Title Psycho-Cybernetics

Author Maxwell Maltz

Year Published 1960

Kind of Book Self-help/Mindset

How strongly I recommend it 9/10 

My Impressions  As a practicing plastic surgeon in his day, Maxwell Maltz became intimately aware of the impact low self-image had on an individuals self-esteem and ability to reach their goals. He explains concepts like mental rehearsal (aka visualization) and using criticism  as a course-correcting mechanism to achieve one’s goals.Since it's publication in 1960, the ideas in Psycho-Cybernetics have been recycled by countless authors and self-help gurus from The Secret, Tony Robbins, You're a Badass etc… No hate to these disciples, but in my opinion this book lays out these ideas better than any of them.

Date Read January 2019

What question is the author trying to answer?

  • Why did plastic surgery complete change some people's self image, but have no affect on other people's self image?

  • How can we "steer our mind to a productive, useful  goal so you can reach…peace of mind?"

Practical Takeaways

  • (reading) Summarize the chapter in your own words after reading it

  • Try things first (for _21___ days) then decide if it works for you

  • Don't measure your progress for the first 21 days after starting something new

  • Seek an Experiential understanding over just an Intellectual understanding

  • Don't generalize by making your short comings become part of your identity. (eg. Say "I failed" not "I am a failure."  "I lost" not "I am a loser") This conflates descriptive claims to generalize about who you are as a person

  • Create a self-image you trust and believe in and like. One you're not ashamed to be.

  • Be honest about what your strengths and weaknesses are

  • Use creative imagination to visualize the person you wan to become in the future

  • Go forward. Make errors. Course correct. //Ray Dalio loop. Jordan Peterson wishing star

  • Have a clearly defined goal

  • Visualize yourself already achieving your goal

  • When worrying stop visualizing what you don't want to happen and start visualizing what you do want to happen

  • Practice in your head (drums, presenting, approaching) Visualize yourself doing it.

  • Identify your limiting beliefs

  • Don't compare yourself to other people

  • Take the lesson that the pain is trying to teach you then let it go. Don't dwell on the past unnecessarily

  • Get comfortable being noticed

  • After you have clearly defined your goals, relax and trust that your servo-mechanism is working for you

  • Focus on the journey the majority of the time and only once or twice a day when you visualize focus on the goal

  • Work on a question instensly in a conscious/focused mode for a few hours or days then leave it for a few weeks or months, then return to it and you'll likely have the answer

  • Activate your creativity/diffuse mode by being around water (shower, walk on beach or by water)

  • Keep a notepad and pen on your nightstand for when inspiration comes to you in the middle of the night

  • Before you go to bed, instruct your mind to work on a problem or question while you are sleeping

  • Speak loudly. Raise the volume of your voice

  • Give people genuine compliments

  •  Do only one thing at a time (don’t multitask)

  • Put your goals in the affirmative not the negative (e.g. do this vs. don’t do this)

  • Don’t plan out what you’re going to say

  • Do your worrying before you place your bet, not after the roulette wheel starts turning

  • Put off making a decision until you've had a chance to sleep on it

  • Be happy now, not after X thing happens

  • See criticism as useful feedback. //Dalio "Mistake learner's High"

  • Gladly and graciously accept "negative feedback" from others

  • Admit your mistakes, but don't cry about them. Correct them and go forward.

  • Admit when you are wrong

  • Confront your problems while they're still small. //JP kill dragons when they're small

  • Pick a goal even if it's not perfect. You can course correct as you go. Just get started.

  • Make a new goal right away after you reach your current goal

  • Always have something to look forward to, to work for, or to hope for.

  • Live your life according to what you want, not according to other's expectation

  • Use the word "project" instead of "goal"

  • Treat other people as if they have some value. //Kenny Werner "see nothing but masters around you."

  • Reflect on past successes and brave moments when beginning a new task.

  • Accept yourself, imperfections and all

  • Exercise to drain off physical aggression

  • Don't fear mistakes

  • Be willing to be vulnerable

  • Stop feeling sorry for yourself

  • Be thick skinned

  • Don't take criticism personally

  • Forgive others for your own sake

  • Don't hold grudges

  • When teaching or Presenting, internalize the information so well that you can spontaneously lecture off the cuff. Trust yourself that you will be fine without word for word notes.

