A self-image is unreal, it is just an idea. Self-image - I am this, I am that. We normally form a self-image by taking ideas of this and that from our memories; often it is negative, because normally that dominates the mind. So we take selected memories, all the things we didn't do well enough, ignoring all the things that we did do well. And we put it together into an idea and say, "This is me." And it would be a bit like someone coming to an interview and telling me about what they are, and I say, "Here. Here is some paper, here are some crayons - draw yourself." And they take the black crayon and go grrrrr. then they take the pink one and go zzzzzz, and they give it back and say, "There". And I say, "That doesn't look like you at all!" -- "Oh if you really knew me."
So often many take a thought about themselves and make it "reality". They believe in it totally and then they come into the interview. I say, "And what about that time? Do you have any good qualities?"-"Ahm, ahm, come on, come on?" and after a while they shyly say, "Oh, well, I do have some compassion, I am kind to people." - "Oh, what else, what else?"
So often we ask ourselves the wrong questions, "What didn't I do well enough, how could I have done it better, how did I fail" etc. So this self-image is all these selected ideas taken together, forming an idea of ourselves that influences how we view others and how we view the future. It often brings fear of the future because we project this created idea of ourselves into the future and of course, then we usually fail.
So when people say they have a fear of the future, I say, "Well, is there any time that you could do something?" And this is where the reflection on good Kamma and reflection on Sympathetic Joy helps to balance the self-image. When we have a negative self-image we are always thinking about ourselves. But if we start to balance it with some of the positive, it begins to balance the self-image, and we start to have beneficial doubt. Is there a beneficial doubt? Yes, the beneficial doubt towards the distorted reality of this negative idea of ourselves. And then we tend not to think about ourselves so much because we get a more balanced idea.
Normally it is not possible at this time to let go of all ideas of self, that doesn't usually go until we are fully enlightened, but to get a more balanced idea of ourselves is very helpful, to lessen the tendency to only focus on the things we didn't do good enough in the past. We try to learn how to let go of the emotional conflicts about our past, and what we didn't do well and what we failed in doing. Learning to see the difference between who we used to be and who we are now helps us to let go of some of these ideas and negativeself-images we take to be real.