Taken from Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz (1960).

The “self-image” is the key to human personality and human behaviour.  Change the self-image and you change the personality and the behaviour.

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.  …  Self-image psychology throws new light on these and many other observable facts of life.  It throws new light on “the power of positive thinking,” and more importantly, explains why it “works” with some individuals and not with others.  (“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).

…  The science of Cybernetics does not tell us that “man” is a machine but that man has and uses a machine.  Moreover, it tells us how that machine functions and how it can be used. 

Chapter 1 – The Self-Image:  Your Key to a better life.

…  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.  From all these we mentally construct a “self” (or a picture of a self).  Once an idea or belief about ourselves goes into this picture it becomes “true”, as far as we personally are concerned.  We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true.

…  it is literally impossible to really think about a particular situation, as long as you hold a negative concept of self.  And, numerous experiments have shown that once the concept of self is changed, other things consistent with the new concept of self, are accomplished EASILY and WITHOUT STRAIN.

…  There were many tests and experiments done where a “poor” student changed from being “poor” to “outstanding,” all based on the student accepting a different self-image of him/herself.  When they flunked a test for example, they were saying to themselves “I am a flunk-out” instead of saying “I flunked that test.”  Numerous case histories of adults succeeding too!

…  As a plastic surgeon he could understand how someone who had been humiliated because of very big ears, would change his whole personality when his ears were corrected.  But why did not all people who had plastic surgery have the same positive effect?  He talks about in Germany students bearing a “sabre scar” on their face with absolute pride, and the exact same looking scar in America would make the patient feel terrible about it.

…The secret is this:  To really “live,” that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self image that you can live with.  You must find you are self acceptable to “you.”  You must have a wholesome self-esteem.  You must have a self that you can trust and believe in.  You must have a self that you are not ashamed to “be,” and one that you can feel free to express creatively, rather than to hide or cover up.  You must have a self that corresponds to reality so that you can function effectively in a real world.  You must know yourself – both your strengths and your weaknesses and be honest with yourself concerning both.  Your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of “you,” being neither more than you are, nor less than you are.

When this self-image is intact and secure, you feel “good.”  When it is threatened, you feel anxious and insecure.  When it is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of, you feel self-confident.  You feel free to “be yourself” and to express yourself.  You function at your optimum.  When it is an object of shame, you attempt to hide it rather than express it.  Creative expression is blocked.  You become hostile and hard to get along with.

…  He believes that the “subconscious mind” is not a “mind” at all, but a mechanism – a goal-striving “servo-mechanism”, which is used by and directed by the mind.  …  This Creative Mechanism within you is impersonal.  It will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending upon the goals which you yourself set for it.  …  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.”  (Lin:  I think this is why so many books tell you to be the person you want to in your programming.  This way you are using all your senses and you “get it” at a much deeper level).

Chapter 2 – Discovering the Success Mechanism Within You.

          …  He talks about a servo-mechanism going for a goal.  When it is on course – no feedback, when it is off-course the feedback tells it.  And then the s.m. corrects.  (Lin: from an esoteric point of view – we get clapped by the universe, when we are obviously off-course, and we need to correct!)  …  Every incident or thing that we have experienced is stored for future use (information).

1. Your built-in success mechanism must have a goal or “target”.  This goal, or target, must be conceived of as “already in existence – now” either in actual or potential form.  It operates by either (a) steering you to a goal already in existence or by (b) “discovering” something already in existence.
2. The automatic mechanism is teleological, (Lin: teleology – belief that all things have a predetermined purpose), that is, operates, or must be oriented to “end results,” goals.  Do not be discouraged because the “means whereby” may not be apparent.  It is the function of the automatic mechanism to supply the “means whereby” when you supply the goal.  Think in terms of the end result, and the means whereby will often take care of themselves.
3. 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.
4. Skill learning of any kind is accomplished by trial and error, mentally correcting aim after an error, until a “successful” motion, movement or performance has been achieved.  After that, further learning, and continued success is accomplished by forgetting the past errors, and remembering the successful response, so that it can be “imitated.”
5. You must learn to trust your creative mechanism to do its work and not “jam it” by becoming too concerned or too anxious as to whether it will work or not, or by attempting to force it by too much conscious effort.  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.

Chapter 3 – Imagination – The First Key to Your Success Mechanism.

