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

by Maxwell Maltz

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

if you would picture the end result—see the ball going where you wanted it to go—and have the confidence to know that it was going to do what you wanted, your subconscious would take over and direct your muscles correctly.

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

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.”

This same Creative Mechanism within you can help you achieve your best possible “self” if you will form a picture in your imagination of the self you want to be and see yourself in the new role.

Somehow, before a person can change, he must see himself in a new role.

mental picture of yourself “the strongest force within you.”

Our aim is to find the real self, and to bring our mental images of ourselves more in line with the objects represented by our goals.

Actually, there is no such thing as a “superiority complex.” People who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority—their “superior self” is a fiction, a cover-up, to hide from themselves and others their deep-down feelings of inferiority and insecurity.

In the first place such an all-wise and all powerful Creator would not turn out inferior products, any more than a master painter would paint inferior canvases. Such a Creator would not deliberately engineer his product to fail, any more than a manufacturer would deliberately build failure into an automobile.

What brings more glory, pride, and satisfaction to a father than seeing his offspring do well, succeed, and express to the full their abilities and talents?

Jesus expressed the same thought when he told us not to hide our light under a bushel, but to let our light shine “so that your Father may be glorified.”

God sees us as men and women in whom and through whom He can do a great work. He sees us as already serene, confident, and cheerful. He sees us not as pathetic victims of life, but masters of the art of living; not wanting sympathy, but imparting help to others, and therefore thinking less and less of ourselves, and full, not of self-concern, but of love and laughter and a desire to serve. . . . Let us look at the real selves which are in the making the moment we believe in their existence. We must recognize the possibility of change and believe in the self we are now in the process of becoming. That old sense of unworthiness and failure must go. It is false and we are not to believe in what is false.

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.

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.

make these pictures as vivid and as detail...

pay attention to small details, sights, sounds, objects, in your imagined environment.

remember is that during this 30 minutes you see yourself acting and reacting appropriately, successfully, ideally.

It doesn’t matter how you acted yesterday. You do not need to try to have faith you will act in the ideal way tomorrow. Your nervous system will take care of that in time—if you continue to practice.

This exercise builds new “memories” or stored data into your mid-brain and central nervous system. It builds a new image of self. After practicing it for a time, you will be surprised to find yourself “acting differently,” more or less automatically and spontaneously—without trying.

getting good at picturing who you want to be requires practice.

Just because the mental imagery isn’t clear when you begin does not mean it won’t get clearer, more vivid, more detailed, and more powerful each time you practice.

When you begin, it’s good to scan your body for tension and begin to consciously relax your head, torso, waist, legs, and so on. And, as strange as it may sound, allow yourself to “smile” into your brain and body, which greatly helps you relax. As you begin to relax, concentrate on breathing deeply. Follow your inhale and your exhale. Allow positive energy to enter as you exhale the negative.

go back into your past and find a “successful” memory, an occasion when y...

How “big” the success was doesn’t matter either. All that matters is that the memory triggers a positive, happy, feel-good experience in you right now.

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.

physical change did not always guarantee personality change.

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.”

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.

Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs.

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.

We judge ourselves, and measure ourselves, not against our own “norm” or “par” but against some other individual’s “norm.” When we do this, we always, without exception, come out second best.

hypnotized by the entirely erroneous idea that “I should be like so-and-so” or “I should be like everybody else.”

“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 not “like” any other person and can never become “like” any other person. You are not “supposed” to be like any other person and no other person is “supposed” to be like you.

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.

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.”

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.”

attempting to use effort or willpower to change beliefs or to cure bad habits has an adverse, rather than a beneficial, effect.

“When the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination invariably wins the day.”

Making an effort to refrain from the habit actually reinforced the habit, he found. His experiments proved that the best way to break a habit is to form a clear mental image of the desired end result, and to practice without effort toward reaching that goal.

“When they can relax, they can talk.”

the effort or “willpower” used to fight against or resist worry is the very thing that perpetuates worry and keeps it going.

Physical relaxation, when practiced daily, brings about an accompanying mental relaxation and a relaxed attitude that enables us to better cons...

Physical relaxation also, in itself, has a powerful influence in dehypnotizing us from negative att...

“unconscious,” is absolutely impersonal. It operates as a machine and has no “will” of its own. It always tries to react appropriately to your current beliefs and interpretations concerning environment. It always seeks to give you appropriate feelings, and to accomplish the goals that you consciously determine. It works only on the data that you feed it in the form of ideas, beliefs, interpretations, opinions.

It is conscious thinking that is the “control knob” of your unconscious machine. It was by conscious thought, though perhaps irrational and unrealistic, that the unconscious machine developed its negative and inappropriate reaction patterns, and it is by conscious rational thought that the automatic reaction patterns can be changed.

The present and the future depend on learning new habits and new ways of looking at old problems. There simply isn’t any future in digging continually into the past.

These memories of past failures do no harm as long as our conscious thought and attention are focused on the positive goal to be accomplished. Therefore, it is best to let these sleeping dogs lie.