Maxwell Maltz

https://youtu.be/cQt4Tn473ok

Conduct an accurate inventory and analysis of the contents of my self-image

• The self image is stored in the subconscious mind. I can alter the self-image and I can project outwards the self-image that is going to attract to us my intent and allow me to take action through the subconscious means to produce the results I want
• "Creative Imagination" is not something reserved for the poets, the philosophers, the inventors. It enters into our every act. For imagination sets the goal "picture" which my automatic mechanism works on. I act, or fail to act, not because of "will," as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination
• I act, and feel, not according to what things are really like, but according to the image my mind holds of what they are like. I have certain mental images of myself, my world, and the people around me, and I behave as through these images were the truth, the reality, rather than the things they represent
• Finding my best self
  • The aim of self-image psychology is not to create a fictitious self which is all-powerful, arrogant, egotistic, all-important. Such an image is as inappropriate and unrealistic as the inferior image of self. My aim is to find the "real self," and to bring my mental images of myself more in line with "the objects they represent."
• Exercise
  • Set aside a period of 30 minutes each day where I can be alone and undisturbed. Relax and make myself as comfortable as possible. Now close my eyes and exercise my imagination
  • See myself acting and reacting appropriately, successfully, ideally. It doesn't matter how I acted yesterday. I do not need to try to have faith I will act in the ideal way tomorrow. My nervous system will take care of that in time if I continue to practice
  • Make these pictures as vivid and as detailed as possible
  • The way to do this is pay attention to small details, sights, sounds, objects, in my imagined environment
  • This exercise builds new "memories" to stored data into my mid-brain and central nervous system. It builds a new image of self. After practicing it for a time, I will be surprised to find myself "acting differently," more or less automatically and spontaneously "without trying"

Identify erroneous and restrictive programming imbedded in my self-image and systemically alter it to better suit my purposes

• The unhappy, failure-type personality cannot develop a new self-image by pure will power, 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. I cannot merely imagine a new self-image; unless I feel that it is based upon truth
• Removing emotional scars
  • Many people have inner emotional scars who have never suffered physical injuries. And the result on personality is the same. These people have been hurt or injured by someone in the past. To guard against future injury from that source they form a spiritual callus, an emotional scar to protect their ego. This scar tissue, however, not only "protects" them from the individual who originally hurt them, it "protects" them against all other humans beings. An emotional wall is built through which neither friend nor foe can pass
  • Three rules for immunizing myself against emotional hurts
  • Be too big to feel threatened
  • A self-reliant, responsible attitude makes me less vulnerable
  • Relax away emotional hurts
• Dehypnotize myself from false beliefs
  • And this feeling of inferiority comes about for just one reason: I judge myself, and measure myself, not against my own "norm" or "par" but against some other individual's "norm." When I do this, I always, without exception, come out second best
  • Stop measuring myself against "their" standards. I am not "them" and can never measure up. Neither can "they" measure up to mine, nor should they. Once I see this simple, rather self-evident truth, accept it and believe it, my inferior feelings will vanish
  • Physical relaxation plays a key role in the dehypnotization process