…  Artur Schnabel, the world famous concert pianist, took lessons for only seven years.  He hated practice and seldom does practice for any length of time at the actual piano keyboard.  When questioned about his small amount of practice, as compared with other concert pianists, he said, “I practice in my head.”

…  C.G. Kop, of Holland, a recognised authority on teaching piano, recommends that all pianists, “practice in their heads.”  A new composition, he says, should be first gone over in the mind.  It should be memorised, and played in the mind, before ever touching fingers to the keyboard.

…  Time magazine reported that when Ben Hogan is playing in a tournament, he mentally rehearses each shot, just before making it.  He makes the shot perfectly in his imagination – “feels” the club-head strike the ball just as it should, “feels” himself performing the perfect follow-through – and then steps up to the ball, and depends upon what he calls “muscle memory” to carry out the shot just as he has imagined it.

…  Successful men and women have, since the beginning of time, used “mental pictures,” and “rehearsal practice” to achieve success.  Napoleon, for example, “practiced” soldiering, in his imagination, for many years before he ever went on an actual battlefield.  Webb and Morgan in their book Making the Most of your Life, tell us that “the notes Napoleon made from his readings during these years of study filled, when printed, four hundred pages.  He imagined himself as a commander, and drew maps of the island of Corsica showing where he would place various defences, making all his calculations with mathematical precision.

…  Instead of trying hard by conscious effort to do the thing by iron-jawed will power, and all the while worrying and picturing to yourself all the things that are likely to go wrong, you simply relax the strain, stop trying to “do it” by strain and effort, picture to yourself the target you really want to hit, and “let” your creative success mechanism take over.  Thus, mental-picturing the desired end result, literally forces you to use “positive thinking.”  You are not relieved thereafter from effort and work, but your efforts are used to carry you forward toward your goal, rather than in futile mental conflict which results when you “want” and “try” to do one thing, but picture to yourself something else.

…  This same creative mechanism within you can help you achieve your best possible “self” if you will form a picture in your imagination of the self you want to be and “see yourself” in the new role.  This is a necessary condition to personality transformation, regardless of the method of therapy used.  Somehow, before a person can change, he must “see” himself in a new role.

…  He talks about alcoholics picturing themselves as non-alcoholics and how it works.  He also talks of studies of mental patients picturing themselves as “normal”.

…  The aim of self-image psychology is not to create a fictitious self which is all-powerful, arrogant, egoistic, all-important.  Such an image is as inappropriate and unrealistic as the inferior image of self.  Our aim is to find the “real self”, and to bring our mental images of ourselves more in line with “the objects they represent.”  However, it is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us under-rate ourselves, short change ourselves and sell ourselves short.

…  Set aside a period of 30 minutes each day where you can be alone and undisturbed.  Relax and make yourself as comfortable as possible.  Now close your eyes and exercise your imagination.

…  He talks about some people have better results imagining that they are watching themselves on a movie screen, and putting in as much detail as possible.  From an NLP state bringing in as many senses as possible, sight, sound, feel, taste – whatever you can to make it as real as possible.

…  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. …  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. Etc.etc.

…  He says you do not have to force yourself to do anything, you will suddenly find yourself acting in the new ways easily and harmoniously.  He also talks earlier in the book that you must work on something for at least 21 days.  He feels that 21 days is about the right amount of time to change, at a deeper level.

Chapter 4 – Dehypnotise Yourself from False Beliefs.

          …  After thousands of experiments and many years of research Lecky (Prescott) concluded that poor grades in school are, in almost every case, due in some degree to the student’s “self-conception” and “self-definition.”  These students had been literally hypnotised by such ideas as “I am dumb,”  “I have a weak personality,” “I am poor in arithmetic,” “I am a naturally poor speller,” “I am ugly,” etc.  With such self-definitions, the student had to make poor grades in order to be true to himself.  Unconsciously, making poor grades became a “moral issue” with him.  It would be as “wrong”, from his own viewpoint, for him to make good grades, as it would be to steal if he defines himself as an honest person.

          …  He tells of the $5000 per year salesman, no matter what area they put him into; and how he manifested illness the one year as soon as he got to the $5000, but was miraculously well again when the new business year started.

