They asked about how many times their friends do worship (prayer, shaum or fasting, etc), and amount of their infaq (charity, alms) in that day, for example. Prophet Muhammad also required his followers to conduct daily introspection through Al-Ma'tsurot prayers at dawns and dusks.
Have we today introspected ourselves and deeply recognized ourselves? Are we persons with positive thinking concept or positive self-concept or in fact we have negative self-concept? We probably deny it, but our behavior in fact proves in what type we are in.
According to William D. Brooks and Phillip Emmert (1976), which is quoted by an Indonesian scholar, Doctor Jalaluddin Rahmat, in his well-known Indonesian book entitled Psikologi Komunikasi (Psychology of Communication), there are five indications of a person with negative self-concept.
First, he is sensitive against criticism. This type of person is very easily angry due to criticism against him. For him, correction or criticism is the effort to jeopardize his dignity. He tends to avoid frontal dialog and eager to defense his opinion with various wrong justifications and logics.
Second, he is very responsive to praises. He possibly pretends to avoid praises; however, his enthusiasm when being praised cannot be hidden. For him, any kinds of titles that support his dignity become his focus of attention.
Third, parallel to his likeness to receive praises or eulogies, he is also hypercritical to others. He always complains, disgraces and underestimates anything and anybody. He is not good at and unable to express gratitude or acknowledgement to other people's superiority.
Fourth, a person with negative self-concept tends to feel not being liked by others. He feels that he is ignored. Therefore he reacts and considers others as his enemies that such kind of perception would not be able to create the warmth and intimacy of a friendship. He will never blame himself, but will consider himself as a victim of the awful social system.
Fifth, he is pessimistic to competition. He is unwilling to compete with others in the achievement. He considers he will not be powerful against the competition that damages him.
In contrary, a person with positive self-concept is also indicated with five items: (1) he is confident about his competence to solve the problems; (2) he feels being equal to others; (3) he accepts praises without any shyness; (4) he realizes that everyone has different feelings, behaviors and desires that public do not entirely agree with the same; and (5) he is able to improve himself because he is able to express the aspects of personality that he does not like about and he tries to change it.
In the reality, there is no one that is purely has positive or negative self-concept. However, as far we can, we should have the most possible traits of positive self-concept.
So, when is the appropriate moment to look at our mirror?
