Psycho-Cybernetics explains how thinking of your mind as a machine can improve your self-image and dramatically increase your ability to feel successful and happy—you can program your mind to achieve success and happiness in the same way that you’d program a machine to achieve certain goals.
This first part of the guide explores why Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon, began researching psychology and cybernetic theory to better understand why some people are prone to success, while others are prone to failure. We’ll then explain Maltz’s theory about how the human brain works to achieve goals according to cybernetic principles.
Throughout his time working as a plastic surgeon, Maltz realized that there was a discrepancy between how different patients responded to the correction of “physical flaws.” After surgery, some patients displayed an immediate rise in self-esteem and self-confidence. As a result, they approached their goals more proactively and achieved more success than they did pre-surgery.
(Shortform note: Throughout the book, Maltz refers to “confidence” and “success” as interchangeable terms—he infers that the more confident you are, the more successful you are.)
However, other patients showed no change in their personalities after surgery—they continued to think, feel, and act exactly as if the “flaw” was still there, and their inner feelings and attitudes remained the same. Even though their outward appearance changed, they still didn’t feel any happier or see themselves differently, and their level of success didn’t improve.
(Shortform note: Psychological problems related to how people view their bodies are increasingly common. Research shows that cosmetic surgery patients are more likely to suffer from “Body Dysmorphic Disorder,” an obsessive-compulsive disorder centered on perceived physical flaws. It’s therefore vital that medical practitioners ensure that their patients are emotionally healthy before agreeing to undertake any procedures.)
The discrepancy in how patients responded to having their physical “flaws” corrected, led Maltz to pursue the connection between the mind and the body and its impact on levels of confidence and success.
Eventually, Maltz concluded that self-perception is far more important to success than physical appearance: Your physical features don’t determine your approach to life and your levels of success and happiness—only your thoughts about yourself impact how you behave and your quality of life. He realized that the key to self-improvement and more success was not simply to change external circumstances, but to remove negative thought patterns that caused patients to view themselves as unsuccessful.
(Shortform note: Like Maltz, Louise Hay, the founder of Hay House, argued that our beliefs about ourselves impact our ability to succeed and experience happiness. In her book, Love Your Body, she argues that you should love your body regardless of your (perceived) flaws. This act of compassion towards your body will release all negative thought patterns and the psychological illnesses (such as body dysmorphia) that arise from them.)
In an attempt to get to the root cause of why people choose to perceive themselves the way that they do, Maltz analyzed the process of success in reverse—he began to research the process the mind goes through to successfully achieve goals and how that links back to self-perception. Therefore, we’ll explain the mechanisms at play when you successfully achieve a goal.
(Shortform note: Maltz chose to analyze goals in reverse because of the way he viewed success: He didn’t see it as external manifestations of prestige such as an impressive career, big house, or expensive car. Instead, he referred to success as an internal feeling, specifically, the satisfaction you feel when you achieve a goal that’s meaningful to you. Because he believed that your levels of confidence impact your ability to succeed in achieving goals, and your self-perception impacts your confidence, he believed he could figure out the solution to success by analyzing how successful goals are achieved.)
Maltz’s research into the process the mind goes through to achieve goals led him to develop an interest in cybernetic theory—a branch of science that studies the goal-oriented behavior of machines. The more Maltz analyzed the way humans achieve goals, the more he realized that the human brain and nervous system operate in accordance with cybernetic principles.
To clarify how you achieve results in the same way that a cybernetic machine does, we’ll illustrate how both machines and humans rely upon an inbuilt guidance system that allows them to interpret positive and negative feedback to help them reach intended goals:
For a machine, imagine a missile programmed to hit a target: In this case, the missile has sensors in place which provide feedback to guide it to its target. This feedback is positive (missile’s on the correct path) and negative (missile’s not on the correct path). The missile continues to move forward and uses this feedback to correct its course and reach the target.
For the human mind, imagine how you learned to eat: The act of directing a spoon into your mouth took a lot of practice and there were many times that you ended up with food on your forehead or in your lap. Throughout all of this, your brain was trying to reach a target (get food into your mouth) and relied on positive and negative feedback to know if it was on the right track. Once you successfully managed to get the food into your mouth, your brain recorded the process as a success and began to duplicate the process every time you fed yourself.
So your brain worked according to cybernetic principles to reach your goal: It used positive and negative feedback to check if it was on track and, once it figured out the correct method, your brain recorded the successful feedback and discarded the negative feedback (which no longer served any purpose once your brain memorized the correct process) so that you could continue to repeat the action without further conscious thought.
How Cybernetic Theory Has Evolved Since Psycho-Cybernetics’s Publication
To develop his theory, Maltz drew on the work of Dr. Norbert Wiener—the originator of cybernetic theory, and the first scientist to theorize that all intelligent behavior is the result of feedback mechanisms—and Dr. John von Neumann, who explored the analogies between technology and the human brain in his seminal work, Computer and the Brain.
Both scientists made important contributions to the development of modern artificial intelligence. However, recent developments in artificial intelligence have subverted the original theory that machines need humans to create and operate them in order to function and fulfill their objectives.
For example, some scientists have explored the possibility of merging animal or human brain cells (neurons) with technology to create machines with biological brains. This takes the concept of humans controlling machines to a whole new level—humans creating machines with the ability to govern themselves—and throws up a number of social and ethical issues that need to be considered.
In addition, it’s already possible for a human brain to interface with a computer—brains and computers can communicate with each other through the use of electromagnetic signals. Apparently, this process can help to overcome mental disorders and improve brain cognition. This has massive implications, especially in the area of healthcare—for example, if someone suffers from a brain injury and has to relearn how to eat, they could interface with a computer to help speed up the process.
Maltz’s conclusion that our brains work according to cybernetic principles leads to the assumption that all we need to do to achieve success and happiness is to decide on an appropriate goal and let our brain work like a machine that’s been directed to work on a specific action—it will automatically direct our thoughts and actions towards reaching that goal.
Unfortunately, things aren’t that simple: You may decide to achieve a goal, but deep down, your brain may not be programmed to achieve that goal. Maltz argues that your conscious goals often differ from your internal programming. For example, your conscious goal may be to make friends (results in success), but your internal programming might lead you to push people away (results in failure). This conflict between your conscious goal and your internal programming leads you to unhappiness and a feeling of failure because you can’t move past your internal programming.
Why does this incongruence between your conscious goals and your internal programming occur? Maltz argues that it’s down to your self-image.
(Shortform note: Maltz argues that when your conscious goals differ from your internal programming, you engage in self-defeating behaviors that thwart the goals you’ve set for yourself. You’ll recognize this in instances of self-sabotage. Obvious forms of self-sabotage include procrastination (when you avoid taking action to achieve your goals) and unhealthy habits such as overeating when your goal is to lose weight, or overspending when your goal is to save money.)
Like a machine, your brain has recorded every experience you’ve had up until this moment—every failure, success, and interaction. Your self-image is a reflection of how you’ve identified with and felt about these experiences. Your self-image defines who you are, how you express yourself, and how you act in any given situation.
For example, consider an experience such as falling over. You could either say to yourself, “I fell over” (a fact that won’t impact your self-image), or you could say to yourself, “I’m a klutz!” (the way you identified with the experience, which will impact your self-image, and the way that you express yourself—for example, you may act overly cautious as a result of this identification).
Your Self-Image Impacts Your Self-Esteem
Research developments in the area of self-identity indicate that our self-image is just one of four interrelated components that inform our opinions of ourselves:
Self-image: How you see yourself.
Ideal self: How you would like to be seen by others.
Real self: The feedback you receive from others shows you who you really are.
Looking glass self: How you perceive the way others perceive you and compare it to the way you see yourself.
The research shows that you’re more likely to have a healthy sense of self-esteem if your beliefs in each of the four components align with and complement each other. In other words, the greater the difference of ideas within each component, the more likely you are to suffer from low self-esteem. For example, you see yourself as boring (your self-image) but you want others to see you as interesting (your ideal self). This gap between your self-image and your ideal self creates conflict and undermines your self-esteem.
