Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life
by Maxwell Maltz
30 popular highlights from this book
Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life:
“You will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be.”
“Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.”
“It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist.”
“Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and ‘natural’ as opposed to self-conscious and studied.”
“Conscious effort inhibits and ‘jams’ the automatic creative mechanism.”
“Adopt the motto—"It doesn't matter who's right, but what's right.”
“Happiness is a mental habit, a mental attitude, and if it is not learned and practiced in the present it is never experienced. It cannot be made contingent upon solving some external problem. When one problem is solved, another appears to take its place. Life is a series of problems. If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy - period! Not happy "because of".”
“The "Success-type" personality is composed of: S-ense of direction U—nderstanding C-ourage C-harity E-steem S-elf-Confidence S-elf-Acceptance.”
“He must have a burning desire to solve the problem. But after he has defined the problem sees in his imagination the desired end result secured all the information and facts that he can then additional struggling fretting and worrying over it does not help but seems to hinder the solution.”
“You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you.”
“Our present state of self-confidence and poise is the result of what we have "experienced" rather than what we have learned intellectually.”
“The important thing for you to remember is that it does not matter in the least how you got the idea or where it came from. You may never have met a professional hypnotist. You may never have been formally hypnotized. But if you have accepted an idea - from yourself, your teachers, your parents, friends, advertisements, from any other source - and further, if you are firmly convinced that idea is true, it has the same power over you as the hypnotist's words have over the hypnotized subject.”
“Our errors, mistakes, failures, and sometimes even our humiliations, were necessary steps in the learning process. However, they were meant to be means to an end - and not an end in themselves. When they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten. If we consciously dwell on the error, or consciously feel guilty about the error and keep berating ourselves because of it, then - unwittingly - the error or failure itself becomes the "goal" that is consciously held in imagination and memory.”
“I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything," said Henry Ward Beecher.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Get yourself a goal worth working for.”
“The individual who is actively engaged in a struggle, or in striving toward an important goal, does not come up with pessimistic philosophies concerning the meaninglessness or the futility of life.”
“I have found that one of the commonest causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan. They do not live, or enjoy life now, but wait for some future event or occurrence. They will be happy when they get married, when they get a better job, when they get the house paid for, when they get the children through college, when they have completed some task or won some victory. Invariably, they are disappointed.”
“Dr. Norton L. Williams, a psychiatrist, addressing a medical convention, said that modern man’s anxiety and insecurity stemmed from a lack of self-realization, and that inner security can only be found “in finding in oneself an individuality, uniqueness, and distinctiveness that is akin to the idea of being created in the image of God.” He also said that self-realization is gained by “a simple belief in one’s own uniqueness as a human being, a sense of deep and wide awareness of all people and all things, and a feeling of constructive influencing of others through one’s own personality.”
“No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes. —William E. Gladstone”
“Stop measuring yourself against “their” standards. You are not “them” and can never measure up. Neither can “they” measure up to yours—nor should they. Once you see this simple, rather self-evident truth, accept it, and believe it, your inferior feelings will vanish.”
“You must have a clear mental picture of the correct thing before you can do it successfully.”
“If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you can succeed.”
“The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere. —Ralph Waldo Emerson”
“Learning the happiness habit, you become a master instead of a slave, or as Robert Louis Stevenson said, “The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.”
“You can have many goals, but concentrating on just one at a time will help you accomplish far more than attempting to focus on many at once. Get the fire of desire started within being single-minded about one goal and the flame will naturally spread to the others without you forcing it. 4.”
“Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information that you give to it from your forebrain. Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you think or imagine to be true.”
“There are “standard” convictions which are strongly held by nearly everyone. These are (1) the feeling or belief that one is capable of doing his share, holding up his end of the log, exerting a certain amount of independence, and (2) the belief that there is “something” inside you which should not be allowed to suffer indignities.”
“It doesn't matter who’s right but what's right.”
