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

by Maxwell Maltz

Revengeful forgiveness, however, is not therapeutic forgiveness.

Therapeutic forgiveness cuts out, eradicates, cancels, makes the wrong as if it had never been. Therapeutic forgiveness is like surgery.

Therapeutic forgiveness is not difficult. The only difficulty is to secure your own willingness to give up and do without your sense of condemnation—your willingness to cancel out the debt, with no mental reservations.

You cannot forgive a person unless you have first condemned him. Jesus never condemned the woman in the first place—so there was nothing for him to forgive.

One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to confuse our behavior with our “self” . . . to conclude that because we did a certain act it characterizes us as a certain sort of person.

We seem to recognize that all children, in learning to walk, will occasionally fall. We say “he fell” or “he stumbled.” We do not say “he is a faller” or “he is a stumbler.”

It was essential, he said, that the patient learn to stop blaming himself, condemning himself, and feeling remorseful over his habits—if he were to cure them.

To live creatively, we must be willing to be a little vulnerable. We must be willing to be hurt a little—if necessary—in creative living.

People with emotional scars, grudges, and the like are living in the past, which is characteristic of old people.

Your do-it-yourself kit consists of relaxation of negative tensions to prevent scars, therapeutic forgiveness to remove old scars, providing yourself with a tough (but not a hard) epidermis instead of a shell, creative living, a willingness to be a little vulnerable, and a nostalgia for the future instead of the past.

When we say that a person “has a good personality,” what we really mean is that he has freed and released the creative potential within him and is able to express his real self.

The inhibited personality has imposed a restraint on the expression of the real self. For one reason or another he is afraid to express himself, afraid to be himself, and has locked up his real self within an inner prison.

Excessive Negative Feedback Is the Key to Inhibition

Negative feedback in a servo-mechanism is equivalent to criticism. Negative feedback says in effect, “You are wrong—you are off course—you need to take corrective action to get back on the beam.”

The purpose of negative feedback, however, is to modify response, and change the course of forward action, not to stop it altogether.

If negative feedback is working properly, a missile or a torpedo reacts to “criticism” just enough to correct course, and keeps going forward toward the target. This course will be, as ...

Excessive Negative Feedback Equals Inhibition

Inhibition and excessive negative feedback are one and the same. When we overreact to negative feedback or criticism, we are likely to conclude that not only is our present course slightly off beam, or wrong, but that it is wrong for us to even want to go forward.

When it comes to our attention that our manner of expression is off course, missing the mark, or “wrong”—we conclude that self-expression itself is wrong, or that success for us (reaching our particular tree) is wrong. Keep in mind that excessive negative feedback has the effect of interfering with, or stopping completely, the appropriate response.

when we talk we receive negative feedback data through our ears by listening to or “monitoring” our own voice.

If the stutterer’s excessive feedback can be toned down, or if it can be made spontaneous rather than anticipatory, improvement in speech will be immediate.

Conscious Self-Criticism Makes You Do Worse

Dr. E. Colin Cherry stated his belief that stuttering was caused by excessive monitoring.

Excessive Carefulness Leads to Inhibition and Anxiety

in normal people when they try too hard, or are “too careful” not to make an error in accomplishing some purpose.

Excessive carefulness and anxiety are close kin. Both have to do with too much concern for possible failure, or doing the “wrong thing,” and making too much of a conscious effort to do right.

Self-Consciousness Is Really Others’ Consciousness

The way to make a good impression on other people is: Never consciously “try” to make a good impression on them. Never act, or fail to act, purely for consciously contrived effect. Never “wonder” consciously what the other person is thinking of you, how he is judging you.

The Job of Your Conscience Is to Make You Happy—Not Miserable

self-expression, or lack of it, is not basically an ethical question, aside from the fact that it is our duty to use the talents that our Creator gave us.

If you are among the millions who suffer unhappiness and failure because of inhibition—you need to deliberately practice disinhibition. You need to practice being less careful, less concerned, less conscientious. You need to practice speaking before you think instead of thinking before you speak—acting without thinking, instead of thinking or “considering carefully” before you act.

A torpedo does not “think out” all its errors in advance, and attempt to correct them in advance. It must act first—start moving toward the goal—then correct any errors that may occur. “We cannot think first and act afterwards,”

Make a habit of speaking louder than usual. Inhibited people are notoriously soft-spoken. Raise the volume of your voice. You don’t have to shout at people and use an angry tone—just consciously practice speaking louder than usual. Loud talk in itself is a powerful disinhibitor.

Let people know when you like them. The inhibited personality is as afraid of expressing “good” feelings as bad ones. If he expresses love, he is afraid it will be judged sentimentality; if he expresses friendship, he is afraid it will be considered fawning or apple-polishing. If he compliments someone, he is afraid the other will think him superficial, or suspect an ulterior motive. Totally ignore these negative feedback signals.

Over-Response Is a Bad Habit That Can Be Cured

You do not have to answer the telephone. You do not have to obey. You can, if you choose, totally ignore the telephone bell. You can, if you choose, continue sitting quietly and relaxed—maintaining your own original state of organization, by refusing to respond to the signal.

the outside signal in itself has no power over you; no power to move you.

“The telephone is ringing, but I do not have to answer it. I can just let it ring.” This thought will “key in” to your mental picture of yourself sitting quietly, relaxed, unresponding, doing nothing, letting the telephone ring unheeded, and will act as a trigger or “clue” to call up the same attitude that you had when letting the telephone ring.

“Her philosophy was simple: ‘I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.’” She was able to maintain her inner equilibrium and effectively cope with her environment in spite of war, fire, pestilence, and unrequited love by delaying the response. Delaying the response breaks up, and interferes with, the automatic workings of conditioning.

You cannot “feel” the emotion of anger or fear if your muscles remain perfectly relaxed. Therefore, if you can delay “feeling angry” for ten seconds, delay responding at all, you can extinguish the automatic reflex.

Relaxation Erects a Psychic Screen, or Tranquilizer

Response means tension. Lack of response means relaxation.

It has been proved in scientific laboratory experiments that you absolutely cannot feel angry, fearful, anxious, insecure, “unsafe” as long as your muscles remain perfectly relaxed. All these things are, in essence, our own feelings.

Tension in muscles is a “preparation for action” or a “getting ready to respond.” Relaxation of muscles brings about “mental relaxati...

Relaxation means—no response. Therefore, in your daily practice of relaxation, you are learning disinhibition as well as providing yourself with nature’s own do-it-yourself tranquilizer, which you can take with you into your daily activities. Protect yourself from disturbing stimuli by maintaining the relaxed attitude.

Build Yourself a Quiet Room in Your Mind

For nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble, does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.

His answer was “I have a foxhole in my mind.” He went on to say that just as a soldier retreated into his foxhole for protection, rest, and recuperation, he periodically retired into his own mental foxhole, where he allowed nothing to bother him.

Each person needs a quiet room inside his own mind—a quiet center within him, like the deep of the ocean that is never disturbed, no matter how rough the waves may become on the surface.

build for yourself, in imagination, a little mental room. Furnish this room with whatever is most restful and refreshing to you: