Lessons from Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics)
Your self-image is the mental picture you have of yourself. It determines how you act and feel. If you have a negative or distorted self-image, you limit your potential and happiness.
Lesson from Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.
What if I told you that you could change your life by changing your mind? That's the premise of Psycho-Cybernetics, the classic book by Maltz, a plastic surgeon who realized that his patients often needed more than a scalpel to feel good about themselves. In the book, Maltz details techniques of how to use the power of your subconscious mind to create a positive self-image and achieve your goals.
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You are what you think about daily. “A human being always acts, feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment. This is a basic and fundamental law of mind. It is the way we are built.”
Visualization is the secret used by high-performing athletes (Michael Phelps, Jim Thrope, Jon Jones, and Conor McGregor) to achieve their goals. Use it. “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 deals, golf tournaments, or whatever, that accompanied your success. What sounds were there? What about your environment? What else was happening.”
There is nothing as powerful as forgiveness. “Therapeutic forgiveness cuts out, eradicates, cancels, makes the wrong as if it had never been.”
For it is only in confronting your old traumas that you can begin healing. “In removing old emotional scars, you alone can do the operation. You must become your own plastic surgeon—and give yourself a spiritual facelift. The results will be new life and new vitality, a new-found peace of mind and happiness.”
You are only limited by your own imagination, nothing else. “Creative imagination is not something reserved for the poets, the philosophers, or the inventors. It enters into our every act. For imagination sets the goal "picture" which our automatic mechanism works on. We act or fail to act, not because of "will," as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.”
Once you have a vision, act and don’t consume yourself over how it will work out. Do the work and trust the process. “You must "let it" work, rather than "make it" work. This trust is necessary because your creative mechanism operates below the level of consciousness, and you cannot "know" what is going on beneath the surface. Moreover, its nature is to operate spontaneously according to present need. Therefore, you have no guarantees in advance. It comes into operation as you act and as you place a demand upon it by your actions. You must not wait to act until you have proof—you must act as if it is there, and it will come through. "Do the thing and you will have the power," said Emerson.”
The only time you fail is when you refuse to learn. “Do not be afraid of making mistakes, or of temporary failures. All servo-mechanisms achieve a goal by negative feedback, or by going forward, making mistakes, and immediately correcting course.”
If you want to change, you need to have a new vision for yourself. “The unhappy, failure-type personality cannot develop a new self-image by pure willpower, or by arbitrarily deciding to. There must be some grounds, some justification, some reason for deciding that the old picture of self is in error and that a new picture is appropriate. You cannot merely imagine a new self-image; unless you feel that it is based upon truth. Experience has shown that when a person does change his self-image, he has the feeling that for one reason or another, he "sees," or realizes the truth about himself.”
Human nature has always needed spiritual and emotional well-being. Pursue these things to live meaningfully. “In man, the goal "to live" means more than mere survival. For an animal to "live" simply means that certain physical needs must be met. Man has certain emotional and spiritual needs which animals do not have. Consequently for man to "live" encompasses more than physical survival and procreation of the species. It requires certain emotional and spiritual satisfactions as well. Activity which is intimately tied into his "living" makes for a fuller life.”
Depression is on the rise not because we have too many things or too little time, but because we’re not fully engaging our mind and body in our work. “Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is built that way he is not happy unless he is functioning the way he was made to function—as a goal-striver… thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other.”
Whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. “Thus, if we dwell upon failure, and continually picture failure to ourselves in such vivid detail that it becomes "real" to our nervous system, we will experience the feelings that go with failure. On the other hand, if we keep our positive goal in mind, and picture it to ourselves so vividly as to make it "real," and think of it in terms of an accomplished fact, we will also experience "winning feelings": self-confidence, courage, and faith that the outcome will be desirable.
You experience beauty only when you forgive. “Forgiveness, when it is real, genuine, complete, and forgotten—is the scalpel which can remove the puss from old emotional wounds, heal them, and eliminate scar tissue.”
If you want to learn more about Psycho-Cybernetics and how it can help you improve your self-image and achieve your goals, tune in to this episode to learn how to use the power of your mind to change your life.
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Till next week, peace!