Maltz argues that your self-image is not a real thing. It’s simply a construct of thoughts you chose to think about past experiences. Thoughts are subjective (for example, you may think you’re fat but it doesn’t mean that you are fat) and may or may not be true. But if you accept them as truth, they become part of your self-image.
Why does your self-image accept all of your thoughts, regardless of how inaccurate they are, as truth? Because your nervous system can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality: Your brain doesn’t judge your thoughts—instead, it reacts automatically to what you think or imagine to be true.
Maltz draws on the practice of hypnotism to make his point. He says that if you’re hypnotized into believing that you’re in a snowstorm, your body will react to the cold: you’ll shiver, goose pimples will rise on your skin, and your teeth will chatter. In the same way that a hypnotist’s words have power over the hypnotized subject, what you accept as truth about yourself has power over you, even if it’s not actually true.
Maltz argues that you’ve been “hypnotized” by others’ words throughout your life. As a young child, you were impressionable and prone to believing what those around you said about your character. You accepted their opinions and beliefs about you as truth and this shaped your self-image in the early part of your life. Your self-image has likely evolved over time, but if you haven’t addressed these original thoughts, they will continue to inform your opinion of yourself.
You’ve also used your imagination to hypnotize yourself: Thoughts plus feelings form mental images and create a strong impression in your mind—these strong impressions turn into beliefs that define your self-image. For example, worries are a form of mental imagery. You think about things that could go wrong and create feelings of anxiety and fear—these thoughts and feelings create the impression of the worst-case scenario in your mind. Your mind then operates according to the belief that the worst-case scenario will take place, and your nervous system responds by creating the appropriate emotional and physical reactions.
How Clinical Hypnotherapy Treats Psychological Problems
Maltz focuses on the negative aspects of being “hypnotized” by others’ beliefs about you, but clinical hypnotherapy can be an effective form of medical treatment and impact your self-image positively. This is because, as Maltz notes, your nervous system can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality.
Hypnotherapy is commonly used to treat a variety of psychological problems such as phobias, anxiety issues, weight management, and addictions. Psychological problems tend to have a clear trigger and response relationship. For example:
Arachnophobia: You see a spider (trigger), and you panic (response).
Anxiety: You think about how much work you have to do (trigger), and you immediately feel worried and overwhelmed (response).
Addictions: You experience a particular feeling (trigger), and you feel overwhelmed by a craving for a particular substance (response).
Clinical hypnotherapy treats these problems by helping you to:
Identify the root cause of your problem: Why you respond to triggers in the way you do.
Reprogram the way your mind responds to triggers: Replaces your negative response with a positive response.
Clinical hypnotists put you in a relaxed, trance-like state so that they can bypass your conscious mind and offer suggestions directly to your subconscious mind—while you're in this state, your conscious mind doesn’t actively “resist” these new suggestions. Successful hypnotherapy sessions create new trigger and response relationships in your mind. For example:
Arachnophobia: You see a spider (trigger), and you feel calm (new response).
Anxiety: You think about how much work you have to do (trigger), and you’re able to think clearly and prioritize your work (new response).
Addictions: You experience a particular feeling (trigger), and you’re able to seek a positive outlet for your emotions (response).
The theme, as the book suggests, is that your brain behaves according to trigger-response pairs that it believes to be true but aren’t actually valid. With training, you can rewire them.
When it comes to achieving goals, humans and machines differ in one essential way: humans rely on their self-image to interpret the feedback they receive from their environment. Their interpretation of feedback impacts the way they approach their goals and doesn’t always lead to success.
Maltz argues that your self-image determines how you perceive your environment and how you read signals to interpret feedback. In other words, your self-image determines how you engage in and perceive every social interaction and experience throughout your life.
Maltz argues that the self-image is continually reinforced by what he calls “feedback loops”—how feedback reinforces learned behavior and programming—and draws parallels with how cybernetic machines incorporate feedback to operate successfully.
Machines process feedback so that they can achieve their goal. Once they achieve the goal, they store their successful feedback (memory of successful attempts) and discard their negative feedback (memory of mistakes). Their memory of successful attempts creates a feedback loop that allows them to “learn” quickly and operate efficiently and successfully.
However, unlike a machine, humans rely on their self-images to interpret feedback to their behavior. Your self-image decides whether to release negative feedback so that you operate successfully (behave in a way that results in success), or to remember and reinforce negative feedback so that you operate inefficiently (behave in a way that creates failure). If your self-image decides to focus on negative feedback, this can lead to programming that causes you to reinforce negative patterns of behavior that work against what you want to achieve.
Even though she wants to connect with others (her goal) her self-image causes her to interpret all feedback as negative, stops her from moving towards what she wants, and perpetuates her self-isolation.
Your interpretation of your environment justifies your self-image and how you continue to act—how you continue to act further reinforces your interpretation of your environment, and so on. So, if you want to achieve success and happiness—according to the goals you’ve consciously set for yourself—you need to ensure that your self-image aligns with what you want. This way, you’ll be able to interpret and act on feedback in a way that moves you toward your goals.
How Unconscious Biases Reinforce Feedback Loops
While you may believe that your perceptions and reactions to your environment are entirely logical, you may be under the influence of unconscious biases that reinforce patterns of behavior that you would rather not engage in.
Research shows that your dominant personality traits and patterns of behavior are influenced by cognitive biases. These biases are the result of your brain’s attempt to make quick judgments based on your past experiences, and they shape the way you think about and perceive your environment.
There are many different types of cognitive biases, and each of them influences your perceptions in different ways. In the example above, the person’s experience suggests that her behavior is influenced by Confirmation Bias—the tendency to pay more attention to the information that confirms and reinforces her opinion (people don’t like her).
She doesn’t want to have this belief—her past experiences led her to form this belief. However, the confirmation bias shapes her perception so that she can only notice and interpret interactions and experiences that reinforce this belief. As a result, she continues to act defensively because her bias ensures that she continues to mistrust others.
Maltz argues that since your self-image is a result of hypnotization and imagination, you can use your imagination to “dehypnotize” yourself and improve your self-image. The more you improve your self-image, the more you improve the way you’re programmed to act. The first step to reprogramming your self-image is becoming conscious of whether you’re using your imagination constructively (to create positive thoughts and feelings) or deconstructively (to create negative thoughts and feelings).
If you’re using your imagination deconstructively, Maltz argues that you need to make a conscious effort to instead use it to form a clear mental picture of yourself as successful—this will allow you to practice feeling successful, and will ultimately improve your approach to life. To replace existing negative beliefs with new successful beliefs, you need to create equally strong impressions in your mind—when you create positive feelings of excitement and desire regularly enough, they’ll outweigh your negative feelings, and your self-image will improve.
(Shortform note: Maltz argues that you must imagine positive feelings that outweigh your negative feelings so that they can create a strong enough impression to replace your unwanted beliefs. However, when you’re in a state of anxiety or fear, it’s not so easy to jump to a positive thought. This is because your thoughts and your state of mind reinforce one another to create an internal feedback loop that’s difficult to break out of: Your thoughts determine your state of mind and your state of mind determines your thoughts. Abraham Hicks suggests a useful technique to help you reframe your negative thoughts into positive ones.)
Maltz describes five methods you can use to direct your imagination towards thoughts and feelings of success related to specific goals and the improvement of your self-image.
Maltz suggests that you choose a habit that you perform daily—one that’s not tied to your self-image, such as brushing your teeth or putting your shoes on—and commit to doing it differently. Every time you make the effort to change this particular habit, affirm to yourself that if you can break this habit, you can also break any negative thought patterns by replacing them with successful thought patterns. For example, if you normally put your right shoe on first, start making the conscious effort to put your left shoe on first. Use the act of putting your shoes on differently to remind yourself that you can choose to think differently.
(Shortform note: Maltz suggests that you focus on changing a current habit to reinforce your commitment to change your self-image. But he doesn’t provide advice on how to successfully change this habit. Since this is the first step to improve your self-image, it’s necessary to set yourself up to succeed—the more you succeed, the more motivation you’ll have to move forward with the process. According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, habits are linked to four stages: cue, craving, response, and reward—if you ensure that each of the four stages reinforces the habits you wish to change, you’ll be more likely to succeed.)
