Psycho-Cybernetics

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This indicated to me that reconstruction of the physical image itself was not “the” real key to changes in personality.

When this “something else” was reconstructed, the person himself changed. When this “something else” was not reconstructed, the person himself remained the same, although his physical features might be radically different.

cybernetics has to do with teleology—the goal-striving, goal-oriented behavior of mechanical systems.

The self-image is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self-image and you change the personality and the behavior.

But more than this: The self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the self-image and you expand the “area of the possible.” The development of an adequate, realistic self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents, and literally turn failure into success.

“Positive thinking” does indeed “work” when it is consistent with the individual’s self-image. It literally cannot “work” when it is inconsistent with the self-image—until the self-image itself has been changed.

In order to understand self-image psychology, and use it in your own life, you need to know something of the mechanism it employs to accomplish its goal. There is an abundance of scientific evidence that shows that the human brain and nervous system operate purposefully in accordance with the known principles of cybernetics to accomplish goals of the individual.

The self-image is changed, for better or worse, not by intellect alone, or by intellectual knowledge alone, but by “experiencing.” Wittingly or unwittingly you developed your self-image by your creative experiencing in the past. You can change it by the same method.

Our present state of self-confidence and poise is the result of what we have experienced rather than what we have learned intellectually.

Both experimental and clinical psychology have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail.

You can acquire information from reading a book. But to “experience” you must creatively respond to information. Acquiring information itself is passive. Experiencing is active. When you “experience,” something happens inside your nervous system and your midbrain. New “engrams” and “neural” patterns are recorded in the gray matter of your brain.

It usually requires a minimum of about 21 days to effect any perceptible change in a mental image.

Therefore you will derive more benefit from this book if you will secure your own consent to reserve critical judgment for at least three weeks.

The Self Image: They Key to a Better Life

The most important psychological discovery of this century is the discovery of the “self-image.” Whether we realize it or not, each of us carries about with us a mental blueprint or picture of ourselves. It may be vague and ill-defined to our conscious gaze. In fact, it may not be consciously recognizable at all. But it is there, complete down to the last detail.

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics (p. 2). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This self-image becomes a golden key to living a better life because of two important discoveries: 
All your actions, feelings, behaviors—even your abilities—are always consistent with this self-image.In short, you will “act like” the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. Not only this, but you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or willpower.
The self-image can be changed

it is literally impossible to really think positively about a particular situation as long as you hold a negative concept of your “self.”

Lecky conceived of the personality as a “system of ideas,” all of which must seem to be consistent with one another. Ideas that are inconsistent with the system are rejected, “not believed,” and not acted on. Ideas that seem to be consistent with the system are accepted. At the very center of this system of ideas—the keystone—the base upon which all else is built, is the individual’s “ego ideal,” his “self-image,” or his conception of himself.

Like any other servo-mechanism, it must have a clear-cut goal, objective, or “problem” to work on. The goals that our own Creative Mechanism seeks to achieve are mental images, or mental pictures, which we create by the use of imagination. The key goal-image is our self-image. Our self-image prescribes the limits for the accomplishment of any particular goals. It prescribes the “area of the possible.” Like any other servo-mechanism, our Creative Mechanism works on information and data that we feed into it (our thoughts, beliefs, interpretations). Through our attitudes and interpretations of situations, we “describe” the problem to be worked on. If we feed information and data into our Creative Mechanism to the effect that we ourselves are unworthy, inferior, undeserving, incapable (negative self-image), this data is processed and acted on as is any other data in giving us the “answer” in the form of objective experience. Like any other servo-mechanism, our Creative Mechanism makes use of stored information, or “memory,” in solving current problems and responding to current situations. Your program for getting more living out of life consists in, first of all, learning something about this Creative Mechanism, or automatic guidance system within you and how to use it as a Success Mechanism, rather than as a Failure Mechanism. The method itself consists in learning, practicing, and experiencing new habits of thinking, imagining, remembering, and acting in order to (1) develop an adequate and realistic self-image, and (2) use your Creative Mechanism to bring success and happiness in achieving particular goals.

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics (pp. 13-14). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Practice Exercises

Get a New Mental Picture of 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 the 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 on 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.

The truth in this chapter can set you free of an old, inadequate self-image, if you read it often, think intently about the implications, and “hammer home” its truths to yourself.

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics (p. 30). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

“Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye and you will be drawn toward it,” said Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the prominent liberal minister. “Picture yourself vividly as defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.” Your present self-image was built on your own imagination pictures of yourself in the past, which grew out of interpretations and evaluations that you placed on experience. Now you are to use the same method to build an adequate self-image that you previously used to build an inadequate one.

Set aside a period of 30 minutes each day when you can be alone and undisturbed. Relax and make yourself as comfortable as possible. Now close your eyes and exercise your imagination. Many people find they get better results if they imagine themselves sitting before a large motion picture screen—and imagine that they are seeing a motion picture of themselves. The important thing is to make these pictures as vivid and as detailed as possible. You want your mental pictures to approximate actual experience as much as possible. The way to do this is to pay attention to small details, sights, sounds, objects, in your imagined environment. One of my patients was using this exercise to overcome her fear of the dentist. She was unsuccessful, until she began to notice small details in her imagined picture—the smell of the antiseptic in the office, the feel of the leather on the chair arms, the sight of the dentist’s well-manicured nails as his hands approached her mouth, etc. Details of the imagined environment are all-important in this exercise, because for all practical purposes, you are creating a practice experience. And if the imagination is vivid enough and detailed enough, your imagination practice is equivalent to an actual experience insofar as your nervous system is concerned.

