Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series)

by Maxwell Maltz

A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information that you give to it from your forebrain. Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you think or imagine to be true.

You act, and feel, not according to what things are really like, but according to the image your mind holds of what they are like. You have certain mental images of yourself, your world, and the people around you, and you behave as though these images were the truth, the reality, rather than the things they represent.

If we picture ourselves performing in a certain manner, it is nearly the same as the actual performance. Mental practice helps to make perfect.

The core of the Morrison system is: You must have a clear mental picture of the correct thing before you can do it successfully.

“Under these circumstances,” said James, “the way to success, as vouched for by innumerable authentic personal narrations, is by . . . surrender . . . passivity, not activity—relaxation, not intentness, should be now the rule. Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all. . . . It is but giving your private convulsive self a rest, and finding that a greater Self is there. The results, slow or sudden, or great or small, of the combined optimism and expectancy, the regenerative phenomena which ensue on the abandonment of effort, remain firm facts of human nature.”

“Happiness is not the reward of virtue,” said Spinoza in his book Ethics, “but virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain our lusts; but, on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore are we able to restrain them.”

“We are never living, but only hoping to live; and, looking forward always to being happy, it is inevitable that we never are so,” said Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher.

When one problem is solved, another appears to take its place. Life is a series of problems. If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy—period! Not happy “because of.”

“I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace,” said the Caliph Abd al-Rahman I, the eighth-century ruler of Iberia, “beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot; they amount to fourteen.”

“Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.”

“Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon,” wrote William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience. “It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer’s inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its sting can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it cheerfully; that a man is simply bound in honor, with reference to many of the facts that seem at first to disconcert his peace, to adopt this way of escape. Refuse to admit their badness; despise their power; ignore their presence; turn your attention the other way; and so far as you yourself are concerned at any rate, though the facts may still exist, their evil character exists no longer. Since you make them evil or good by your own thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.”

See yourself reacting to threats, not by running away or evading them, but by meeting them, dealing with them, grappling with them in an aggressive and intelligent manner. “Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or practice,” said Bulwer-Lytton, the English novelist.

Dr. Arthur W. Combs called a “self-fulfilled person.” Dr. Combs, professor of educational psychology and counseling at the University of Florida, said that the goal of every human being should be to become a “self-fulfilled person.” This, he said, is not something you’re born with, but must be achieved. Self-fulfilled persons have the following characteristics: 1. They see themselves as liked, wanted, acceptable, and able individuals 2. They have a high degree of acceptance of themselves as they are. 3. They have a feeling of oneness with others. 4. They have a rich store of information and knowledge.

Scientific experiments have shown that it is absolutely impossible to feel fear, anger, anxiety, or negative emotions of any kind while the muscles of the body are kept perfectly relaxed. We have to “do something” to feel fear, anger, anxiety. “No man is hurt but by himself,” said Diogenes.

The way to make a good impression on other people is: Never consciously “try” to make a good impression on them. Never act, or fail to act, purely for consciously contrived effect. Never “wonder” consciously what the other person is thinking of you, how he is judging you.

And I asked myself, “What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling. Despicable biped! What is the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death: and say the pangs of Tophet too and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a heart; canst thou not suffer whatso it be: and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, then: I will meet it and defy it!” And as I so thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of unknown strength; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my misery was changed: not Fear or whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance.

This is why I tell my patients to “develop a nostalgia for the future” instead of for the past if they want to remain productive and vital. Develop an enthusiasm for life, create a need for more life, and you will receive more life.