Maltz argues that practicing physical relaxation will enable you to consciously control your imagination and, subsequently, your self-image. When your mind is relaxed, it’s more receptive to positive suggestions. This is because negative thoughts create tension in the body—this tension makes it difficult for your mind to accept new ideas or possibilities. On the other hand, when you’re in a state of relaxation, negative thoughts tend to disappear. Relaxing your mind and body will create space for your positive suggestions to thrive.
(Shortform note: In addition to creating tension that blocks your mind from accepting new thoughts and ideas, negative and stressful thoughts impact your ability to think about what you’re experiencing. This is because, when you feel stress, your amygdala acts as if you’re in danger: It ensures that you respond automatically to threats by inhibiting the thinking part of your brain (the hippocampus). In other words, stress and tension stop you from thinking objectively and lead you to act in irrational ways.)
Maltz suggests that you use your imagination to think about the person you want to be and to recall your successful memories. He argues that each time you create or recall successful feelings, your subconscious will record them and imprint them into your self-image. These successful feelings will accumulate in your self-image and you’ll gradually find yourself naturally feeling and acting more successfully.
(Shortform note: While visualizing success can lead you to act in successful ways, in Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday claims that it can also confuse your mind and create the opposite effect: When your mind believes that you’ve already achieved something, you feel that you’ve made progress despite not having taken any measurable steps toward achieving your goal. This feeling of progress feels good, but it’s based on a false sense of achievement that may cause you to lose sight of the actions you need to take to move forward.)
Maltz argues that you need to find a reason to change your self-image before you can develop the skills to change it. In other words, you should know what results you hope to achieve with an improved self-image. Without a clear reason, you’re unlikely to find the motivation you need to make the required changes. So, if you want to change your self-image so that you can feel more inner peace, think about why you want this—what you’ll get, or what improvements you hope to see in your life once you make this change. For example, will you get along better with your family, or feel more productive at work?
Once you’ve thought of something that your successful self would want to achieve, break it down and think of the first step that you can realistically achieve—Maltz argues that it’s important to develop the habit of success early on so that you can gradually build up your self-confidence to achieve more demanding goals.
How To Overcome Your Mind’s Resistance to Change
Maltz argues that your habits are a result of your current self-image. If you want to create new habits to support a more positive self-image, you need to take small achievable steps to develop the habit of success. This is because the bigger the change you want to make, the more your mind is going to resist it—your mind’s job is to protect you. If it believes that you’re attempting to do things that will cause it harm, it will resist every attempt that you make with feelings of fear or inhibition.
So how can you get past this resistance so that you can achieve what you want? In The Kaizen Way, Psychologist Rober Maurer claims that you’re more likely to make successful changes if you take very small but regular steps toward the large goal you intend to achieve. This is because small changes are more likely to bypass your brain’s instinctive reaction to resist new behavioral changes. Each time you take another step, you’ll demonstrate to your brain that you’re safe, and you’ll eventually succeed without fear or resistance.
Maltz argues that genuine success and wellbeing come from cultivating and developing the habit of happiness in your life. Further, he claims that your mental attitude influences the way that your body heals: Happy people are generally healthier and more resilient to physical setbacks because they expect to get well and have a reason to get well.
On the other hand, unhappy people suffer from poor health and wellbeing because they don’t have a reason to get better—they don’t have anything to look forward to. Studies have shown results that support his idea that negative attitudes are bad for your health. For example, stressed out and unhappy people often suffer from ulcers and high blood pressure, they’re more likely to develop addictive behaviors and less likely to engage in healthy routines.
(Shortform note: Multiple research experiments confirm Maltz’s claim that mental attitudes impact health. Studies on the impact of negative mental states (depression, stress, anxiety) on health confirm that negative attitudes are bad for your health. Prolonged negativity affects your hormones, immune system, sleep, brain, and digestion. These researchers suggest that you can reduce your levels of stress and negativity by undertaking a daily ritual such as meditation, therapy, or physical exercise.)
An Active Mind Is a Happy Mind: The realization that success comes from cultivating happiness led Maltz to think about what makes people feel happy. Maltz argues that your mind is designed to achieve goals. You’re more likely to feel interested and engaged in your life when you give your mind goals to pursue. The more you pursue satisfying goals, the more you have to look forward to and engage with. This makes you want to look after your health and your wellbeing. As a result, you're more inclined to feel happy.
(Shortform note: Like Maltz, the author of Flow argues that people are more likely to feel happy when they focus all of their attention on completing tasks and achieving goals. He claims that the more you direct your focus to achieve a goal, the more absorbed you feel in what you’re doing. This sense of absorption makes it difficult for your mind to wander and get distracted by negative thoughts, and trains your mind to feel satisfied and happy—your mind gets used to experiencing satisfaction and this feeling impacts your overall mood and behavior.)
Maltz argues that the more you free yourself from responding to and identifying with negative thoughts—by deliberately creating successful feedback loops like a machine—the more likely you are to develop a happy and successful state of mind. He prescribes three methods you can use to replace existing negative thoughts and feelings with positive thoughts and feelings, and redirect yourself towards achieving successful outcomes.
A challenge is any situation that takes you out of your comfort zone. It’s important to see this type of situation as an opportunity rather than a crisis. Maltz argues that someone with a negative self-image often confuses challenges (opportunities to advance) with crises (life-threatening situations) because they perceive threats to be bigger than they are. They find excuses to avoid challenges, and they waste time and energy worrying or evading discomforting situations. On the other hand, people with a positive self-image recognize the difference between an actual crisis and a challenge. They proactively seek ways to overcome challenges, and they spend their time visualizing and planning how to make the best out of every situation.
(Shortform note: In her book Mindset, Carol S. Dweck explains the two mindsets used to describe a person’s attitude to challenges and setbacks: Growth mindset (people see challenges as an opportunity to learn) and fixed mindset (people see challenges as proof of their inability to achieve success). Dweck argues that even if you have a tendency toward a fixed mindset, you can develop a growth mindset through conscious awareness and effort. Many of the methods Maltz prescribes complement Dweck’s argument that you can improve the way you approach and overcome the challenges in your life.)
Maltz suggests that you plan ahead for challenges as much as you can by taking the time to investigate your fears. To move past your fears, ask yourself questions to uncover what exactly you’re afraid of and then use your answers to better prepare yourself for this challenge—use your imagination to overwrite your fearful thoughts by visualizing yourself responding to situations calmly and competently.
(Shortform note: Like Maltz, Tim Ferriss suggests that you should investigate your fears. He argues that focusing on your worst-case scenarios will empower you to approach any challenge. This is because you’re more likely to hold back from taking action when your fears are unknown—vague possibilities that could happen. The more you think about the unknown, the more powerless you feel to overcome your fears. But when you define the actual worst-case scenario, you give your mind something specific and productive to work on.)
Maltz argues that your negative feelings (anxiety, discomfort, lack of self-confidence) are not an indication of reality, just how you feel about reality—and those feelings are a result of your habitual thought process. That is, if you habitually think negative thoughts, you’ll often misunderstand events and draw false conclusions that keep you stuck in a negative feedback loop. When you feel negative thoughts, feelings, or memories surface, choose to replace them with rational thoughts that encourage positive beliefs.
(Shortform note: Similar to Maltz’s method, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on asking questions to assess the rationality of uncomfortable thoughts and to explore other perspectives. This process helps you to examine and challenge uncomfortable thoughts so that you can find alternative ways to think about your triggers. The more you question the validity of your uncomfortable thoughts, the less likely you are to accept them as truth and allow them to rule your emotions.)
Maltz argues that an unwillingness or failure to forgive past mistakes and traumas holds people back from experiencing success in their lives—they form “emotional scars” to protect themselves from future hurts and humiliations. Instead of protecting them, these scars only prevent them from experiencing new things and keep them trapped in a negative mental state..
