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

by Maxwell Maltz

a person cannot rise above how he sees himself. “Our future,” Jack said, “is controlled by a mental blueprint we have inside our subconscious mind, and it dictates where we think we belong. If you want to get more clients and make more money, then you need to expand your self-image before you can have them. Trying to achieve without expanding your self-image doesn’t lead to lasting positive change.”

“This book has been designed not merely to be read but to be experienced. You can acquire information from reading a book. But to ‘experience’ you must creatively respond to information.” He goes on to advise readers to continue to practice the techniques in the book and reserve judgment for at least 21 days—the

After reliving and reexperiencing myself at my best, I was able to flip a switch and use my imagination in the same way I used my memory. I could imagine and feel that I was achieving a goal in the future but experience it as if it was happening now, almost as if it was the memory of another accomplished goal. Once I mastered this technique, everything began to change for me.

As you read this book, one of the many secrets you will come to understand is this: You can be happy now as well as every single day you are working toward achieving your goals. When you discover happiness along the way—instead of expecting that you can only be happy once you’ve achieved a goal— then you’ve already fulfilled the promise of Psycho-Cybernetics.

“There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.”

It is not the child who is taught about love but the child who has experienced love that grows into a healthy, happy, well-adjusted adult. Our present state of self-confidence and poise is the result of what we have experienced rather than what we have learned intellectually.

Throw a man in water over his head and the experience may teach him to swim. The same experience may cause another man to drown. The Army “makes a man” out of many young boys. But there is no doubting that Army experience also makes many psycho-neurotics.

Perhaps most important of all, we will learn how chronically unhappy people have learned to enjoy life by “experiencing” happiness!

The building of an adequate self-image is something that should continue throughout a lifetime. Admittedly we cannot accomplish a lifetime of growth in three weeks’ time. But you can experience improvement within three weeks’ time—and sometimes the improvement is quite dramatic.

Noah Webster defined success as “the satisfactory accomplishment of a goal sought for.” Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations, and talents (and not the symbols which the “Joneses” expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function. Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is “built that way,” he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made to function—as a goal striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other.

Understanding the psychology of the self can mean the difference between success and failure, love and hate, bitterness and happiness. The discovery of the real self can rescue a crumbling marriage, recreate a faltering career, and transform victims of “personality failure.” On another plane, discovering your real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity.

most of these beliefs about ourselves have unconsciously been formed from our past experiences, our successes and failures, our humiliations, our triumphs, and the way other people have reacted to us, especially in early childhood. From all these we mentally construct a “self” (or a picture of a self). Once an idea or a belief about ourselves goes into this picture, it becomes “true,” as far as we personally are concerned. We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true.

The self-image is a premise, a base, or a foundation upon which your entire personality, your behavior, and even your circumstances are built. Because of this our experiences seem to verify, and thereby strengthen, our self-images and a vicious or a beneficent cycle, as the case may be, is set up. For example, a schoolboy who sees himself as an “F”-type student, or one who is “dumb in mathematics,” will invariably find that his report card bears him out. He then has “proof.” A young girl who has an image of herself as the sort of person nobody likes will indeed find that she is avoided at the school dance. She literally invites rejection. Her woebegone expression, her hangdog manner, her over-anxiousness to please, or perhaps her unconscious hostility toward those she anticipates will affront her—all act to drive away those whom she would attract. In the same manner, a salesman or a businessman will also find that his actual experiences tend to “prove” his self-image is correct. Because of this objective “proof” it very seldom occurs to a person that his trouble lies in his self-image or his own evaluation of himself. Tell the schoolboy that he only “thinks” he cannot master algebra, and he will doubt your sanity. He has tried and tried, and still his report card tells the story. Tell the salesman that it is only an “idea” that he cannot earn more than a certain figure, and he can prove you wrong by his order book. He knows only too well how hard he has tried and failed. Y...