  • Practice your public speaking in the mirror

  • If you are an inhibited person, practice speaking before you think

  • Let people know when you like them

  • Compliment people

  • When you get angry take a deep breath and count to ten

  • Practice skills in a low pressure situation

  • It can't hurt to ask. You'll be in the same position you were in before

  • Start with a goal you can succeed at and gradually take on more difficult tasks.//Live on your edge

  • When you hit your limit for going fast, practice really slow (typing and drums)

  • Don't set a rigid deadline to reach your goals

  • When you set out to find a new idea or an answer to a problem, assume the answer already exists somewhere and you just need to locate it

  • While doing creative imagination, practice role-playing various difficult situations coming up and rehearse what you would do in them.

  • (Job Interview) Go over in your mind all the various questions that are likely to be asked. Think about the answers you are going to give. Then 'rehearse' the interview in your mind.

  • (Creative Visualization) Form a mental picture in your imagination of the self you want to be and see yourself in the new role

  • As soon as you have learned from the mistake, forget about it. Stop carrying it around.

  • Focus on what you want, not what you DON'T want

  • Instruct your unconscious mind before bed to be open to the answer to a question you have

 

Big Ideas

  • Our beliefs about where we think we belong dictate where we end up

 

  • Changing how a person's face looks changes how they think about themselves

And

  • How a person views himself affects where they end up in life

 

  • The self-image a person has of himself is what determines his success or failure in life

  • If a person sees himself as ugly, scarred, inferior he will act out these roles in his life

 

  • Our self-image is what defines what we can and cannot do

Therefore

  • When you expand your self-image, you expand what you can do

 

  • Positive thinking works when it is consistent with the individual's self-image

  • Positive thinking does not work when it is not consistent with the individual's self-image

  • A person's self-image changes through experience (not intellectual understanding)

However

  • If a person has no experience of success to draw on he can't draw on it and therefore will lead to more failures

Therefore

  • A person with no experience of success to draw on must engage in vivid imagination of success

Because

  • Our subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail

 

  • Humans are made to strive towards a goal

  • Humans are not happy unless they are striving towards a goal

 

  • The way you see yourself becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy

Because

 

  • We act like the sort of person we conceive ourselves to be

  • It is possible to change your self-image

 

  • Some people whose faces are disfigured will see little-to-no changes in their appearance after a plastic surgeon has done reconstructive surgery on them

Because

  • Though their face has changed, their self-image has remained the same

 

  • Only certain people with scars and disfigurements from accidents feel shame and humiliation about it (not all people)

 

  • To live a fulfilling life you must have a adequate self-image (one that corresponds to reality)

  • To live a fulfilling life you must find your Self acceptable

  • To live a fulfilling life you must be able to trust and believe in your self

 

  • When our self-image is threatened we feel anxious and insecure

 

  • Everyone has goals

However

  • Many people have never articulated their goals to themselves or others (ie. Made them conscious)

 

  • One positive experience/Success is enough to draw-on when making your self image

 

  • Humans are the only animals who have the ability to imagine themselves doing something successfully in the future that they have never done

 

  • Our brain operates much like a goal-seeking device

 

  • you will 'act like' the sort of person you conceive yourself to be

 

  • Before a person can change, he must see himself in a new role

  • Once you have successfully done something once you now have a memory that can be remembered to trigger you to succeed again and again

 

  • New ideas/innovations are 'in the air' (ie. In the collective unconscious)

  • If one person doesn't act on a new idea, someone else will have the same idea and act on it

 

  • You cannot merely imagine a new self-image for yourself, unless you truly feel that it is based on truth.

 

  • The 'how' to how to achieve your goal only comes to you AFTER you have formed a clear mental image of the 'what' of your goal

 

  • Our imagination is creating our reality whether we actively make an effort to use it to create the future we want

  • Our imagination is either creating a constructive or destructive reality around us

 

  • Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real experience

 

  • We act and feel according to the way our mind believes things are (not according to the way they ACTUALLY are)

 

  • We are able to practice new traits and behaviors that we would like to have through creative imagination

 

  • We hypnotize ourselves by unconsciously repeating beliefs to ourselves that others have told us or that we have blindly accepted

 

  • 95% of people are held back in life by feelings of inferiority

 

  • Everyone you meet is superior to you in some way

  • Everyone you meet is inferior to you in some

 

  • We feel feelings of inferiority because we measure ourselves against other people

 

  • Our errors, mistakes, failures, and sometimes even humiliations, are necessary steps in the learning process