Forgiveness, on the other hand, heals these emotional scars and allows you to move forward with your life. You need to accept that we all make mistakes and it’s okay—no one’s perfect. Holding onto blame only holds you back from success. Forgiving yourself and others for past mistakes will liberate you and allow you to focus on where you want to go.
(Shortform note: In How To Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie expands upon the idea that you should “forgive and forget” past hurts so that you can move forward and embrace success and happiness. He claims that holding onto past grievances takes away your power because it prevents you from focusing on what you want. These negative feelings can also harm your physical health and produce effects such as high blood pressure and insomnia. Carnegie’s suggestions for releasing grievances, or “emotional scars,” include looking for the good in every situation, and focusing on something you’re passionate about.)
Psycho-Cybernetics is based on the theory that your mind functions according to cybernetic principles—you can program your mind to achieve success and happiness in the same way that you’d program a machine to achieve the results that you want. Maxwell Maltz suggests a number of methods to help you to consciously:
Dr. Maxwell Maltz (1889-1975) was a plastic surgeon, lecturer, professor, and author. He was renowned worldwide for his expertise and skill in the field of plastic surgery.
Maltz released a number of fiction and non-fiction books, including:
Matt Furey, the author of the updated edition of Psycho-Cybernetics that this guide is based on, is president of the Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation and runs seminars and coaching programs to extend the legacy of Maltz’s work. He is a successful entrepreneur, holds multiple championship titles in wrestling and martial arts, and has authored a number of books:
Connect with Matt Furey:
Publisher: Penguin Random House
This guide is based on the 2015 edition of Psycho-Cybernetics released by Matt Furey. Previous adaptations released since Maltz's death in 1975 include:
Psycho-Cybernetics was first published in 1960. At the time, behaviorism was the dominant school of thought in psychology. Behavioral psychology is based on the idea that all behaviors develop through a process of conditioning (Pavlov’s Dogs is a classic example of conditioning), and that anyone can be trained to perform any task, or behave in a particular way, as long as they’ve been conditioned correctly.
According to this theory, your mind is a simple stimulus-response machine, and your behavior is a result of how you’ve been conditioned to act—you act like this because of that. Behaviorism only attributes responses to the way you've been conditioned to act and doesn't factor your internal state or the concept of free will into the analysis of your behavior. For example, if your phone rings (stimulus) and you answer it (response), behaviorists will say you’re answering it because you’ve been conditioned to respond to the sound of your phone ringing. But you might have other reasons to check your phone, such as being anxious to hear from someone in particular, or you may decide to ignore your phone because you want to avoid distractions.
Maltz challenged behaviorism with a combination of Cybernetic theory and psychologist Prescott Lecky’s Self-Consistency theory.
Maltz analyzed the process your mind goes through to achieve goals and realized that there’s a parallel between Cybernetic theory and Self-Consistency Theory: In the same way that machines can’t operate beyond how they’ve been programmed to operate, your mind can’t move beyond the limitations of its programming. For example, if your mind believes that you are bad at math, it imposes limits that prevent you from approaching math problems confidently. Maltz identified self-image—which is malleable—as the essential factor that determines your mind’s programming. Consequently, Maltz created methods to raise awareness of your current limitations, and to reprogram your mind to achieve success.
The theories that Maltz drew on to develop Psycho-Cybernetics eventually led to the development of cognitive science—the scientific study of the mind and its processes—and continue to play a major role in psychological research and therapy.
Psycho-Cybernetics is a recognized classic in the field of self-help books. The book rapidly became a bestseller and has since sold more than 35 million copies worldwide. It also revolutionized the self-help industry and paved the way for the majority of personal empowerment programs in existence today. Many influential writers, such as Wayne Dyer and Tony Robbins (Awaken the Giant Within), have drawn on Maltz’s ideas about visualization and mental imagery—both Dyer and Robbins rely heavily on Maltz’s argument that you need to align your feelings with the success you want to achieve before you approach your goals.
The original edition of Psycho-Cybernetics enjoys excellent feedback—many reviewers have labeled this book as “life-changing” and “highly recommended,” and find it a useful aid to clarify complex concepts touched on in more recent self-help books, such as why people experience their lives the way that they do and how changing their feelings and expectations can improve their lives. As a result, the book continues to remain highly relevant and useful despite being in print since 1960.
However, some reviewers do find it difficult to move past the repetitive style of the book—they dislike how difficult it is to follow Maltz’s argument and locate the actionable material that complements his ideas. In particular, some reviewers have commented that the book could’ve been greatly condensed if Maltz had presented the concepts and actionable material in a more consecutive sequence.
Psycho-Cybernetics explains cybernetic theory and how your mind works like a machine, how your self-image impacts your experiences, and how you can improve your self-image to create more success and happiness in your life. Maltz supports his arguments with a wealth of examples and scientific theories (from that time).
Psycho-Cybernetics attempts to explain and provide examples and supporting arguments for a number of complicated theoretical concepts: cybernetic theory, the self-image, and the subconscious mind. However, Maltz doesn’t approach the concepts in consecutive order—each of the 15 chapters includes fragments of each concept. As a result, the book suffers from repetition and a general lack of focus.
In addition, the methods that Maltz prescribes for a better self-image are interwoven throughout the chapters—many reviewers report that this makes it difficult to locate and effectively implement the actionable material.
This guide separates Maltz’s ideas and techniques into two distinct parts: Part 1 discusses the theory behind Psycho-Cybernetics, and Part 2 presents the actionable material that Maltz weaves throughout his book. We also compare and contrast each key concept with up-to-date psychological research and self-improvement methods, and we expand on Maltz’s prescriptive style with actionable ideas from other authors and psychologists. You’ll learn more about:
Psycho-Cybernetics explains how thinking of your mind as a machine can improve your self-image and dramatically increase your ability to feel successful and happy—you can program your mind to achieve success and happiness in the same way that you’d program a machine to achieve certain goals.
In this first part of the guide, we’ll cover the theory behind Psycho-Cybernetics. Then, in Part 2, we’ll discuss actionable ways to implement Maltz’s methods and improve your life.
In this chapter, we’ll explore why Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon, began researching psychology and cybernetic theory to better understand why some people are prone to success, while others are prone to failure. We’ll then explain Maltz’s theory about how the human brain works to achieve goals according to cybernetic principles.
Throughout his time working as a plastic surgeon, Maltz realized that there was a discrepancy between how different patients responded to the correction of “physical flaws.” After surgery, some of his patients would display an immediate rise in self-esteem and self-confidence—he noticed that these patients were more comfortable with themselves and approached their goals more proactively than they did pre-surgery. This initially led Maltz to believe that transforming his patients’ physical appearance would lead them to think more positively about themselves—this rise in self-confidence would become apparent in their self-expression and personality, and it would have an impact on the level of success that they achieved.
However, this theory didn’t hold up, as he noticed that some patients showed no change in their personalities after surgery—they continued to think, feel, and act exactly as if the “flaw” was still there, and their inner feelings and attitudes remained the same. In other words, their outward appearance changed (sometimes drastically) but they still didn’t feel any happier or see themselves differently, and their level of success didn’t improve.
Through further research of this discrepancy, Maltz discovered that patients who responded positively to surgery (with a rise in self-esteem) correctly identified their flaws as the cause of their low self-esteem. On the other hand, the patients who failed to change often had expectations that were not satisfied by the surgery—they incorrectly identified their flaws as the cause of their low self-esteem and lack of success.
(Shortform note: Throughout the book, Maltz refers to “confidence” and “success” as interchangeable terms—he infers that the more confident you are, the more successful you are.)
Don’t Rely on Cosmetic Surgery to Improve Your Self-Esteem
Psychological problems related to how people view their bodies are increasingly common. For example, a poll from the Mental Health Foundation revealed that one in eight UK adults are so self-conscious about their body image that they have suicidal thoughts. The charity identified social media’s representation of the “idealized body image” as a cause of this distress.
Consequently, research shows that cosmetic surgery patients are more likely to suffer from “Body Dysmorphic Disorder,” an obsessive-compulsive disorder centered on perceived physical flaws. It’s therefore vital that medical practitioners watch out for patients who rely on cosmetic surgery as a source of their self-esteem, particularly those who view cosmetic surgery as a quick fix to confidence.
