decisions you've made in life whether good or bad. Everyone has a king and a fool in them, the one people talk to grows more and the people you talk to the most are the people you spend time with and the people you spend time with the most especially talking, are your friends. Do they talk to the fool in you or in the king in you? Abigail spoke to the king in David else he would've done a foolish thing.
Your picture of you shows how much value you have for yourself. If you see yourself as one poor little thing, people would push wherever they wanted you to go and you wouldn't mind, you wouldn't object or speak up because somehow you feel you deserve it. It determines how you let yourself be treated. It determines your appearance, how you dress.
Your self portrait determines your attitude. A woman with a confident picture of herself acts confident, while another woman who sees herself as helpless and weak always acts in fear. She'd never step out to do anything because of fear. And another woman who feels she's not good enough yet will always be in competition with everybody. 

How you see yourself determines what you pursue and how you pursue. When you have a glorious picture of yourself, you'd go all out to see it come to manifestation. You would probably deny yourself certain luxuries or frivolities just to attain that vision. You would be so focused that you become blind to other irrelevant things, all that would matter to you is striving for excellence.
Whenever God wants to change a man, He starts with changing how that man sees himself. Take for instance Gideon in the bible, an angel appears to him while he's threshing wheat in hiding and proclaims to him, "Gideon! Thou mighty man of valour". At that point, Gideon was not anywhere near being called a man of valour but God already had a beautiful picture of him as one.
When God gives you a picture of yourself, he's giving you a picture of you as a finished product, he's giving you a picture of your future. Nurture it, Protect it and Make it happen. This is why spending time in his presence is very important because he helps make that picture a reality.
One of the greatest weapon devil has stolen through sin is people's God-given self portrait and replaced it with a condemned image. A lot of Christians believe in God's greatness but see no greatness in themselves forgetting we are made in his image and likeness.
If you do not already have a healthy self portrait of yourself, ask God to show you his picture of you. It would be so amazing and life transforming to truly see yourself in the way that God sees you. Always maintain a healthy picture of yourself in your heart for out of it flows the issues of life.