The next important thing to remember is that during this 30 minutes you see yourself acting and reacting appropriately, successfully, ideally. It doesn’t matter how you acted yesterday. You do not need to try to have faith you will act in the ideal way tomorrow. Your nervous system will take care of that in time—if you continue to practice. See yourself acting, feeling, “being,” as you want to be. Do not say to yourself, “I am going to act this way tomorrow.” Just say to yourself: “I am going to imagine myself acting this way now—for thirty minutes today.” Imagine how you would feel if you were already the sort of personality you want to be. If you have been shy and timid, see yourself moving among people with ease and poise and feeling good because of it. If you have been fearful and anxious in certain situations, see yourself acting calmly and deliberately, acting with confidence and courage—and feeling expansive and confident because you are.

This exercise builds new “memories” or stored data into your mid-brain and central nervous system. It builds a new image of self. After practicing it for a time, you will be surprised to find yourself “acting differently,” more or less automatically and spontaneously—without trying. This is as it should be. You do not need to try or make an effort now in order to feel ineffective and act inadequately. Your present inadequate feeling and doing is automatic and spontaneous because of the memories, real and imagined, you have built into your automatic mechanism. You will find it will work just as automatically on positive thoughts and experiences as on negative ones.

PRACTICE EXERCISE How to Use Mental Pictures to Relax (To be practiced for at least 30 minutes daily.) Seat yourself comfortably in an easy chair or lie down on your back. Consciously “let go” the various muscle groups as much as possible without making too much of an effort of it. Just consciously pay attention to the various parts of your body and let go a little. You will find that you can always voluntarily relax to a certain degree. You can stop frowning and let your forehead relax. You can ease up a little on the tension in your jaws. You can let your hands, your arms, your shoulders, and legs, become a little more relaxed than they are. Spend about five minutes on this and then stop paying any attention to your muscles. This is as far as you are going to try to go by conscious control. From here on out you will relax more and more by using your Creative Mechanism to automatically bring about a relaxed condition. In short, you are going to use “goal pictures,” held in imagination, and let your automatic mechanism realize those goals for you. MENTAL PICTURE 1 In your mind’s eye see yourself lying stretched out on the bed. Form a picture of your legs as they would look if made of concrete. See yourself lying there with two very heavy concrete legs. See these very heavy concrete legs sinking far down into the mattress from their sheer weight. Now picture your arms and hands as made of concrete. They also are very heavy and are sinking down into the bed and exerting tremendous pressure against the bed. In your mind’s eye see a friend come into the room and attempt to lift your heavy concrete legs. He takes hold of your feet and attempts to lift them. But they are too heavy for him. He cannot do it. Repeat with arms, neck, etc. MENTAL PICTURE 2 Your body is a big marionette doll. Your hands are tied loosely to your wrists by strings. Your forearm is connected loosely by a string to your upper arm. Your upper arm is connected very loosely by a string to your shoulder. Your feet, calves, thighs are also connected together with a single string. Your neck consists of one very limp string. The strings that control your jaw and hold your lips together have slackened and stretched to such an extent that your chin has dropped down loosely against your chest. All the various strings that connect the various parts of your body are loose and limp and your body is just sprawled loosely across the bed. MENTAL PICTURE 3 Your body consists of a series of inflated rubber balloons. Two valves open in your feet, and the air begins to escape from your legs. Your legs begin to collapse and continue until they consist only of deflated rubber tubes, lying flat against the bed. Next a valve is opened in your chest, and as the air begins to escape your entire trunk begins to collapse limply against the bed. Continue with arms, head, and neck. MENTAL PICTURE 4 Many people will find this the most relaxing of all. Just go back in memory to some relaxing and pleasant scene from your past. There is always some time in everyone’s life when he felt relaxed, at ease, and at peace with the world. Pick out your own relaxing picture from your past and call up detailed memory images. Yours may be a peaceful scene at a mountain lake where you went fishing. If so, pay particular attention to the little incidental things in the environment. Remember the quiet ripples on the water. What sounds were present? Did you hear the quiet rustling of the leaves? Maybe you remember sitting perfectly relaxed, and somewhat drowsy, before an open fireplace long ago. Did the logs crackle and spark? What other sights and sounds were present? Maybe you choose to remember relaxing in the sun on a beach. How did the sand feel against your body? Could you feel the warm, relaxing sun, touching your body, almost as a physical thing? Was there a breeze blowing? Were there gulls on the beach? The more of these incidental details you can remember and picture to yourself, the more successful you will be. Daily practice will bring these mental pictures, or memories, clearer and clearer. The effect of learning will also be cumulative. Practice will strengthen the tie-in between mental image and physical sensation. You will become more and more proficient in relaxation, and this in itself will be “remembered” in future practice sessions.