          …  He tells the story of a Mr Russell whose bottom lip was quite large.  Maltz charged Mr Russell (a Jamaican) a minimum amount of money for the op, on condition that Mr Russell told his girlfriend that he had spent all his life savings on the op.  She had told Mr R. that she could not marry him due to his large lip, no matter how much money he had.  As soon as she thought there was no money left, she immediately got angry, and told Mr R. in no uncertain terms that she was not going to marry him, and furthermore she put a “curse” on him.  He developed something in his lip, which he was told was an African Bug, who would take all his life force away.  Within 3 weeks he lost 30 lbs, and aged 20 years.  Maltz told him, that he was able to take the Bug away, and showed Mr R.  It was scar tissue from the lip operation.  Within another 3 weeks Mr R. had recovered his 30 lbs weight and de-aged his 20 years!  All to do with the beliefs held in mind.

          …  Under hypnosis all sorts of things are taken to be true.  He talks of an athlete whose gripping power has been tested on a dynometer and has been found to be 100 pounds; under hypnosis the athlete is told that he is very, very strong, much stronger than before, and he pulls the needle easily to 125 lbs.  …  What the hypnotic suggestion did do was to overcome a negative idea which had previously prevented him from expressing his full strength.  In other words, the athlete in his normal waking state had imposed a limitation upon his strength by the negative belief that he could only grip 100 lbs.  The hypnotist merely removed this mental block, and allowed him to express his true strength.

          …  It is not knowledge of actual inferiority in skill or knowledge which gives us an inferiority complex and interferes with our living.  It is the feeling of inferiority that does this.  …  And this feeling of inferiority comes about for just one reason:  We judge ourselves, and measure ourselves, not against our own “norm” or “par” but against some other individual’s “norm”.  When we do this, we always, without exception, come out second best.

          …  He talks at length about not using force to try and change either habits or self-image.  He mentions Emile Coue – “Better and better every day” man, said that “Your suggestions (ideal goals) must be made without effort if they are to be effective,”  and “When the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination invariably wins the day.”

          …  He gives a number of exercises on how to relax, and a number of visualisations around this; from heavy legs that can’t be lifted, right through to a previous restful scene in nature.

Chapter 5 – How to Utilise the power of Rational Thinking.

          …  It is conscious thinking which is the “control knob” of your unconscious machine.  It was by conscious thought, though perhaps irrational and unrealistic, that the unconscious machine developed its negative and inappropriate reaction patterns, and it is by conscious rational thought that the automatic reaction patterns can be changed.  …  The fact that there are “buried” in the unconscious, memories of past failures, unpleasant and painful experiences, does not mean that these must be “dug out,” exposed or examined, in order to effect personality changes.  …  Continually criticising yourself for past mistakes and errors does not help matters, but on the other hand tends to perpetuate the very behaviour you would change.  …  The minute that we change our minds, and stop giving power to the past, the past with its mistakes loses power over us.

          …  He talks at length about catching the thought that brings about the negative feeling and rationally changing it.  (Lin:  back to Liz’s “Is that true?  Is that really true?”)

          …  One of my patients was a salesman who was “scared to death” when calling upon “big shots.”  His fear and nervousness were overcome in just one counselling session, during which I asked him, “Would you physically get down on all fours and crawl into the man’s office, prostrating yourself before a superior personage?”  “I should say not!” he bristled.  “Then, why do you mentally cringe and crawl?”  Another question:  “Would you go into a man’s office with your hand out like a beggar, and beg for a dime for a cup of coffee?”  “Certainly not.”  “Can’t you see that you are doing essentially the same thing, when you go in overly concerned with whether or not he will approve of you?  Can’t you see that you have your hand out – literally begging for his approval and acceptance of you as a person?”

          …  Rational thought, to be effective in changing belief and behaviour, must be accompanied by deep feeling and desire.

          Picture to yourself what you would like to be and have, and assume for the moment that such things might be possible.  Arouse a deep desire for these things.  Become enthusiastic about them.  Dwell upon them – and keep going over them in your mind.  Your present negative beliefs were formed by thought plus feelings.  Generate enough emotion, or deep feeling, and your new thoughts and ideas will cancel them out.  …  If you will analyse this you will see that you are using a process you have often used before – worry!  The only difference is you change your goals from negative to positive.  When you worry, you first of all picture some undesirable future outcome, or goal, vividly in your imagination.  You use no effort or will power.  (Lin:  I must admit when I worry about something I am also adding a whole heap of negative, deeply felt, emotions).  But you keep dwelling on the “end result.”  You keep thinking about it – dwelling upon it – picturing it to yourself as a “possibility.” …………….  Many of us unconsciously and unwittingly, by holding negative attitudes and habitually picturing failure to ourselves in our imagination – set up goals of failure.