Numerous patients have said to me something like the following: “If you are talking about ‘positive thinking,’ I’ve tried that before, and it just doesn’t work for me.” However, a little questioning invariably brings out that these individuals have employed “positive thinking,” or attempted to employ it, either on particular external circumstances, or on some particular habit or character defect. (“I will get that job,” “I will be more calm and relaxed in the future,” “This business venture will turn out right for me,” etc.) But they have never thought to change their thinking about the “self” that was to accomplish these things.

The secret is this: To really “live,” that is, to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with. You must find your self acceptable to “you.” You must have a wholesome self-esteem. You must have a self that you can trust and believe in. You must have a self that you are not ashamed to “be,” and one that you can feel free to express creatively, rather than hide or cover up. You must have a self that corresponds to reality, so that you can function effectively in a real world. You must know yourself—both your strengths and your weaknesses—and be honest with yourself concerning both. Your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of “you,” being neither more than you are nor less than you are. When this self-image is intact and secure, you feel good. When it is threatened, you feel anxious and insecure. When your self-image is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of, you feel self-confident. You feel free to “be yourself” and to express yourself. You function at your optimum. When it is an object of shame, you attempt to hide it rather than express it. Creative expression is blocked. You become hostile and hard to get along with.

Memorize the following basic principles by which your Success Mechanism operates. You do not need to be an electronic engineer, or a physicist, to operate your own servo-mechanism, any more than you have to be able to engineer an automobile in order to drive one, or become an electrical engineer in order to turn on the light in your room. You do need to be familiar with the following concepts, however, because when you have memorized them, they will throw new light on what is to follow:

1. Your built-in Success Mechanism must have a goal or “target.” This goal, or target, must be conceived of as “already in existence—now” either in actual or potential form. It operates by either (1) steering you to a goal already in existence or (2) “discovering” something already in existence.

2. The automatic mechanism is teleological, that is, it operates or must be oriented to “end results” goals. Do not be discouraged because the “means whereby” may not be apparent. It is the function of the automatic mechanism to supply the means whereby when you supply the goal. Think in term...

The means by which your Success Mechanism works often take care of themselves and do so effortlessly when you supply the goal to your brain. The precise action steps will come to you without stress, tension, or worry about how you are going to accomplish the result you seek. Many people make the mistake of interfering with their Success Mechanism by demanding a how before a goal is clearly established. After you’ve formed a mental image of the goal you seek to create, the how will come to you—not before. Remain calm and relaxed and the answ...

3. Do not be afraid of making mistakes, or of temporary failures. All servo-mechanisms achieve a goal by negative feedback, or by going forward, making mistakes, and immediately correcting course.

4. Skill learning of any kind is accomplished by trial and error, mentally correcting aim after an error, until a “successful” motion, movement, or performance has been achieved. After that, further learning, and continued success, is accomplished by forgetting the past errors, and remembering the successful response, so that it can be imitated.

5. You must learn to trust your Creative Mechanism to do its work and not “jam it” by becoming too concerned or too anxious as to whether it will work or not, or by attempting to force it by too much conscious effort. You must “let it” work, rather than “make it” work. This trust is necessary because your Creative Mechanism operates below the level of consciousness, and you cannot “know” what is going on beneath the surface. Moreover, its nature is to operate spontaneously according to present need. Therefore, you have no guarantees in advance. It comes into operation as you act and as you place a demand on it by your actions...

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.

suppose, for example, that the man on the trail had not met a real bear, but a movie actor dressed in a bear costume. If he thought and imagined the actor to be a bear, his emotional and nervous reactions would have been exactly the same.

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

Plan for the interview in advance. Go over in your mind all the various questions that are likely to be asked. Think about the answers you are going to give. Then “rehearse” the interview in your mind. Even if none of the questions you have rehearsed come up, the rehearsal practice will still work wonders. It gives you confidence.

You must have a clear mental picture of the correct thing before you can do it successfully.

Successful men and women have, since the beginning of time, used “mental pictures,” and “rehearsal practice,” to achieve success.