Further, these patients are more likely to become addicted to cosmetic surgery—they have one procedure and feel an instant boost of confidence. Eventually, this confidence wears off and they find another “flaw” to fix, so they have another procedure, and so on.
While cosmetic surgery can help to promote a positive self-image, cosmetic surgeons do need to ensure that their patients are emotionally healthy before agreeing to undertake any procedures. Emotional health in this respect means that patients have a balanced opinion about their appearance. They understand that most of what they experience has nothing to do
with how they look, and they realize that their lives won’t drastically change after cosmetic surgery.
After Maltz discovered that his patients responded differently to having their physical “flaws” corrected, he next realized that two people with the same physical flaw can respond in dramatically different ways to the same feature. One person may feel ashamed of this feature and use it as an excuse to withdraw from life, while the other person may not pay any attention to it and won’t let it affect her confidence (success).
Why is it that two people can respond so differently to the same flaw? If the first person is able to feel confident with her nose, why is the second person allowing this same feature to make her feel so unconfident? Would surgery help her to feel more confident and successful or is there something else making her feel insecure?
These questions led Maltz to pursue the connection between the mind and the body and its impact on levels of confidence and success. He paid particular attention to the process the human mind goes through to achieve goals, and drew on a wide range of research, including Psychologist Prescott Lecky’s Self-Consistency theory.
(Shortform note: Lecky argued that you don’t simply act in response to the environment. Instead, your actions are motivated by the need to align your behaviors with your beliefs and ideas about yourself—in other words, your behavior always reflects what you believe about yourself.)
Eventually, Maltz concluded that self-perception is far more important to success than physical appearance: Your physical features don’t determine your approach to life and your levels of success and happiness—only your thoughts about yourself impact how you behave and your quality of life. He realized that the key to self-improvement and more success was not simply to change external circumstances, but to remove negative thought patterns that caused patients to view themselves as unsuccessful.
According to Maltz, the second person from our earlier example has negative thought patterns that cause her to perceive herself as unsuccessful—she just happens to fixate on her nose as a focal point for her failures and unhappiness. So, a nose reduction may or may not help her to feel happier: What she really needs to do is change her thought patterns and perceive herself in a more positive light.
Self-Compassion Leads to Self-Acceptance and Happiness
Louise Hay, the founder of Hay House and bestselling metaphysical author, was a firm believer in the mind-body connection—like Lecky and Maltz, she argued that our beliefs about ourselves impact our ability to succeed and experience happiness.
She took Maltz’s idea about how our thoughts influence our perception of our physical features a little further by claiming that our bodies are a physical representation, or a mirror, of our thoughts and beliefs: The more you love your body, the more beautiful it is. In her book, Love Your Body, she argues that you should love your body regardless of your (perceived) flaws. This act of compassion towards your body will release all negative thought patterns and the psychological illnesses (such as body dysmorphia) that arise from them.
So for the example above, according to Hay, the person who hates her nose needs to love and accept her nose before she can release her negative thought patterns about her nose. Once she loves her nose, her nose will appear perfect to her. As a result, she’ll improve her self-esteem and self-confidence, and she’ll be able to approach life positively and achieve success.
But can you make yourself love something that you believe is a flaw? Hay insists that our physical features are not good or bad—our judgments about our features simply label them as good or bad. This is why two people can perceive the same physical feature in opposite ways. The person who hates her nose has made a habit of choosing to think negative thoughts about her nose. But once she understands that her nose isn’t the real problem, she can work to change her thoughts about her nose.
If this person was to follow Hay’s advice, she would look in the mirror multiple times a day, focus on her nose, and tell it that she loves and accepts it exactly as it is. This process would initially bring up emotional resistance (crying, anger, feelings of self-hate) because her mind will want to reject the new thought patterns (this links back to Lecky’s self-consistency theory—your mind won’t instantly accept new thought patterns that contradict your current self-perception). But, with daily practice, this mental resistance will soften, and her mind will eventually come to accept these positive thoughts and release the negative thoughts.
Once Maltz concluded that the key to finding success and happiness is to change self-perception (to be more positive), he next needed to find out why people perceive themselves in the way that they do. Only if we know how self-perception forms can we hope to influence it.
In an attempt to get to the root cause of why people choose to perceive themselves the way that they do, Maltz analyzed the process of success in reverse—he began to research the process the mind goes through to successfully achieve goals and how that links back to self-perception. Therefore, we’ll explain the mechanisms at play when you successfully achieve a goal.
(Shortform note: Maltz chose to analyze goals in reverse because of the way he views success: He doesn’t see it as external manifestations of prestige such as an impressive career, big house, or expensive car. Instead, he refers to success as an internal feeling, specifically, the satisfaction you feel when you achieve a goal that’s meaningful to you. Because he believed that your levels of confidence impact your ability to succeed in achieving goals, and your self-perception impacts your confidence, he believed he could figure out the solution to success by analyzing how successful goals are achieved.)
Maltz’s research into the process the mind goes through to achieve goals led him to the work of Dr. John von Neumann, who explored the parallels between computers and the human mind. Neumann’s concepts led Maltz to develop an interest in cybernetic theory—a branch of science that studies the goal-oriented behavior of mechanical systems.
The more Maltz analyzed the way humans achieve goals, the more he realized that the human brain and nervous system operate in accordance with cybernetic principles. We direct our minds (often unconsciously) to achieve results in the same way that we program machines to achieve specific objectives.
To clarify how you achieve results in the same way that a cybernetic machine does, we’ll illustrate the two distinct ways that machines operate and rely upon feedback to either reach their targets, or to find solutions, and compare it to how your mind functions to achieve similar goals:
When the target is clearly defined, both machines and humans rely upon an inbuilt guidance system that allows them to interpret positive and negative feedback to help them reach the intended target.
For a machine, imagine a missile programmed to hit a clear target: In this case, the missile has sensors in place which provide feedback to guide it to its target. This feedback is positive (missile is on the correct path) and negative (missile isn’t on the correct path). The missile continues to move forward and uses this feedback to correct its course and eventually reach the target.
For the human mind, imagine how you learned to eat: The act of directing a spoon into your mouth took a lot of practice and there were many times that you ended up with food on your forehead or in your lap. Throughout all of this, your brain was trying to reach a target (get food into your mouth) and relied on positive and negative feedback to know if it was on the right track. Once you successfully managed to get the food into your mouth, your brain recorded the process as a success and began to duplicate the process every time you fed yourself.
(Shortform note: Maltz focused primarily on how the human brain successfully reaches a target or achieves a goal. However, his theory does bring up questions about how learning disabilities can impact this process. According to the latest research, learning disabilities are due to permanent neurological disorders that limit the brain’s ability to store and process information and impact 15% of the school-age population. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce these limitations: According to recent research, multisensory teaching techniques limit the effects of some learning disabilities by activating other areas of the brain to improve the way students store and process information.)
When a problem needs to be solved, both machines and humans rely upon stored memory to process data, to record feedback, and to arrive at an appropriate solution.
For a machine, imagine how a calculator works to solve mathematical equations: You input a problem (the equation you want solved) and the calculator uses the data you input, as well as its own stored memory of processes, to figure out and discover the solution to the problem.
For the human mind, imagine how you learned to figure out simple equations: Before you could achieve this, you had to learn how to count and your brain had to record this data. Your brain then used this data (the numbers you memorized) to figure out how different combinations of these numbers produced different results. Every time you made a mistake, your brain would remember this error and try to avoid making it again. Every time you managed to correctly solve an equation, your brain would record the success. Eventually, your brain discovered the correct process to quickly solve similar equations.
How Your Brain Learns New Things
Since Psycho-Cybernetics’s publication in 1960, neuroscientists have developed the ability to observe how learning occurs at the molecular level—they can see what goes on inside our brains when we’re engaged in learning something new.
The more you learn, the more you change the physical structure of your brain by strengthening specific neural pathways. Here’s a very brief overview of neural pathways:
The brain consists of a dense network of pathways consisting of neurons.
