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

by Maxwell Maltz

The self-image is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self-image and you change the personality and the behavior.

Dr. Norton L. Williams, a psychiatrist, addressing a medical convention, said that modern man’s anxiety and insecurity stemmed from a lack of self-realization, and that inner security can only be found “in finding in oneself an individuality, uniqueness, and distinctiveness that is akin to the idea of being created in the image of God.” He also said that self-realization is gained by “a simple belief in one’s own uniqueness as a human being, a sense of deep and wide awareness of all people and all things, and a feeling of constructive influencing of others through one’s own personality.”

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

first place happiness isn’t something that happens to you. It is something you yourself do and determine upon.

The success-type personality is composed of: Sense of direction Understanding Courage Compassion Esteem Self-Confidence Self-Acceptance

It is the person who has no purpose of his own who pessimistically concludes, “Life has no purpose.” It is the person who has no goal worth working for who concludes, “Life is not worthwhile.”

“‘I can forgive, but I cannot forget,’ is only another way of saying ‘I will not forgive,’” said Henry Ward Beecher. “Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note—torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.”

If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, ‘I won’t waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don’t care an iota whether I succeed or not.’ Say this sincerely, and feel it, and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently.”

“The real problem is not to control emotion,” wrote Lecky, “but to control the choice of which tendency shall receive emotional reinforcement.”

Everything in life is a mental picture. Every goal you have begins as a picture in your mind. And anything you don’t like about yourself or your life can be changed by changing your mental pictures. Never forget: Even forgiveness is a mental picture.”