Chapter 6 – Relax and Let Your Success Mechanism Work for You.

          …  The essence of this whole chapter is about relaxing.  Thinking and worrying before the act or decision – not after.  If you are going to a party and don’t want to go – once you have made the decision to go, then relax and enjoy yourself – or decide not to go.  Same with the dentist!

1. Do your worrying before you place your bet, not after the wheel starts turning.
2. Form the habit of consciously responding to the present moment.
3. Try to do only one thing at a time. 
4. Sleep on it.
5. Relax while you work.

Chapter 7 – You Can Acquire the Habit of Happiness.

          …  Happiness – “A state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time.”

          …  Happiness is native to the human mind and its physical machine.  …  Tests prove that when thinking pleasant thoughts they could see better, taste, smell and hear better, and detect finer differences in touch.  … eyesight improves immediately …  memory is greatly improved, and mind relaxed …  stomachs, liver, heart, and all our internal organs function better  …  Harvard studies proved the correlation between  happiness and criminality and concluded that “Happy people are never wicked,” was scientifically true.  Majority of criminals came from unhappy homes, and had a history of unhappy relationships. …  unhappiness is the sole cause of all psychosomatic ills and that happiness is the only cure.  …  A recent survey showed that by and large, optimistic, cheerful businessmen who “looked on the bright side of things” were more successful than pessimistic businessmen.  …  We have the cart before the horse – “Be good,” we say, “and you will be happy.”  …  It would be nearer the truth if we said, “Be happy – and you will be good, more successful, healthier, feel and act more charitably towards others.”

          …  Happiness is not something that is earned or deserved.  Happiness is not a moral issue, any more than the circulation of the blood is a moral issue.  …  Happiness is merely a state of mind …  One of the most pleasant thoughts to any human being is the thought that he is needed, that he is important enough to help and add to the happiness of some other human being.  …  However, if it becomes a moral issue – that is a no no.

          …  He talks about his patients who decide they will be happy when …….  If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy – period! Not happy “because of”.  …  “Happiness is purely internal, …  It is produced not by objects, but by ideas, thoughts, and attitudes which can be developed and constructed by the individual’s own activities, irrespective of the environment.”  …  To a large extent we react to petty annoyances, frustrations, and the like with grumpiness, dissatisfaction, resentment and irritability, purely out of HABIT.  (Lin:  Back to Claim Your Self-Esteem).  We have practiced reacting that way so long, it has become habitual.  Much of this habitual unhappiness-reaction originated because of some event which we interpreted as a blow to our self-esteem.  …  Learning the happiness habit, you become a MASTER instead of a slave.

          …  Even in regard to tragic conditions, and the most adverse environment, we can usually manage to be happier, if not completely happy, by not adding to the misfortune our own feelings of self-pity, resentment, and our own adverse opinions.

          “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.”

          …  When I announced that I wanted to be a doctor, I was told that this could not be, because my folks had no money.  It was a fact that my mother had no money.  It was only an opinion that I could never be a doctor.  …  I was in love with a beautiful girl.  She married someone else.  These were facts.  But I kept reminding myself that it was merely my opinion that this was a “catastrophe” and that life was not worth living.  I not only got over it, but it turned out that it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me.  …  and suggested that the real cause of his unhappy feeling was not that he had lost $200 000, but that he had lost his goal; he had lost his aggressive attitude, and was yielding passively rather than reacting aggressively.

          …  Carl Erskine – baseball pitcher – “One sermon has helped me overcome pressure better than the advice of any coach,” he said.  “Its substance was that like a squirrel hoarding chestnuts, we should store up our moments of happiness and triumph so that in a crisis we can draw upon these memories for help and inspiration.”

          …  Habits are merely reactions and responses which we have learned to perform automatically without have to “think” or “decide.”  They are performed by our Creative Mechanism.  …  Fully 95% of our behaviour, feeling and response is habitual.  …  The pianist does not “decide” which keys to strike.  The reaction is automatic and unthinking.  …  In much the same way our attitudes, emotions and beliefs tend to become habitual.  In the past we “learned” that certain attitudes, ways of feeling and thinking were “appropriate” to certain situations.  Now, we tend to think, feel and act the same way whenever we encounter what we interpret as “the same sort of situation.”