Synapses allow sensory information to be transmitted through this network of neurons.
This sensory information is stored in your short-term memory while your brain processes it by comparing it to the memories you’ve stored in your long-term memory. This process determines whether the new sensory information is kept or discarded.
Neuroscientists believe that your memory and recall rely upon the relationship that your neurons have with each other. The stronger the relationship (the more frequently these neurons interact with each other), the stronger your ability to remember and recall what you need to do. This is because strong neural pathways heighten the transmission speed of information and allow you to effortlessly recall the information you need. This is why you can perform your routine tasks without conscious effort.
Every time you learn something new, you need to form new neural connections within the brain—this requires conscious effort and attention. When you attempt to do something new, your brain has to work much harder because you haven’t yet developed the specific neural pathways—the neurons required to achieve the task haven’t developed a relationship so their communication is inefficient. However, the more you practice, the more you strengthen your neural pathways and encourage the required neurons to interact and develop strong pathways.
While cybernetic machines operate in the same way—they store the correct information and processes in their hard drive and can only operate as efficiently as their memory allows (RAM determines the speed and efficiency of a computer), they benefit from not having to learn or make decisions. Programming (coding for example) determines how they operate, and their hardware and software components determine what kind of tasks they can complete (a Dyson can’t solve equations because it doesn’t have the hardware or software built into it).
In both of the above examples, your brain worked according to cybernetic principles to reach your target or find a solution. It used positive and negative feedback to check if it was on track and, once it figured out the correct method, your brain recorded the successful feedback and discarded the negative feedback (which no longer served any purpose once your brain memorized the correct process) so that you could continue to repeat the action without further conscious thought. So now, you can eat and solve simple equations without having to think about it.
How Cybernetic Theory Has Evolved Since Psycho-Cybernetics’ Publication
To develop his theory, Maltz drew on the work of Dr. Norbert Wiener—the originator of cybernetic theory, and the first scientist to theorize that all intelligent behavior is the result of feedback mechanisms—and Dr. John von Neumann, who explored the analogies between technology and the human brain in his seminal work, Computer and the Brain.
Both scientists made important contributions to the development of modern artificial intelligence. However, recent developments in artificial intelligence have subverted the original theory that machines need humans to create and operate them in order to function and fulfill their objectives.
For example, some scientists have explored the possibility of merging animal or human brain cells (neurons) with technology to create machines with biological brains. This takes the concept of humans controlling machines to a whole new level—humans creating machines with the ability to govern themselves—and throws up a number of social and ethical issues that need to be considered.
In addition, it’s already possible for a human brain to interface with a computer—brains and computers can communicate with each other through the use of electromagnetic signals. Apparently, this process can help to overcome mental disorders and improve brain cognition. This has massive implications, especially in the area of healthcare—for example, if someone suffers from a brain injury and has to relearn how to eat, they could interface with a computer to help speed up the process.
In the previous chapter, we examined how Maltz reached the conclusion that our brains work according to cybernetic principles: Our brains operate to successfully reach targets and find solutions. This conclusion leads to the assumption that all we need to do to achieve success and happiness is to decide on an appropriate goal and let our brain work like a machine that’s been directed to work on a specific action—it will automatically direct our thoughts and actions towards reaching that goal.
Unfortunately, things aren’t that simple: You may decide to achieve a goal, but deep down, your brain may not be programmed to achieve that goal. Maltz argues that your conscious goals often differ from your internal programming. For example, your conscious goal may be to make friends (results in success), but your internal programming might lead you to push people away (results in failure). This conflict between your conscious goal and your internal programming leads you to unhappiness and a feeling of failure because you can’t move past your internal programming.
(Shortform note: Maltz argues that when your conscious goals differ from your internal programming, you engage in self-defeating behaviors that thwart the goals you’ve set for yourself. You’ll recognize this in instances of self-sabotage. Obvious forms of self-sabotage include procrastination (when you avoid taking action to achieve your goals) and unhealthy habits such as overeating when your goal is to lose weight, or overspending when your goal is to save.)
Why does this incongruence between your conscious goals and your internal programming occur? Maltz argues that it’s down to your self-image. In this chapter, we’ll examine:
Like a machine, your brain has recorded every experience you’ve had up until this moment—every failure, success, and interaction. Your self-image is a reflection of how you’ve identified with and felt about these experiences. Your self-image defines who you are, how you express yourself, and how you act in any given situation.
For example, consider an experience such as falling over. You could either say to yourself, “I fell over” (a fact that won’t have an impact on your self-image), or you could say to yourself, “I’m a klutz!” (the way you identified with the experience, which will have an impact on your self-image, and the way that you express yourself—for example, you may act overly cautious as a result of this identification).
Your Self-Image Impacts Your Self-Esteem
Research developments in the area of self-identity indicate that our self-image is just one of four interrelated components that inform our opinions of ourselves:
Self-image: How you see yourself.
Ideal self: How you would like to be seen by others.
Real self: The feedback you receive from others shows you who you really are.
Looking glass self: How you perceive the way others perceive you and compare it to the way you see yourself.
Further, the research shows that you’re more likely to have a healthy sense of self-esteem (how much you like and accept yourself) if your beliefs in each of the four components align with and complement each other.
In other words, the greater the difference of ideas within each component, the more likely you are to suffer from low self-esteem. For example, you see yourself as boring (your self-image) but you want others to see you as interesting (your ideal self). This gap between your self-image and your ideal self creates conflict and undermines your self-esteem.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the beliefs that inform your opinion of yourself in each of these areas. However, there are a number of tests you can take to discover what you really think about yourself such as The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale or The Flourishing Scale.
Maltz argues that your self-image is not a real thing. It’s simply a construct of thoughts you chose to think about past experiences. Thoughts are subjective (for example, you may think you’re fat but it doesn’t mean that you are fat) and may or may not be true. But if you accept them as truth, they become part of your self-image.
Why does your self-image accept all of your thoughts, regardless of how inaccurate they are, as truth? Because your nervous system can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality: Your brain doesn’t judge your thoughts—instead, it reacts automatically to what you think or imagine to be true.
Maltz draws on the practice of hypnotism to make his point. He says that if you’re hypnotized into believing that you’re in a snowstorm, your body will react to the cold: you’ll shiver, goose pimples will rise on your skin, and your teeth will chatter. In the same way that a hypnotist’s words have power over the hypnotized subject, what you accept as truth about yourself has power over you, even if it’s not actually true.
Maltz argues that you’ve been “hypnotized” by others’ words throughout your life. As a young child, you were impressionable and prone to believing what those around you said about your character. You accepted their opinions and beliefs about you as truth and this shaped your self-image in the early part of your life. Your self-image has likely evolved over time, but if you haven’t addressed these original thoughts, they will continue to inform your opinion of yourself.
You’ve also used your imagination to hypnotize yourself: Thoughts plus feelings form mental images and create a strong impression in your mind—these strong impressions turn into beliefs that define your self-image. For example, worries are a form of mental imagery. You think about things that could go wrong and create feelings of anxiety and fear—these thoughts and feelings create the impression of the worst-case scenario in your mind. Your mind then operates according to the belief that the worst-case scenario will take place, and your nervous system responds by creating the appropriate emotional and physical reactions.
How Clinical Hypnotherapy Treats Psychological Problems
Maltz focuses on the negative aspects of being “hypnotized” by others’ beliefs about you, but clinical hypnotherapy can be an effective form of medical treatment and impact your self-image positively. This is because, as Maltz notes, your nervous system can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality.
Hypnotherapy is commonly used to treat a variety of psychological problems such as phobias, anxiety issues, weight management, and addictions. Psychological problems tend to have a clear trigger and response relationship. For example:
Arachnophobia: You see a spider (trigger), and you panic (response).
Anxiety: You think about how much work you have to do (trigger), and you immediately feel worried and overwhelmed (response).
Addictions: You experience a particular feeling (trigger), and you feel overwhelmed by a craving for a particular substance (response).
Clinical hypnotherapy treats these problems by helping you to:
Identify the root cause of your problem: Why you respond to triggers in the way you do.