Use my imagination to reprogram and manage my self-image

• Understanding the psychology of the self can mean the difference between success and failure, love and hate, bitterness and happiness. The discovery of the real self can rescue a crumbling marriage, recreate a faltering career, transform victims of 'personality failure.' On another plane, discovering my real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity
• How to unlock my real personality
  • When I become too conscious concerned about "what others think"; when I become too careful to conscious try to please other people; when I become too sensitive to the real or fancied disapproval of other people, then I have excessive negative feedback, inhibition, and poor performance
  • Practice exercises
  • Don't wonder in advance what I am "going to say." Just open my mouth and say it. Improvise as I go along
  • Don't plan (take no thought for tomorrow). Don't think before I act. Act, and correct my actions as I go along. This advice may seem radical, yet it is actually the way all servo-mechanisms must work
  • Stop criticizing myself. The inhibited person indulges in self-critical analysis continually. After each action, however simple, he says to himself, "I wonder if I should have done that." after he has gotten up courage enough to say something, he immediately says to himself, "Maybe I shouldn't have said that."
  • Make a habit of speaking louder than usual
  • Let people know when I like them
• Ingredients of the "Success-Type": personality and how to acquire them
  • S-ense of direction
  • Get myself a goal worth working for. Better still, get myself a project. Decide what I want out of a situation. Always have something ahead of me 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
  • U-nderstanding
  • Look for and seek out true information concerning myself, my problems, other people, or the situation, whether it is good news or bad news. Adopt the motto, "It doesn't matter who's right, but what's right."
  • C-ourage
  • Be willing to make a few mistakes, to suffer a little pain to get what I want. Don't sell myself short. I've got the resources. But I never know I've got them until I act, and give them a chance to work for me
  • C-harity
  • Try to develop a genuine appreciation for people by realizing the truth about them
  • Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person's feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs
  • Act as if other people are important and treat them accordingly
  • E-steem
  • Stop carrying around a mental picture of myself as a defeated, worthless person. Stop dramatizing myself as an object of pity and injustice. Use the practice exercises in this book to build up an adequate self-image
  • S-elf-Confidence
  • Confidence is built upon an experience of success. When I first begin any undertaking, I am likely to have little confidence, because I have not learned from experience that I can succeed. This is true of learning to ride a bicycle, speak in public, or perform surgery
  • Use errors and mistakes as a way to learn, then dismiss them from my mind. Deliberately remember and picture to myself past successes
  • S-elf-Acceptance
  • Accept myself as I am, and start from there. Learn to emotionally tolerate imperfection in myself. It is necessary to intellectually recognize my shortcomings, but disastrous to hate myself because of them
    

Use my imagination in concert with my self-image to effectively communicate with my servo-mechanism, so that it acts as an Automatic Success Mechanism, moving me steadily toward my goals, including getting back no course when confronted with obstacles

• Servo-mechanisms are so constructed that they automatically "steer" their way to a goal, target, or "answer." This new concept does not mean "I" am a machine, but that my physical brain and body functions as a machine which "I" operate. This automatic creative mechanism within me can operate in only one way. It must have a target to shoot at
  • One goal is where the target, goal, or "answer" is known, and the objective is to reach it or accomplish it
  • Another goal is where the target or "answer" is not known and the objective is to discover or locate it
• The failure mechanism: How to make it work for me instead of against me
  • F-rustration, hopelessness, futility
  • Frustration is an emotional feeling which develops whenever some important goal cannot be realized or where some strong desire is thwarted
  • Chronic frustration usually means that the goals I have set for myself are unrealistic, or the image I have of myself is inadequate, or both
  • A-ggressiveness (misdirected)
  • Excessive and misdirected aggressiveness follows frustration as night follows day
  • The failure-type personality does not direct his aggressiveness toward the accomplishment of a worthwhile goal. Instead, it is used in such self-destructive channels as ulcers, high blood pressure, worry, excessive smoking, compulsive overwork, or it may be turned upon other persons in the form of irritability, rudeness, gossip, nagging, or fault-finding
  • I-nsecurity
  • The feeling of insecurity is based upon a concept or belief of inner inadequacy. If I feel that I do not "measure up": to what is required, I feel insecure
  • Since man is a goal-striving mechanism, the self realizes itself fully only when man is moving forward towards something
  • L-oneliness (lack of "oneness")
  • Doing things with other people and enjoying things with other people, helps me to forget myself. In stimulating conversation, in dancing, playing together, or in working together for a common goal, I become interested in something other than maintaining my own shams and pretenses
  • Develop some social skill that will add to the happiness of other people
  • U-ncertainty
  • Elbert Hubbard said, "The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one."
  • Uncertainty is a "way" of avoiding mistakes, and responsibility
  • One "way" is to avoid as many decisions as possible, and prolong them as much as possible. Another "way" is to have a handy scapegoat to blame
  • R-esentment
  • When the failure-type personality looks for a scapegoat or excuse for his failure, he often blames society, "the system", life, the "breaks."
  • He resents the success and happiness of others because it is proof to him that life is short-changing him and he is being treated unfairly
  • Resentment is an attempt to make my own failure palatable by explaining it in terms of unfair treatment, injustice
  • Remember that my resentment is not caused by other persons, events, or circumstances. It is caused by my own emotional response, my own reaction. I alone have power over this, and I can control it if I firmly convince myself that resentment and self-pity are not way sot happiness and success, but ways to defeat and unhappiness
  • E-mptiness
  • A person who has the capacity to enjoy still alive within him finds enjoyment in many ordinary and simple things in life. He also enjoys whatever success in a material way he has achieved. The person in whom the capacity to enjoy is dead can find enjoyment in nothing
  • Emptiness is a symptom that I am not living creatively. I either have no goal tha tis important enough to me, or I am not using my talents and efforts in striving toward an important goal
  • How to use negative thinking
  • I am sensitive to the negative to the extent that it can alert me to danger
  • I recognize the negative for what it is, something undesirable, something I don't want, something that does not bring genuine happiness
  • I take immediate corrective action and substitute an opposite factor from the Success Mechanism
• I can acquire the habit of happiness
  • "The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere," said that most famous moralist, Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • For the next 21 days
  • I will be as cheerful as possible
  • I will try to feel and act a little more friendly toward other people
  • I am going to be a little less critical and a little more tolerant of other people, their faults, failings and mistakes. I will place the best possible interpretation upon their actions
  • Insofar as possible, I am going to act as if success were inevitable, and I already am the sort of personality I want to be. I will practice "acting like" and "feeling like" this new personality
  • I will not let my own opinion color facts in a pessimistic or negative way
  • I will practice smiling at least three times during the day
  • Regardless of what happens, I will react as calmly and intelligently as possible
  • I will ignore completely and close my mind to all those pessimistic and negative "facts" which I can do nothing