Henry Kaiser has said that each of his business accomplishments was realized in his imagination before it appeared in actuality. It is no wonder that the art of mental picturing has in the past sometimes been associated with “magic.” However, the new science of cybernetics gives us an insight into why mental picturing produces such amazing results, and shows that these results are due not to “magic,” but to the natural, normal functioning of our minds and brains. Cybernetics regards the human brain, nervous system, and muscular system as a highly complex servo-mechanism: an automatic goal-seeking machine that “steers” its way to a target or goal by use of feedback data and stored information, automatically correcting course when necessary. As stated earlier, this concept does not mean that you are a machine, but that your physical brain and body functions as a machine that you operate. This automatic Creative Mechanism within you can operate in only one way. It must have a target to shoot at. As Alex Morrison said, you must first clearly see a thing in your mind before you can do it. When you do see a thing clearly in your mind, the creative Success Mechanism within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort, or “willpower.” Instead of trying hard by conscious effort to do the thing with ironed-jawed willpower, and all the while worrying and picturing to yourself all the things that are likely to go wrong, you simply relax the stra...

This is a necessary condition to personality transformation, regardless of the method of therapy used. Somehow, before a person can change, he must see himself in a new role.

We can begin to see why Dr. Albert Edward Wiggam, author of Marks of a Clear Mind and other books on the mind, called your mental picture of yourself “the strongest force within you.”

“Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye and you will be drawn toward it,” said Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the prominent liberal minister. “Picture yourself vividly as defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.”

Your present self-image was built on your own imagination pictures of yourself in the past, which grew out of interpretations and evaluations that you placed on experience. Now you are to use the same method to build an adequate self-image that you previously used to build an inadequate one. Set aside a period of 30 minutes each day when you can be alone and undisturbed. Relax and make yourself as comfortable as possible. Now close your eyes and exercise your imagination. Many people find they get better results if they imagine themselves sitting before a large motion picture screen—and imagine that they are seeing a motion picture of themselves. The important thing is to make these pictures as vivid and as detailed as possible. You want your mental pictures to approximate actual experience as much as possible. The way to do this is to pay attention to small details, sights, sounds, objects, in your imagined environment. One of my patients was using this exercise to overcome her fear of the dentist. She was unsuccessful, until she began to notice small details in her imagined picture—the smell of the antiseptic in the office, the feel of the leather on the chair arms, the sight of the dentist’s well-manicured nails as his hands approached her mouth, etc. Details of the imagined environment are all-important in this exercise, because for all practical purposes, you are creating a practice experience. And if the imagination is vivid enough and detailed enough, your imaginati...

As for the 30-minute time? You can begin experiencing positive results in five or ten minutes per day. Visualizations that last no longer than 10 to 15 minutes can result in extraordinary changes. The biggest key is to practice every day. Once you’ve established this habit and you’re seeing and feeling the results, it’s easy to find more time.

Now, the point I want to make is this: Adler had been hypnotized by a false belief about himself. Not figuratively, but literally and actually hypnotized. Remember that we said in the last chapter that the power of hypnosis is the power of belief. Let me repeat here Dr. Barber’s explanation of the “power” of hypnosis: “We found that hypnotic subjects are able to do surprising things only when convinced that the hypnotist’s words are true statements. . . . When the hypnotist has guided the subject to the point where he is convinced that the hypnotist’s words are true statements, the subject then behaves differently because he thinks and believes differently.” The important thing for you to remember is that it does not matter in the least how you got the idea or where it came from. You may never have met a professional hypnotist. You may have never been formally hypnotized. But if you have accepted an idea—from yourself, your teachers, your parents, friends, advertisements, from any other source—and further, if you are firmly convinced that idea is true, it has the same power over you as the hypnotist’s words have over the hypnotized subject.

If you could have seen Mr. Russell as I did, both “before” and “after,” you would never again entertain any doubts about the power of belief, or that an idea accepted as true from any source can be every bit as powerful as hypnosis.

