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

by Maxwell Maltz

You can be happy now as well as every single day you are working toward achieving your goals.

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

This self-image is our own conception of the “sort of person I am.” It has been built up from our own beliefs about ourselves. But 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.

All your actions, feelings, behaviors—even your abilities—are always consistent with this self-image.

Every human being has been literally “engineered for success” by his Creator.

Every human being has access to a power greater than himself.

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. And even though real life has no set lines to be recited like a stage play, rehearsal practice will help you to ad-lib and react spontaneously to whatever situation you find yourself in, because you have practiced reacting spontaneously.

If . . . we have in our minds a picture of ourselves as fear-haunted and defeated nobodies, we must get rid of that picture at once and hold up our heads. That is a false picture and the false must go. 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.

Dr. Adler’s experience was very much like that of a patient of mine some years back, a businessman who wanted to excel in public speaking because he had a vital message to impart about his outstanding success in a difficult field. He had a good voice and an important topic, but he was unable to get up in front of strangers and put his message over. What held him back was his belief that he could not make a good talk, and that he would fail to impress his audience, simply because he did not have an imposing appearance; he did not “look like a successful executive.” This belief had burrowed so deeply into him that it threw up a roadblock every time he stood up before a group of people and began to talk. He mistakenly concluded that if he could have an operation to improve his appearance, he would then gain the confidence he needed. An operation might have done the trick and it might not . . . my experience with other patients had shown that physical change did not always guarantee personality change. The solution in this man’s case was found when he became convinced that his negative belief was preventing him from delivering the vital information he had. He succeeded in replacing the negative belief with a positive belief that he had a message of extreme importance that he alone could deliver, no matter what he looked like. In due time, he was one of the most sought after speakers in the business world. The only change was in his belief and in his self-image.

“How can I be happy?” the wife of an alcoholic husband asked me. “I don’t know,” I said, “but you can be happier by resolving not to add resentment and self-pity to your misfortune.”

“How can I possibly be happy?” asked a businessman, “I have just lost $200,000 on the stock market. I am ruined and disgraced.” “You can be happier,” I said, “by not adding your own opinion to the facts. It is a fact that you lost $200,000. It is your opinion that you are ruined and disgraced.”

“Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.”

I kept reminding myself that all these impossibles were opinions, not facts.

The success-type personality is composed of: Sense of direction Understanding Courage Compassion Esteem Self-Confidence Self-Acceptance

Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Decide what you want out of a situation. Always have something ahead of you to “look forward to”—to work for and hope for. Look forward, not backward. Develop what one of the automobile manufacturers calls “the forward look.” Develop a “nostalgia for the future” instead of for the past. The “forward look” and a “nostalgia for the future” can keep you youthful. Even your body doesn’t function well when you stop being a goal-striver and “have nothing to look forward to.” This is the reason that very often when a man retires, he dies shortly thereafter. When you’re not goal-striving, not looking forward, you’re not really “living.” In addition to your purely personal goals, have at least one impersonal goal, or cause, which you can identify yourself with.

Get interested in some project to help your fellow man—not out of a sense of duty, but because you want to.

FACT: Two friends are whispering when you walk up. Suddenly they stop talking and look somewhat embarrassed. OPINION: You think, “They must have been gossiping about me.”

Confidence is built upon an experience of success. When we first begin any undertaking, we are likely to have little confidence, because we have not learned from experience that we can succeed. This is true of learning to ride a bicycle, speak in public, or perform surgery. It is literally true that success breeds success. Even a small success can be used as a stepping-stone to a greater one. Managers of boxers are very careful to match them so they can have a graduated series of successful experiences. We can use the same technique, starting gradually, and experiencing success at first on a small scale.

Another important technique is to form the habit of remembering past successes, and forgetting failures. This is the way both a computer and the human brain are supposed to operate.

We can just as easily delete negative thoughts from our minds as we can delete documents by dragging them into t...

Use errors and mistakes as a way to learning—then dismiss them from your mind. Deliberately remember and picture to yourself past successes. Everyone has succeeded sometime at something.

The first step toward becoming stronger is the recognition that you are weak.

Many people say in effect to themselves, “Because I am skinny, fat, short, too tall, etc.—I am nothing.” Say to yourself instead, “I may not be perfect, I may have faults and weaknesses, I might have gotten off the track, I may have a long way to go—but I am something and I will make the most of that something.”

what I call the “Failure Mechanism,” when they associate them with the letters that make up the word “failure.” They are: Frustration, hopelessness, futility Aggressiveness (misdirected) Insecurity Loneliness (lack of “oneness”) Uncertainty Resentment Emptiness

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.