Psycho-Cybernetics Deluxe Edition: The Original Text of the Classic Guide to a New Life (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series)

by Maxwell Maltz

In medical circles, we call this “purpose tremor.” It occurs, as above, in normal people when they try too hard, or are “too careful” not to make an error in accomplishing some purpose.

“I don’t like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything,” said Henry Ward Beecher.

When you become too consciously concerned about “what others think”; when you become too careful to consciously try to please other people; when you become too sensitive to the real or fancied disapproval of other people—then you have excessive negative feedback, inhibition, and poor performance.

Then, when he walked into a ritzy dining room, he would imagine or pretend that he “was going to eat with Ma and Pa”—and act that way.

Conscience’s Job Is to Make You Happy—Not Miserable

But, when you inhibit bad emotions, you also inhibit the expression of good emotions.

Properly directed and controlled, anger is an important element of courage.

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.

See yourself sitting quietly, letting the phone ring, ignoring its signal, unmoved by its command. Although you are aware of it you no longer mind or obey it. Also, get clearly in your mind the fact that the outside signal in itself has no power over you; no power to move you. In the past you have obeyed it, responded to it, purely out of habit.

“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.

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.

“very well, but not this very minute. I will delay leaving the room for two minutes. I can refuse to obey for only two minutes!”

one of the best ways that I have found for entering this quiet center is to build for yourself, in imagination, a little mental room. Furnish this room with whatever is most restful and refreshing to you: perhaps beautiful landscapes, if you like paintings; a volume of your favorite verse, if you like poetry.

Your soul and your nervous system need a room for rest, recuperation and protection every bit as much as your physical body needs a physical house, and for the same reasons. Your mental quiet room gives your nervous system a little vacation every day.

And if you have just talked with an irate and irritable customer, you need a change in set before talking with a second customer. Otherwise “emotional carry-over” from the one situation will be inappropriate in dealing with the other.

the key to the matter of whether you are disturbed or tranquil, fearful or composed, is not the external stimulus, whatever it may be, but your own response and reaction.

As Prescott Lecky expressed it, “The same attitude must be maintained in spite of environmental changes.”

“Doing Nothing” Is the Proper Response to an Unreal Problem

(1) Practice Without Pressure

The more intense the crisis situation under which you learn, the less you learn.

One man I know lines up six or eight empty chairs, imagines people sitting in them, and practices his speech on the imaginary audience.

I've been doing it since I was 17 years old. I wanted to become a public speaker speaking in English, so I started to talk to the empty wall imagining thousands of people are listening to me. Such a powerful way to practice something.

Common experience teaches that, when great demands are made upon us, if only we fearlessly accept the challenge and confidently expend our strength, every danger or difficulty brings its own strength—‘As thy days so shall thy strength be.’”*

If you lose sight of your original goal, and your attitude-goal becomes one of running away from the crisis, of seeking to somehow get past it by evading it—this running-away tendency will also be re-inforced, and you will experience fear and

“When some misfortune threatens, consider seriously and deliberately what is the very worst that could possibly happen. Having looked this possible misfortune in the face, give yourself sound reasons for thinking that after all it would be no such terrible disaster. Such reasons always exist, since at the worst nothing that happens to oneself has any cosmic importance. When you have looked for some time steadily at the worst possibility and have said to yourself with real conviction, ‘Well, after all, that would not matter so very much,’ you will find that your worry diminishes to a quite extraordinary extent.

Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen if I fail?”, rather than responding automatically, blindly and irrationally.

And to supply a goal capable of activating your creative mechanism, you must think of the end result in terms of a present possibility. The possibility of the goal must be seen so clearly that it becomes “real” to your brain and nervous system. So real, in fact, that the same feelings are evoked as would be present if the goal were already achieved.

Remember: When you experience that winning feeling, your internal machinery is set for success.

Picture it to yourself clearly and vividly. Then simply capture the feeling you would experience if the desirable goal were already an accomplished fact. Then you are acting spontaneously and creatively. Then you are using the powers of your subconscious mind.

But by arranging things so that we can succeed in little things, we can build an atmosphere of success which will carry over into larger undertakings.

Albert Tangora, for many years the World Champion Speed Typist, used to practice “typing slow”—at half normal speed—whenever he reached a plateau, where further increase in speed seemed impossible.

Go back in memory and relive those successful experiences. In your imagination revive the entire picture in as much detail as you can. In your mind’s eye “see” not only speech, business deal, golf tournament, or whatever, that accompanied your success.

You will find yourself feeling self-confident, because self-confidence is built upon memories of past successes.

Whenever we find ourselves experiencing undesirable feeling-tones, we should not concentrate upon the undesirable feeling, even to the extent of driving it out. Instead, we should immediately concentrate upon positive imagery—upon filling the mind with wholesome, positive, desirable images, imaginations, and memories. If we do this, the negative feelings take care of themselves. They simply evaporate. We develop new feeling-tones appropriate to the new imagery.

The past explains how you got here. But where you go from here is your responsibility. The choice is yours.

“rapid-healers” had in common. They were optimistic, cheerful “positive thinkers” who not only expected to “get well” in a hurry, but invariably had some compelling reason or need to get well quick.

Mental attitudes can influence the body’s healing mechanisms.

In the human body the capillaries are the channels through which waste is removed. It has definitely been established that lack of exercise and inactivity literally “dries up” the capillaries.

As a group, creative workers—research scientists, inventors, painters, writers, philosophers not only live longer, but remain productive longer than non-creative workers.

Develop an enthusiasm for life, create a need for more life, and you will receive more life.

“We age, not by years, but by events and our emotional reactions to them,”

Such nonsense as “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” still persists despite the fact that numerous researches have shown that learning ability is about as good at 70 as it is at 17.