Consciously decide 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 upon their actions.
4. 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.
5. I will not let my own opinion colour 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” which I can do nothing to change.

Simple?  Yes.  But each of the above habitual ways of acting, feeling, thinking does have 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.

Chapter 8 – Ingredients of the “Success-Type” Personality and How to Acquire Them.

     …  (Lin – I’ve just “got” something.  So often top Sales people are promoted into the position of Sales Manager, and they fail – and no-one has worked out that they “fail” because their self-image is of a top Sales Person, and not a great Sales Manager!  They have to get the Self-Image lined up again!)

     …  You can have a Success-type personality or a Failure-type personality!  We concentrate on the Success-type personality as follows:-

S – sense of direction

U – nderstanding
C – ourage
C – harity
E – steem
S - elf-Confidence
S – elf-Acceptance

1. Sense of Direction.  “Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle,” I told him.  “A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it is going forward towards something.  You have a good bicycle.  Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go.  It’s no wonder you feel shaky.”  …  We are engineered as goal-seeking mechanisms. We are built that way.  When we have no personal goal which we are interested in and which “means something” to us, we are apt to “go around in circles,” feel “lost” and find life itself “aimless,” and “purposeless.”  We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.  People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile.
2. Understanding.  Understanding depends upon good communication.  Communication is vital to any guidance system or computer.  You cannot react appropriately if the information you act upon is faulty or misunderstood.  …  We expect other people to react and respond and come to the same conclusions as we do from a given set of “facts” or “circumstances.”  We should remember that no one reacts to “things as they are,” but to his own mental images.  …  He says that people do not react to make us suffer, but react because they “understand” the situation differently from ourselves.
3. Courage.  …  You must have the courage to act, for only by actions can goals, desires and beliefs be translated into realities.  …  Nothing in this world is ever absolutely certain or guaranteed.  Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.
4. Charity.  It is a psychological fact that our feelings about ourselves tend to correspond to our feelings about other people.  When a person begins to feel more charitably about others, he invariably begins to feel more charitably towards himself.  …  In essence each person is a child of God, with a unique personality and is a creative being.
5. Esteem.  …  We simply must get it through our heads that holding a low opinion of ourselves is not a virtue, but a vice.  Jealousy, for example, which is the scourge of many a marriage, is nearly always caused by self-doubt.  The person with adequate self-esteem doesn’t feel hostile toward others, he isn’t out to prove anything, he can see facts more clearly, isn’t as demanding in his claims on other people.  …  Stop carrying around a mental picture of yourself as a defeated, worthless person.  Stop dramatising yourself as an object of pity and injustice.
6. Self-Confidence.  Confidence is built upon an experience of success.  …  No matter how small, remember the success and build on it.  …  Managers of boxers are very careful to match them carefully so they can have a graduated series of successful experiences.  …  form the habit of remembering past successes, and forgetting past failures.  …  Yet, what do most of us do?  We destroy our self-confidence by remembering past failures and forgetting all about past successes.  We not only remember failures, we impress them on our minds with emotion.  We condemn ourselves.  We flay ourselves with shame and remorse …  and self-confidence disappears.
7. Self-Acceptance.  …  No real success or genuine happiness is possible until a person gains some degree of self-acceptance.  The most miserable and tortured people in the world are those who are continually straining and striving to convince themselves and others that they are something other than what they basically are.  …  Success, which comes from self-expression, often eludes those who strive and strain to “be somebody”, and often comes, almost of its own accord, when a person becomes willing to relax and – “Be Himself.”

…  Changing your self-image does not mean changing your self, or improving your self, but changing your own mental picture, your own estimation, conception, and realisation of that self.  The amazing results which follow from developing an adequate and realistic self-image, come about, not as a result of self-transformation, but from self-realisation, and self-revelation.  Your “self” right now, is what it has always been, and all that it can ever be.  …  You are somebody, not because you’ve made a million dollars, or drive the biggest car in your block, or win at bridge – but because God created you in His own image.   …  Most of us are better, wiser, stronger, more competent – NOW, than we realise.  Creating a better self-image does not create new abilities, talents, powers – it releases and utilises them.