The gripping strength of a third athlete has been tested on a dynometer and has been found to be 100 pounds. All his effort and straining cannot budge the needle beyond the 100-pound mark. Now he is hypnotized and told, “You are very, very strong. Stronger than you have ever been in your life. Much, much stronger. You are surprised at how strong you are. Again the gripping strength of his hand is tested. This time he easily pulls the needle to the 125-pound mark.

This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs. Just as quickly as you can dehypnotize yourself from the ideas of “I can’t,” “I’m not worthy,” “I don’t deserve it,” and other self-limiting ideas.

It is not knowledge of actual inferiority in skill or knowledge that gives us an inferiority complex and interferes with our living. It is the feeling of inferiority that does this.

The person with an inferiority complex invariably compounds the error by striving for superiority. His feelings spring from the false premise that he is inferior. From this false premise, a whole structure of “logical thought” and feeling is built. If he feels bad because he is inferior, the cure is to make himself as good as everybody else, and the way to feel really good is to make himself superior.

This striving for superiority gets him into more trouble, causes more frustration, and sometimes brings about a neurosis where none existed before. He becomes more miserable than ever, and “the harder he tries,” the more miserable he becomes. Inferiority and superiority are reverse sides of the same coin. The cure lies in realizing that the coin itself is spurious. The truth about you is this: You are not “inferior.” You are not “superior.” You are simply “You.”

“You” as a personality are not in competition with any other personality simply because there is not another person on the face of the earth like you, or in your particular class. You are an individual. You are unique. You are not “like” any other person and can never become “like” any other person. You are not “sup...

An “inferiority complex,” and its accompanying deterioration in performance, can be made to order in the psychological laboratory. All you need to do is to set up a norm or average, then convince your subject he does not measure up. According to a report in Science Digest, a psychologist wanted to find out how feelings of inferiority affected ability to solve problems.

Stop measuring yourself against “their” standards. You are not “them” and can never measure up. Neither can “they” measure up to yours—nor should they. Once you see this simple, rather self-evident truth, accept it, and believe it, your inferior feelings will vanish.

How to Use Mental Pictures to Relax (To be practiced for at least 30 minutes daily.) Seat yourself comfortably in an easy chair or lie down on your back. Consciously “let go” the various muscle groups as much as possible without making too much of an effort of it. Just consciously pay attention to the various parts of your body and let go a little. You will find that you can always voluntarily relax to a certain degree. You can stop frowning and let your forehead relax. You can ease up a little on the tension in your jaws. You can let your hands, your arms, your shoulders, and legs, become a little more relaxed than they are. Spend about five minutes on this and then stop paying any attention to your muscles. This is as far as you are going to try to go by conscious control. From here on out you will relax more and more by using your Creative Mechanism to automatically bring about a relaxed condition. In short, you are going to use “goal pictures,” held in imagination, and let your automatic mechanism realize those goals for you. MENTAL PICTURE 1 In your mind’s eye see yourself lying stretched out on the bed. Form a picture of your legs as they would look if made of concrete. See yourself lying there with two very heavy concrete legs. See these very heavy concrete legs sinking far down into the mattress from their sheer weight. Now picture your arms and hands as made of concrete. They also are very heavy and are sinking down into the bed and exerting tremendous pressure ag...

Daily practice is the key to getting results. Avoid judging yourself in this process. Regardless of where you start, you will improve with practice.

The underlying emotional problem has the same common denominator in every patient. This common denominator is that the patient has forgotten how, or probably never learned how, to control his present thinking to produce enjoyment.”

all skill learning is accomplished by trial and error, by making a trial, missing the mark, consciously remembering the degree of error, and making correction on the next trial—until finally a hit, or successful attempt, is accomplished. The successful reaction pattern is then remembered, or recalled, and imitated on future trials. This is true for a man learning to pitch horseshoes, throw darts, sing, drive a car, play golf, get along socially with other human beings, or any other skill. It is also true of a “mechanical rat,” learning its way through a maze.