Reprogram the way your mind responds to triggers: Replaces your negative response with a positive response.
Clinical hypnotists put you in a relaxed, trance-like state so that they can bypass your conscious mind and offer suggestions directly to your subconscious mind—while you're in this state, your conscious mind doesn’t actively “resist” these new suggestions. However, hypnotists can’t force you to do something against your will—you’re always aware of what’s going on around you, and you remain in control.
Successful hypnotherapy sessions create new trigger and response relationships in your mind. For example:
Arachnophobia: You see a spider (trigger), and you feel calm (new response).
Anxiety: You think about how much work you have to do (trigger), and you’re able to think clearly and prioritize your work (new response).
Addictions: You experience a particular feeling (trigger), and you’re able to seek a positive outlet for your emotions (response).
The theme, as the book suggests, is that your brain behaves according to trigger-response pairs that it believes to be true but aren’t actually valid. With training, you can rewire them.
We’ll discuss two ways your self-image impacts the way you’re programmed to behave: by processing feedback and influencing your subconscious.
Maltz argues that the self-image is continually reinforced by what he calls “feedback loops”—how feedback reinforces learned behavior and programming—and draws parallels with how cybernetic machines incorporate feedback to operate successfully. Therefore, we’ll explain how both machines and humans rely upon feedback loops to “operate” and why your interpretation of feedback reinforces your patterns of behavior.
Machines process feedback so that they can achieve their goal. Once they achieve the goal, they store their successful feedback (memory of successful attempts) and discard their negative feedback (memory of mistakes and failures). Their memory of successful attempts creates a feedback loop that allows them to “learn” quickly and operate efficiently and successfully.
However, unlike a machine, humans rely on their self-images to interpret feedback to their behavior. Your self-image decides whether to release negative feedback so that you operate successfully (behave in a way that results in success), or to remember and reinforce negative feedback so that you operate inefficiently (behave in a way that creates failure). If your self-image decides to focus on negative feedback, this can lead to programming that causes you to reinforce negative patterns of behavior that work against what you want to achieve.
The following example illustrates how negative feedback loops take place to reinforce negative programming:
Bob wants to connect with others (his goal) but his self-image causes him to interpret all feedback as negative, stops him from moving towards what he wants, and perpetuates his self-isolation.
Maltz argues that your self-image determines how you perceive your environment and how you read signals to interpret what others think of you. In other words, your self-image determines how you engage in and perceive every social interaction and experience throughout your life. Feedback loops direct your behavior: Your interpretation of your environment justifies your self-image and how you continue to act—how you continue to act further reinforces your interpretation of your environment, and so on.
How Unconscious Biases Reinforce Feedback Loops
While you may believe that your perceptions and reactions to your environment are entirely logical, you may be under the influence of unconscious biases that reinforce patterns of behavior that you would rather not engage in.
Research shows that your dominant personality traits and patterns of behavior are influenced by cognitive biases. These biases are the result of your brain’s attempt to make quick judgments based on your past experiences, and they shape the way you think about and perceive your environment.
There are many different types of cognitive biases, and each of them influences your perceptions in different ways. For example, Bob’s experience suggests that his behavior is influenced by Confirmation Bias—the tendency to pay more attention to the information that confirms and reinforces his opinion (people don’t like him).
Bob doesn’t want to have this belief—his past experiences led him to form this belief. However, the confirmation bias shapes his perception so that he can only notice and interpret interactions and experiences that reinforce this belief. As a result, Bob continues to act defensively because his bias ensures that he continues to mistrust others.
Another way that self-image impacts your programming is by influencing your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is a reservoir of thoughts, feelings, and memories that are beneath your conscious awareness. It records and stores your every experience. (In contrast, your conscious mind contains all of the thoughts and feelings that you’re aware of at any given moment.)
Your Subconscious Mind Is Always Awake
There is still much to be learned about how the subconscious mind works. However, neuroscientists have confirmed that 95% of your brain activity takes place beyond your conscious awareness, in your subconscious mind. Further, research reveals that your subconscious mind makes decisions about how you choose to feel or act before your conscious mind even perceives the need to make a decision.
In addition, your subconscious mind is always alert—one of its jobs is to control your bodily functions and processes so it stays awake even while you’re asleep. Even if you’re not consciously aware of something happening in your environment, your subconscious mind is paying attention to every little detail, and recording the entire experience.
Maltz argues that while you may consciously decide upon a goal, it’s your subconscious mind that guides you towards achieving it. In fact, your subconscious mind is always directing you towards a goal, even if you’re not aware of it.
But how does your subconscious mind decide whether or not to pursue a goal? The answer lies with your self-image. Your self-image programs your subconscious mind to achieve goals. If you have a positive self-image, your subconscious works to help you achieve your goals. If you have a negative self-image, your subconscious works to sabotage your goals.
Like a machine, your subconscious mind works automatically and impersonally to achieve the goals that your self-image sets for it, and your behaviors depend on how your self-image has programmed your subconscious to act. Your subconscious mind believes your self-image to be true and doesn’t question what your self-image programs it to do (like a calculator doesn’t care about the numbers you input). Therefore, your self-image dictates the limits of your accomplishments.
Recall Bob and the feedback loop that kept him in a state of self-isolation. Bob’s behavior clearly illustrates how subconscious goals direct experience. Consciously, Bob wants to make friends. He doesn’t understand why people don’t like him. He is unable to see that his behavior towards others encourages them to respond to him in a certain way. Bob’s self-image directs his subconscious to protect him from social interactions. No matter how much Bob wants to engage with others, his subconscious brings up fearful thoughts and feelings that hold him back, and limit him from succeeding.
If the goals you consciously set for yourself are inconsistent with the subconscious goals your self-image sets for you, your subconscious will reject them. Maltz argues that no amount of willpower or positive thinking will change your results unless you make a conscious attempt to change your self-image and your beliefs. The person who believes she’s a terrible cook will never enjoy cooking no matter how many times she superficially affirms to herself “I’m an excellent cook” (she says it but doesn’t believe it) since her subconscious mind isn’t taking instructions from her, but from her self-image (where her real beliefs are stored).
So, if you’ve identified with being a failure so often that it’s now a part of your self-image, then no matter how hard you work towards achieving something, your subconscious will always find a way for you to fail. If you’ve identified yourself as a victim of circumstances, then your subconscious will always lead you to situations that make you feel powerless. The feedback loop (your behavior plus your interpretation of your experience) will continue to reinforce this pattern.
Maltz, therefore, concludes that, if you want to achieve success and happiness—according to the goals you’ve consciously set out for yourself—you need to ensure that you have a positive self-image. This is the only way to ensure that your subconscious works with you to achieve your idea of success, rather than leading you down a path that works against what you want.
The Difference Between Psycho-Cybernetics and the Law of Attraction
The Law of Attraction (LoA) also claims that what you really believe about yourself subconsciously impacts the way you perceive and react to your experiences. It’s centered around the belief that you get what you focus on: Positive thoughts lead to positive consequences, and negative thoughts lead to negative consequences. However, the LoA is based upon a fundamentally different foundation from Psycho-Cybernetics: Rather than your self-image defining your reality, the “universe” orchestrates your reality according to your thoughts and beliefs.
Maltz argues that your self-image programs your “subconscious mind” to achieve goals, and your subconscious mind then dictates your behavior and your actions. The key argument here is that your behavior and your actions define the limits of your accomplishments—your subconscious mind is in charge of your success.
In contrast, the LoA replaces your “subconscious mind” with “universal” or “source” energy. It claims that your frequency (what the LoA calls your thoughts and beliefs) sends a signal to the universe, and the universe then coordinates your reality to match your frequency. The key argument here is that your frequency defines the limits of what the universe delivers to you—the universe is in charge of your success.
Let’s continue with the cooking example to make the distinction clear. According to Maltz, your self-image determines the actions you take to get results—whether your meal is successful or not depends entirely on your self-image because it defines whether your actions support or work against your goal to make a good meal. According to the LoA, your frequency has to align with the results you want to create so that the universe can orchestrate your reality around your desire to make a successful meal. How does it orchestrate your reality? Here are a few different examples of what the universe may deliver to you to help you create a successful meal:
You’re online when you notice a very easy recipe that inspires you to get in the kitchen and start cooking.