However

  • Our errors, mistakes, failures, and sometimes even humiliations are painful because they are supposed to teach us a lesson

  • Once we learn the lessons from our errors, mistakes, failures, humiliations there is no reason for us to still think about them

 

  • Dwelling on negative memories (failures/mistakes/errors/humiliations) make you more likely to repeat them

Because

  • SP: when we are dwelling on negative memories (failures/mistakes/errors/humiliations) we are mentally rehearsing them (ie. It is a type of active imagination)

 

  • We change our ideas about things because we adopt new/better ideas (not because we will ourselves to stop believing them)

 

  • Worry is the process of vividly imagining an undesirable future outcome

 

  • Most people underestimate what they are capable of

  • Most people overestimate how difficult the challenge they are facing is

 

  • It is a fallacy to believe that because you failed in the past, you are going to fail in the future

  • One's failure in something in the past does not guarantee (or even strongly predict) failure in that thing in the future

 

  • It is a fallacy to believe that you CAN'T do something merely because you have never TRIED to do it

  • Most people assume that they CAN'T do something BECAUSE they have never tried it

  • It is more rational to believe that you are not sure if you can or can't do something you have never tried doing

 

  • In order for someone to have a hunch or intuition about something, he must have been intensely focused on it or interested in solving it for a period of time leading up to it

  • After a person has defined a problem, researched it, and thought about it intensely, it is better to leave it rather than continuing to focus on it

 

  • Epiphanies/insights/ideas/solutions to problems are more likely to arise when you are doing some low-level activity which keeps the mind alert without putting too much strain on it

 

  • We can only do one thing at a time

 

  • We think better when we are happy

  • All our internal organs function better when we are happy

 

  • A bicycle is only poised and in balance when it is moving forward towards something

Similarly

  • People are only poised and in balance when they are moving forward towards a goal

 

  • People are goal-seek mechanisms

  • The goal we are striving for must mean something to us

  • Life feels meaningless when we don't have a goal we are striving towards

 

  • People often die shortly after retirement

Because

  • After retirement people stop having a goal to strive for

 

  • Hitler may have lost WW2 in part because he punished his advisors for delivering him bad news, so they stopped delivering him bad news and he didn't understand the situation fully -Bertrand Russell

 

  • If we wait until we are absolutely certain and sure before we act, we will never do anything

 

  • When we treat others as if they have some value, our self-esteem goes up

 

  • We build confidence after we have gained some experience doing something successfully

Therefore

  • We are likely to not have much confidence when we do something for the first time

 

  • Changing your self-image means changing your mental picture of your self, not changing your self

 

  • Chronic frustration usually means that the goals we have set for ourselves are unrealistic

 

  • Physical exercise is great for getting rid of aggression

 

  • It is more motivating to work to become something you're not than to try to maintain/defend something you already are

Therefore

  • Underdogs often beat the defending champions in sports

 

  • The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one. -Elbert Hubbard

 

  • Self-pity is the worst emotional habit a person can develop

 

  • The protective mechanism we use to protect ourselves after an emotional injury often does more damage than good

 

  • the people who become offended the easiest have the lowest self-esteem

 

  • A healthy self-image does not bruise easily

 

  • When we condemn another, we good because we feel superior to him

 

  • Feeling sorry for yourself is pleasurable/satisfying its own perverse kind of way

 

  • The best way to make a good impression on someone is to not think about what kind of impression you are making on them

 

  • Not all escapism is bad

  • You need a certain amount of escapism to be healthy

 

  • When you practice in a low-stress environment you perform better in a high-stress environment

 

  • Our nervous system can't tell the difference between real and imagined failure

Therefore

  • If we picture ourselves failing we will start to feel like we have already failed

 

Surprising Facts

  • It is impossible to feel emotions like fear, anxiety, or anger while all of the muscles of the body are completely relaxed

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Unknown Terms

Psycho-Cybernetics: a term coined by Maxwell Maltz which menas, Steering your mind to a productive, useful goal …. so you can reach the greatest port in the world

Superiority Complex: an attitude of superiority which conceals actual feelings of inferiority and failure.

Self -Image" "… our own conception of the 'sort of person I am.' It has been built up from out 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 a 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." pg.2

Esteem: literally means to appreciate the worthy of

Success Syndrome: a term in psychiatry denoting a person who feels guilty, insecure, and anxious when he realizes he has 'succeed'