Quotes from Maxwell Maltz

The mere reading of words will not show you or give you the experience of truth.

When you become too consciously concerned about "what others think"; when you become too careful to consciously try to please other people; when you become too sensitive to the real or fancied disapproval of other people—then you have excessive negative feedback, inhibition, and poor performance.

a person has to start in the present to acquire some maturity so that the future may be better than the past. The present and the future depend on learning new habits and new ways of looking at old problems

This common denominator is that the patient has forgotten how, or probably never learned how, to control his present thinking to produce enjoyment.

21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and a new one to jell.

I failed once in the past, so I will probably fail in the future" is neither logical nor rational. To conclude "I can't" in advance, without trying, and in the absence of any evidence to support the inevitability of failure, is not rational. We should be more like the man who was asked if he could play the piano. "I don't know," he said. "What do you mean you don't know?" he was asked. "I have never tried," he replied.

Physical relaxation, when practiced daily, brings about an accompanying mental relaxation and a relaxed attitude that enables us to better consciously control our automatic mechanism. Physical relaxation also, in itself, has a powerful influence in dehypnotizing us from negative attitudes and reaction patterns.

Get a New Mental Picture of Yourself

afraid of making

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.

if you would picture the end result—see the ball going where you wanted it to go—and have the confidence to know that it was going to do what you wanted, your subconscious would take over and direct your muscles correctly.

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.

each of us really wants, deep down, is more life. Happiness, success, peace of mind, or whatever your own conception of supreme good may be, is experienced in its essence as more life.

YOUR CASE HISTORY List here an experience from your past that is explained by the principles given in this chapter:

In his book I Can See Clearly Now, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer wrote about the influence that Psycho-Cybernetics had on his career, and it's easy to understand why he's so fond of saying, "There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.

When we experience expansive emotions of happiness, self-confidence, and success, we enjoy more life. And to the degree that we inhibit our abilities, frustrate our God-given talents, and allow ourselves to suffer anxiety, fear, self-condemnation, and self-hate, we literally choke off the life force available to us and turn our backs on the gift which our Creator has made. To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death.

He succeeded in replacing the negative belief with a positive belief that he had a message of extreme importance that he alone could deliver, no matter what he looked like.

You" as a personality are not in competition with any other personality simply because there is not another person on the face of the earth like you, or in your particular class. You are an individual. You are unique. You are not "like" any other person and can never become "like" any other person. You are not "supposed" to be like any other person and no other person is "supposed" to be like you.

Since you make them evil or good by your own thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.

in finding in oneself an individuality, uniqueness, and distinctiveness that is akin to the idea of being created in the image of God.

In fact, it is literally impossible to really think positively about a particular situation as long as you hold a negative concept of your "self.

Even impersonal events can be interpreted, and reacted to, as affronts to our self-esteem. The bus we wanted to catch had to be late; it had to go and rain when we had planned to play golf; traffic had to get into a snarl just when we needed to catch the plane. We react with anger, resentment, self-pity, or in other words, unhappiness.

The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell

When your self-image 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.