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics (pp. 67-69). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

PRACTICE EXERCISE In Chapter 4, you learned how to induce physical and mental relaxation while resting. Continue with the daily practice in relaxation and you will become more and more proficient. In the meantime, you can induce something of “that relaxed feeling,” and the relaxed attitude, while going about your daily activities, if you will form the habit of mentally remembering the nice relaxed feeling that you induced. Stop occasionally during the day, it need only take a moment, and remember in detail the sensations of relaxation. Remember how your arms felt, your legs, back, neck, face. Sometimes forming a mental picture of yourself lying in bed, or sitting relaxed and limp in an easy chair, helps to recall the relaxed sensations. Mentally repeating to yourself several times, “I feel more and more relaxed,” also helps. Practice this remembering faithfully several times each day. You will be surprised at how much it reduces fatigue, and how much better you are able to handle situations. For by relaxing, and maintaining a relaxed attitude, you remove those excessive states of concern, tension, and anxiety, which interfere with the efficient operation of your Creative Mechanism. In time, your relaxed attitude will become a habit, and you will no longer need to consciously practice it.

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics (p. 104). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

PRACTICE EXERCISE Habitually, you put on either your right shoe first or your left shoe. Habitually, you tie your shoes by either passing the right-hand lace around behind the left-hand lace, or vice versa. Tomorrow morning determine which shoe you put on first and how you tie your shoes. Now consciously decide that for the next 21 days you are going to form a new habit by putting on the other shoe first and tying your laces in a different way. Each morning, as you decide to put on your shoes in a certain manner, let this simple act serve as a reminder to change other habitual ways of thinking, acting, and feeling throughout that one day. Say to yourself as you tie your shoes, “I am beginning the day in a new and better way.” Then, consciously decide that throughout the day: 1. I will be as cheerful as possible. 2. I will try to feel and act a little more friendly toward other people. 3. 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 on their actions. 4. Insofar as possible, I am going to act as if successes are inevitable, and I already am the sort of personality I want to be. I will practice “acting like” and “feeling like” this new personality. 5. I will not let my own opinion color facts in a pessimistic or negative way. 6. I will practice smiling at least three times during the day. 7. Regardless of what happens, I will react as calmly and as intelligently as possible. 8. I will ignore completely and close my mind to all those pessimistic and negative “facts” that I can do nothing to change. Simple? Yes. But each of the above habitual ways of acting, feeling, thinking does have a beneficial and constructive influence on your self-image. Act them out for 21 days. “Experience” them, and see if worry, guilt, hostility have not been diminished and if confidence has not been increased.

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics (pp. 121-122). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

PRACTICE EXERCISE Don’t wonder in advance what you are going to say. Just open your mouth and say it. Improvise as you go along. (Jesus advises us to give no thought as to what we would say if delivered up to councils, but that the spirit would advise us what to say at the time.) Don’t plan (take no thought for tomorrow). Don’t think before you act. Act—and correct your actions as you go along. This advice may seem radical, yet it is actually the way all servo-mechanisms must work. 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,” said A. N. Whitehead. “From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.” Stop criticizing yourself. 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. Maybe the other person will take it the wrong way.” Stop all this tearing yourself apart. Useful and beneficial feedback works subconsciously, spontaneously, and automatically. Conscious self-criticism, self-analysis, and introspection are good and useful if undertaken perhaps once a year. But as a continual, moment-by-moment, day-by-day sort of second-guessing yourself—or playing Monday-morning quarterback to your past actions—it is defeating. Watch for this self-criticism—pull yourself up short and stop it. 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. Recent experiments have shown that you can exert up to 15 percent more strength, and lift more weight, if you will shout, grunt, or groan loudly as you make the lift. The explanation of this is that loud shouting disinhibits and allows you to exert all your strength, including that which has been blocked off and tied up by inhibition. 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. Compliment at least three people every day. If you like what someone is doing, or wearing, or saying—let them know it. Be direct. “I like that idea, Joe.” “Mary, that’s great work you did today.” “Jim, that proves to me you are a smart person.” And if you’re married, just say to your spouse, “I love you” at least twice a day.

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics (pp. 202-204). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

PRACTICE EXERCISE Create in your imagination a vivid mental picture of yourself sitting quietly, composed, unmoved, letting your telephone ring, as outlined earlier in this chapter. Then, in your daily activities “carry-over” the same peaceful, composed, unmoved attitude by remembering this mental picture. Say to yourself, “I am letting the telephone ring,” whenever you are tempted to “obey” or respond to some fear-bell or anxiety-bell. Next, use your imagination to practice non-response in various sorts of situations: See yourself sitting quietly and unmoved while an associate rants and raves. See yourself going through your daily tasks one by one, calmly, composed, unhurried, in spite of the pressures of a busy day. See yourself maintaining the same constant, stable course, in spite of the various hurry-bells and pressure-bells in your environment. See yourself in various situations that have in the past upset you, only now you remain “set,” settled, poised—by not responding.

Maltz, Maxwell. Psycho-Cybernetics (pp. 222-223). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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