Chapter 9 – The Failure Mechanism: How to Make it Work FOR you Instead of AGAINST you.

          …  He talks about needing negative things in our life as signposts that something is wrong so we can correct, e.g. the pain in the stomach is not “bad” it is a warning so that we have our appendix removed!  And everyone suffers from time to time with the aspects of failure.  We need to be able to recognise the symptoms and get back on course.

F – rustration, hopelessness, futility

A – ggressiveness (misdirected)
I – nsecurity
L – oneliness (lack of “oneness”)
U – ncertainty
R – esentment
E – mptiness

1. Frustration.  Frustration is an emotional feeling which develops whenever some important goal cannot be realised or when some strong desire is thwarted.  …  It is only when a frustrating experience brings excessive emotional feelings of deep dissatisfaction and futility that it becomes a symptom of failure.  Chronic frustration usually means that the goals we have set for ourselves are unrealistic, or the image we have of ourselves is inadequate, or both.
2. Aggressiveness.  …  He says that aggressiveness towards a goal is fine, but if the goal is unattainable then the aggression needs to go somewhere like the steam in a boiler.  (Aggression follows frustration!) Typically you want to punch the boss in the nose, but can’t, so go home and kick the cat.  Not good!  Find an outlet – exercise is good.
3. Insecurity.  The feeling of insecurity is based upon a concept or belief of inner inadequacy.  If you feel that you do not “measure up” to what is required, you feel insecure.  A great deal of insecurity is not due to the fact that our inner resources are actually inadequate, but due to the fact that we use a false measuring stick.  …  “should’s” not good!
4. Loneliness.  All of us are lonely at times.  But it is the extreme and chronic feeling of loneliness – of being cut off and alienated from other people – that is a symptom of the failure mechanism.  The person who is alienated from his real self has cut himself off from the basic and fundamental “contact” with life.  …  Loneliness is a way of self-protection.
5. Uncertainty.  …  He talks about making decisions.  You have to make decisions and if they are wrong – don’t beat yourself up.  But also don’t rush into decision making without taking time to establish as many of the facts as possible.
6. Resentment.  …  looks for a scape-goat or excuse for his failure.  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 our own failure palatable …  Resentment is also a “way” of making us feel important.  Many people get a perverse satisfaction from feeling “wronged.”  The victim of injustice, the one who has been unfairly treated, is morally superior to those who caused the injustice.  (Lin: remember Kendall saying that “Victim” is a very powerful state to be in!  It is a way of sorting things out, or getting help.  He mentioned the minority or majority people who give out the feeling that they are victims and the whole world rushes in to protect them, and make things better!)  …  In this sense resentment is a mental resistance to, a non-acceptance of, something which has already happened.  The word itself comes from two Latin words: “re” meaning back, and “sentire” meaning to feel.  Resentment is an emotional rehashing, or re-fighting of some event in the past.  You cannot win, because you are attempting to do the impossible – change the past.  …  Resentment .. is not the way to win.  It soon becomes an emotional habit.  Habitually feeling that you are a victim of injustice, you begin to picture yourself in the role of a victimised person.  …  Habitual resentment invariably leads to self-pity, which is the worst possible emotional habit anyone can develop.  …  Resentment is caused by your own emotional response – your own reaction.  You alone have power over this, and you can control it …
7. Emptiness.  …  He talks about the person who looks as if he has achieved everything but in fact is empty inside.  No happiness or joy!  The problem is that they do not have a purposeful goal or job or something to keep interested in.

Chapter 10 – How to Remove Emotional Scars OR How to Give Yourself an Emotional Face Lift.

          …  The person with emotional scars not only has a self-image of an unwanted, unliked, and incapable person, he also has an image of the world in which he lives as a hostile place.  His primary relationship with the world is one of hostility, and his dealings with other people are not based upon giving and accepting, cooperating, working with, enjoying with, but upon concepts of overcoming, combating, and protecting from.  He can neither be charitable towards others nor himself.  Frustration, aggression, and loneliness are the price he pays.

Three Rules for Immunising Yourself Against Emotional Scars.