Effectively use my servo-mechanism as something like a giant search engine, to provide precisely the idea, information, or solution I need for any particular purpose

• How to utilize the power of rational thinking
  • Ideas are changed, not by "will," but by other ideas
  • Questions
  • Yourself, "is this belief based upon an actual fact, or upon an assumption, or a false conclusion?"
  • Is there any rational reason for such a belief?
  • Could it be that I am mistaken in this belief?
  • Would I come to the same conclusion about some other person in a similar way?
  • Why should I continue to act and feel as if this were true if there is no good reason to believe it?
• Relax and let my success mechanism work for me
  • Too much effort to consciously bring about spontaneity is likely to destroy spontaneous action. It is much easier and more effective to simply define my goal or end result. Picture it to myself clearly and vividly. Then simply capture the feeling I would experience if the desirable goal were already an accomplished fact. Then I am acting spontaneously and creatively. Then I am using the powers of my subconscious mind
  • Five rules for freeing my creative machinery
  • Do my worrying before I place my bet, not after the wheel starts turning
  • Form the habit of consciously responding to the present moment
  • Try to do only one thing at a time
  • Sleep on it
  • Relax while I work
• In order to perform well in a crisis I need to
  • Practice without pressure
  • i.e Fire drill to get the nervous system able to respond in a certain way that is optimal for them in the case of being in an actual fire
  • Crisis brings power
  • The secret lies in the attitude of "fearlessly accepting the challenge," and "confidently expending my strength." this means maintaining an aggressive, goal-directed attitude, rather than a defensive, evasive, negative one: "No matter what happens, I can handle it, or I can see it through," rather than, "I hope nothing happens."
  • The essence of this aggressive attitude is remaining goal oriented. I keep my own positive goal in mind. I intend to "go through" the crisis experience to achieve my goal
  • What is the worst that can possibly happen
  • Close scrutiny will show that most of these everyday so-called "crisis scenarios" are not life-or-death matters at all, but opportunities to either advance, or stay where I am