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

by Maxwell Maltz

Rational thought, to be effective in changing belief and behavior, must be accompanied with deep feeling and desire. Picture to yourself what you would like to be and have, and assume for the moment that such things might be possible. Arouse a deep desire for these things. Become enthusiastic about them. Dwell on them—and keep going over them in your mind. Your present negative beliefs were formed by thought plus feelings. Generate enough emotion, or deep feeling, and your new thoughts and ideas will cancel them out. If you will analyze this, you will see that you are using a process you have often used before—worry! The only difference is you change your goals from negative to positive. When you worry, you first of all picture some undesirable future outcome, or goal, very vividly in your imagination. You use no effort or willpower. But you keep dwelling on the “end result.” You keep thinking about it—dwelling on it—picturing it to yourself as a “possibility.” You play with the idea that it “might happen.” This constant repetition, and thinking in terms of “possibilities,” makes the end result appear more and more “real” to you. After time, appropriate emotions are automatically generated—fear, anxiety, discouragement—all these are appropriate to the undesirable end result you are worrying about. Now change the “goal picture”—and you can as easily generate “good emotions.” Constantly picturing to yourself, and dwelling on, a desirable end result will also make the possibi...