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

by Maxwell Maltz

Our errors, mistakes, failures, and sometimes even our humiliations, were necessary steps in the learning process. However, they were meant to be means to an end—and not an end in themselves. When they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten.

If we consciously dwell on the error, or consciously feel guilty about the error and keep berating ourselves because of it, then—unwittingly—the error or failure itself becomes the “goal” ...

If we are victimized, it is by our conscious, thinking mind and not by the “unconscious.”

is with the thinking part of our personality that we draw conclusions, and select the “goal images” that we shall concentrate upon.

Ideas Are Changed, Not by “Will,” but by Other Ideas

Don’t just pass these questions by casually. Wrestle with them. Think hard on them. Get emotional about them. Can you see that you have cheated yourself and sold yourself short—not because of a “fact”—but only because of some stupid belief?

Indignation and anger can sometimes act as liberators from false ideas.

Rational thought, to be effective in changing belief and behavior, must be accompanied with deep feeling and desire.

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.

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.

Constantly picturing to yourself, and dwelling on, a desirable end result will also make the possibility seem more real—and again appropriate emotions of enthusiasm, cheerfulness, encouragement, and happiness will automatically be generated.

‘As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.’”

Remember that your automatic mechanism can as easily function as a Failure Mechanism as it can as a Success Mechanism, depending on the data you give it to process, and the goals you set for it.

Many of us unconsciously and unwittingly—by holding negative attitudes and habitually picturing failure to ourselves in our imagination—set up goals of failure.

automatic mechanism does not reason about, or question, the data you feed it. It merely processes it a...

It is very important that the automatic mechanism be given true facts conc...

“Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will become so,”

Practically always it seems to be due to the tendency to exaggerate the difficulty and importance of your mental labors, to take them too seriously and fear they will find you incapable.

Most of us are subjected to negative suggestions every day. If our conscious mind is working and on the job, we do not have to accept them blindly. “It ain’t necessarily so” is a good motto.

It is the job of conscious rational thought to decide what you want, select the goals you wish to achieve—and concentrate on these rather than on what you do not want.

“It would have been very bad,” he said, “but I never allow my mind to think in that way.”

conscious, rational thought selects the goal, gathers information, concludes, evaluates, estimates, and starts the wheels in motion. It is not, however, responsible for results.

It is with the forebrain that we think “I,” and feel our sense of identity. It is with the forebrain that we exercise imagination, or set goals. We use the forebrain to gather information, make observations, and evaluate incoming sense-data, form judgments.

But the forebrain cannot create. It cannot “do” the job to be done, any more than the operator of a computer can “do” the work.

creative ideas are not consciously thought out by forebrain thinking, but come automatically, spontaneously, and somewhat like a bolt out of the blue, when the conscious mind has let go of the problem and is engaged in thinking of something else.

practically all his good ideas came to him when he was not actively engaged in work on a problem, and that most of the discoveries of his contemporaries were made when they were away from their workbench,

Thomas A. Edison was stymied by a problem, he would lie down and take a short nap.

“Ideas, I find, come most readily when you are doing something that keeps the mind alert without putting too much strain upon it. Shaving, driving a car, sawing a plank, or fishing or hunting, for instance. Or engaging with some friend in stimulating conversation. Some of my best ideas came from information picked up casually and entirely unrelated to my work.”

they get their best ideas either in the shower, while walking along the beach, or otherwise being in or around water. Perhaps the “flow” of water leads to the flow of ideas.

The other “activity” that often leads to creative insights is sleeping. If you have a question you’d like an answer to, or a project you’re working on that you’d like to accomplish with greater ease, you can instruct your mind before going to bed to be open to useful information and to remember it upon awakening.

Keeping a notepad and pen on your nightstand to record the insights as th...

what we call “genius” is a process; a natural way in which the human mind works to solve any problem, but that we mistakenly apply the term “genius” only when the process is used to write a book or paint a picture.

Conscious effort inhibits and jams the automatic Creative Mechanism.

1. “Do Your Worrying Before You Place Your Bet, Not After the Wheel Starts Turning”

I would do all my worrying, all my forebrain thinking, before a decision was made, and that after making a decision, and setting the wheels in motion, I would “dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.”

much nervousness and anxiety is caused by mentally trying to escape or run away from something that you have decided to go through with physically.

Live today as best you can. By living today well you do the most within your power to make tomorrow better.

“Don’t try to stop drinking forever—merely say, ‘I will not drink today.’”

Practice becoming more consciously aware of your present environment. What sights, sounds, odors are present in your environment right now that you are not conscious of?

The Native Americans and the early pioneers had to be alert to the sights and sounds and feelings of their environment in order to survive.

So does modern man, but for a different reason: Not because of physical dangers, but because of the dangers of “nervous disorders” that come from confused thinking, from failure to live creatively and spontaneously and to respond appropriately to environment.

This becoming more aware of what is happening now, and attempting to respond only to what is happening now, has almost magical...

The next time you feel yourself tensing up, becoming jittery and nervous—pull yourself up short and say, “What is there here and now that I should re...

A great deal of nervousness is caused from unwittingly “trying” to do something that cannot be done here or now. You are then geared for action ...

In short we do not react to reality—but to a fiction. Full recognition of this, and realization of what you’re doing, can frequently bring about an amazingly quick “cure.”

3. Try to Do Only One Thing at a Time

We can only do one thing at a time.

bad mental habit of feeling that you should be doing many things now.

Just as only one grain of sand could pass through the hourglass, so could we only do one thing, at a time.