1. Be too big to feel threatened.  …  It is a well-known psychologic fact that the people who become offended the easiest, have the lowest self-esteem.  …  He talks about being terribly “hurt” by little pin-pricks to the ego, and how we need to grow a tougher skin.  (Lin: not take things so personally!)
2. A Self-Reliant, Responsible Attitude makes you less Vulnerable.  …  You ain’t going to be loved by everybody!  …  The passive-dependent person turns his entire destiny over to other people, circumstances, luck.  Life owes him a living and other people owe him consideration, appreciation, love, happiness.  He makes unreasonable demands and claims on other people and feels cheated, wronged, hurt, when they aren’t fulfilled.  Because life just isn’t built that way, he is seeking the impossible and leaving himself “wide open” to emotional hurts and injuries.  Someone has said that the neurotic personality is forever “bumping into” reality.  …  Develop a more self-reliant attitude.  Assume responsibility for you own life and emotional needs. 
3. Relax away Emotional Hurts.  …  we are injured and hurt emotionally – not so much by other people or what they say or don’t say – but by our own attitude and our own response.  …  When we “feel hurt” or “feel offended,” the feeling is entirely a matter of our own response.  In fact the feeling IS our response.  …  You do not have to respond at all.   …  Evidently it has been proven that you cannot feel anger or fear if the muscles in your body are kept relaxed!

…  He talks at length about forgiveness.  …  Forgiveness, when it is real and genuine and complete, AND FORGOTTEN – is the scalpel which can remove the pus from old emotional wounds, heal them, and eliminate scar tissue.  …  Forgiveness which is partial, or half-hearted, works no better than a partially completed surgical operation on the face.  …  True forgiveness comes only when we are able to see, and emotionally accept, that there is and was nothing for us to forgive.  We should not have condemned or hated the other person in the first place.  …  Forgiveness of self.

Chapter 11 – How to Unlock Your Real Personality.

     …  He talks at length about being self-conscious, and how we need to forget about what others are thinking; or more to the point what we think others are thinking.

Chapter 12 – Do-It-Yourself Tranquillisers which Bring Peace of Mind.

     …  Various tranquillisers erect a “psychic screen” between us and disturbing stimuli.  …  Tranquillisers work because they greatly reduce, or eliminate, our own response to disturbing stimuli.  …  We are still able to recognise (the disturbing stimuli) but we do not respond to them emotionally.  …  He talks about outside stimuli like the phone going, and how out of habit we jump up and answer it – but instead of being on automatic – we can choose not to answer.  …  You can choose not to respond  to the boss, or whatever the thing is that normally brings up a fear response.  …  Retaining a state of relaxation seems to be the answer.  Delay in getting angry, etc.

     …  He goes on to describe building a “quiet room” in your imagination.  Every thing you would want in there, colours etc, and no noise – this is your space – go to it each day.  No decisions are made in here – just a time to relax and be with yourself.  (Lin:  I love his next little thing he does!  If he is feeling under a lot of pressure – he goes into his room, sits down, and imagines that like a geyser “Old Faithful” in Yellowstone Park, he blows off, letting all the steam and anger out of the top of his head.  Isn’t that great, it would leave him feeling as if all the tension has gone, and he is “emptied” of his frustrations.  He would then be able to return to the physical scene – very much more in control of himself and his responses!)

Chapter 13 – How to Turn a Crisis into a Creative Opportunity.

     …  He talks about how one person will “react” under a crisis situation and another person will “react” completely differently under the same circumstances.  In tests with rats they found that the learning was far broader, when the atmosphere was relaxed.  The latter rats, when under pressure, seemed to learn new ways thru the maze far quicker than those rats who had learned the route under pressure.  …  Practice without pressure and you will learn more efficiently and be able to perform better in a crisis situation.  …  Shadow boxing – practiced 10 000 times before the bout!  …  Billy Graham preached sermons to cypress stumps in a Florida swamp before developing his compelling platform personality with live audiences.

     …  For sales people who clam up when they are faced with objections – he recommends the dry runs.  In imagination, do the whole thing from walking into the client, doing the full presentation, and then going over every one of the objections, and coming up with great answers.  Do that a number of times, and then actually go see a client – as a dry run, without the expectation of getting a sale.  (Practicing under no-pressure).

     …  The word “crisis” comes from a Greek word which means, literally, “decisiveness”, or “point of decision.”  A crisis is a fork in the road.  One fork holds promise of a better condition – the other of a worse condition.  In medicine – the crisis point is the patient lives or dies!

     …  In a crisis maintain the attitude “No matter what happens, I can handle it, or I can see it through,” rather than, “I hope nothing happens.”  …  The “excitement” that you feel just before a crisis situation is an infusion of “spirit” and should be so interpreted by you.

     …  Many people have a tendency to magnify out of all proportion the potential “penalty” or “failure” which the crisis situation holds.  We use our imaginations against ourselves and make mountains out of molehills.  …  Someone has said that the greatest cause of ulcers is mountain-climbing over molehills!  A salesman calling upon an important prospect may act as if it were a matter of life and death.  …  Close scrutiny will show that most of these everyday so-called “crisis situations” are not life-or-death matters at all, but opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.  For example, what is the worst that can happen to the salesman?  He will either get an order and come out better off than he was – or he will not get the order and be no worse off than before he made the call!  …  One salesman I know doubled his income after he was able to change his attitude from a scary, panicky, “Everything depends upon this” outlook, to the attitude, “I have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”

Chapter 14 – How to Get “That Winning Feeling.”

     …  The “winning feeling” itself does not cause you to operate successfully, but it is more in the nature of a sign or symptom that we are geared for success.  It is more like a thermometer, which does not cause the heat in the room but measures it.  However, we can use this thermometer in a very practical way.  Remember:  When you experience that winning feeling, your internal machinery is set for success.

     …  It is much easier and more effective to simply define your goal or end result.   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.  Then your internal machinery is geared for success.  (Lin:  this is why in NLP you anchor that great feeling).

     …  President Eliot of Harvard once made a speech on what he called “The Habit of Success.”  Many failures in elementary schools, he said, were due to the fact that students were not given, at the very beginning, a sufficient amount of work at which they could succeed, and thus never had the opportunity to develop the “Atmosphere of Success”, or what we call “the winning feeling”.  The student, he said, who had never experienced success early in his school life, had no chance to develop the “habit of success” – the habitual feeling of faith and confidence in undertaking new work.  He urged that teachers arrange work in the early grades so as to insure that the student experienced success.  (Lin:  This is one of the things that the One Minute Manager recommends – catching someone doing something right and make a big fuss of it!)

     …  If we are habitually frustrated by failure, we are very apt to acquire habitual “feelings of failure” which colour all new undertakings.  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.

     …  He talks about going back to any success that you had, and getting into the picture, capture the sounds, smells, people, everything you can remember, and in particular get into the FEELING of your success.  Then take that FEELING and apply it to the situation you are working on – so that you get the FEELING of success around that thing.  See the thing as completed and combine it with that FEELING of success. 

     …  Mentally, begin to play with the idea of complete and inevitable success.  Don’t force yourself.  Don’t attempt to coerce your mind.  Don’t try to use effort or will power to bring about the desired conviction.  …  “Just suppose such and such a thing happens,” you say mentally to yourself.  You repeat this idea over and over to yourself.  You “play with it.”  Next you play with the idea of possibility.

     …  First of all, it is important to understand that failure feelings – fear, anxiety, lack of self-confidence – do not spring from some heavenly oracle.  They are not written in the stars.  They are not holy gospel.  Nor are they intimations of a set and decided “fate” which means that failure is decreed and decided.  They originate from your own mind.  They are indicative only of attitudes of mind within you  - not external facts which are rigged against you.  They mean only that you are underestimating your own abilities, overestimating and exaggerating the nature of the difficulty before you, and that you are reactivating memories of past failures rather than memories of past successes.  That is all that they mean and all that they signify.  They do not pertain to or represent the truth concerning future events, but only your own mental attitude about the future event.

Chapter 15 – More Years of Life and More Life in Your Years.

     …  Channels of energy.  He talks at length about the scientific proof that we are “run” by “adaptive energy.”  …  Not only has he proved that the body is capable of curing itself, but that in the final analysis that is the only sort of “cure” there is.  Drugs, surgery, and various therapies work largely by either stimulating the body’s own defence mechanism when it is deficient, or toning it down when it is excessive.  …  The energy which heals a wound is the same energy which keeps all our other body organs functioning.  …  Positive and happy people with a purpose seem to heal better and quicker.  …  Think young.

     (Lin: This book has been tremendous.  I must have read it in my early 20’s, and it is absolutely super!)