Your friend, who happens to be an excellent cook, comes over for a surprise visit and ends up helping you to make dinner.
You feel inspired to join a cooking class to improve your skills—the class you want to join happens to offer a discount.
However, if your thoughts and beliefs on the subject of cooking are negative, the universe will create experiences that align with your negative frequency—in other words, you’re going to experience difficulties that make it impossible for you to cook a successful meal. Here are a few different examples of what the universe may deliver to you:
Your local store runs out of the ingredients you need.
Your oven malfunctions so you end up having to abandon the meal.
You make the meal, but your family criticizes it and you end up in tears.
While advocates of the law of attraction believe that you can consciously change your thoughts to create better outcomes, Maltz maintains that you can’t force your subconscious mind to think differently. For Maltz, the only path to positive outcomes is a positive self-image.
Each person has a unique self-image that determines how they interpret and interact with different people and situations. Use this exercise to better understand your self-image.
Describe a recent situation in which you and another person disagreed because you interpreted the situation differently. This could be an interaction you were both involved in, or your response to some news—you both had access to the same information.
Now that you understand more about how your self-image impacts your perception, why do you think you interpreted the situation in the way that you did?
Think about the conclusion your interpretation led you to form about the situation. Do you think your self-image helped you in this situation or worked against you?
The previous two chapters make it clear that you need to make sure you have a positive self-image so that you can consistently achieve success and happiness in your life. Maltz argues that you need to examine what type of self-image you have so you can figure out if it’s working with you or against you.
But how can you figure out what kind of self-image you have if it lives in your subconscious mind? Maltz argues that your self-image—and the way it directs your subconscious to act—is expressed through your personality. Further, he claims that your habitual personality traits tend to fall into one of two personality types that define how you approach your life experiences: positive personality and negative personality.
(Shortform note: Maltz argues that your habitual personality traits define whether you have a positive or negative self-image. However, there are many people who suffer from a poor self-image but believe, and appear to others as if, they have positive personality traits: They use these positive traits to conceal their poor self-image. For example, consider people who give too much of themselves to others (their time, money, or effort). On the surface, these people come across as altruistic and, therefore, positive. However, in some cases, this positive trait serves to cover up feelings of low self-worth—if they're motivated by the need to please others to win affection, or if they're motivated by the need to avoid displeasing others.)
Let’s examine the personality traits Maltz attributes to positive and negative personality types so you can figure out what type of self-image you have:
| Positive Personality (Good Self-Image) | Negative Personality (Bad Self-Image) |
| You’re goal-oriented: You have a clear idea of what makes you happy and focus on what you want. You keep moving forward and are driven by a desire to become more and achieve more. | You’re overly sensitive to setbacks: You let errors and minor failures define your emotional state. You act like a victim of life. |
| You’re open: You communicate well with others because you’re willing to think about their perspectives and why they think and feel the way that they do. You’re willing to admit your mistakes and errors. | You’re accusatory: Your frustration leads to aggression that you misdirect towards yourself or others. You lash out because you’re not resolving your problems. |
| You’re willing to take risks: You’re willing to take risks and face new challenges. You confront your problems. | You’re insecure: You never feel good enough. You compare yourself to others or hold an ideal version of yourself that you fail to live up to. You always feel like you should be better than you are. |
| You’re empathetic: You treat others with kindness and respect because you recognize that every individual is valuable and important. You understand and appreciate that everyone has unique needs and abilities. | You’re guarded: You feel alienated from yourself and others. You’ve lost touch with what makes you happy and you’re afraid of exposing your real self to others. |
| You value yourself: You have a healthy sense of self-worth and self-respect. This is reflected in the way you interact with others. | You’re afraid: You’re fearful of making mistakes and hold yourself back from making decisions or taking responsible steps to move forward. |
| You’re confident: You remember and focus on your past successes and happy moments. This positive focus allows you to approach life with confidence. | You’re resentful: You blame others for treating you unfairly. You expect others to make you feel happy and you feel like a victim when they don’t. You perceive injustice and allow this to control your emotional state—self-pity. |
| You’re happy with yourself: You accept yourself as you are and express yourself authentically. You’re aware of your strengths and weaknesses and you know that you can decide to change if you choose to. | You’re apathetic: You’re unable to enjoy life no matter how much you achieve. Your achievements don’t feel worthwhile because you can’t see the value in them. |
Why People Are Prone to Failure
People don’t choose to develop negative personality traits—they’ve simply developed the habit of dwelling more on the bad experiences in their lives. Psychologists refer to this tendency as the Negativity Bias.
Research shows that you’re hardwired to notice and dwell on negative events. Further, negative events have a greater impact on you than positive ones—your emotional responses are stronger for negative events than they are for positive ones. In other words, negative events feel more important to you than positive ones. Subsequently, negative events create a strong and vivid impression in your long-term memory, and they influence the decisions you make.
Consequently, you’re more likely to notice, react to, and remember:
Criticism more than praise: This leads you to focus only on feedback that reinforces your feelings of insecurity. As a result, you may feel like a victim (you blame others for criticizing you) and withdraw into self-pity, or you may end up lashing out at others in an attempt to release your feelings of resentment.
Sad memories more than happy memories: The habitual focus on sad events from the past makes it difficult to find reasons to be happy in the present moment. This can lead to apathy and depression.
Bad news more than good news: This tendency trains your mind to perceive situations as unjust or unfair, and often leaves you feeling fearful of taking action and moving forward in your life.
Your mistakes more than your successes: The more you focus on your mistakes, the more difficult you find it to accept yourself as you are—you reinforce the false belief that you should be better than you are.
Negative traits in others more than their positive traits: The tendency to focus on flaws in others makes it difficult for you to trust others and show them who you really are—if you can’t accept them as they are, how can they accept you? The more you restrict your self-expression, the more isolated you feel.
It’s possible that evolution hard-wired this bias into us to keep us safe from danger: In order to ensure survival, our ancestors had to pay more attention to the dangers and risks in their environment. However, even if it is a case of hardwiring, you can make the conscious decision to bypass this tendency, evolve your thinking, and adopt a more positive approach to life.
How to Predict Success
While Maltz believes that personality traits like being confident and empathetic determine your success, some experts believe that the following characteristics and habits are better indicators of whether you’re more likely to achieve success in life:
You choose to be proactive instead of lazy.
You seek long-term satisfaction instead of instant gratification.
You focus on interests that create value instead of indulging in meaningless activities and distractions.
You keep learning and growing instead of allowing your knowledge and skills to stagnate.
You embrace challenges and expect to succeed instead of feeling inadequate and expecting to fail.
Now we’ll discuss how you can develop a positive or a negative personality—according to Maltz, the key is whether or not you feel comfortable enough to express yourself authentically.
You’re more likely to develop a positive personality if you focus on your unique capabilities, and think about what fulfills and satisfies you more than you think about what other people may or may not think about you—this way, you focus on what brings you happiness (successful feedback) instead of how you’re interpreting the way others respond to you (likely to create negative feedback). In other words, you don’t allow other people’s opinions to inhibit you—this is commonly referred to as authenticity.
(Shortform note: Psychologists agree that you’re more likely to develop positive personality traits if you engage in authentic behaviors. These psychologists break authenticity down into three components: how well you know and understand yourself, how well your behavior reflects your true feelings, and how often you change your behavior to meet external expectations.
The more self-aware you are, the more you can understand your motivations and assess whether or not you’re acting authentically.)
Maltz argues that the more authentic you are, the more successful you feel—you’re more able to deal effectively and appropriately with your environment, respond to situations spontaneously, express yourself confidently, and choose and reach goals that satisfy you.
Maltz believes that every human being is unique, inherently valuable, and always evolving. You’re not inferior to anyone. You're not superior to anyone. You are simply you, and you are good enough. A unique and successful personality is a sign that you’ve accepted yourself as you are, figured out what brings you genuine satisfaction, and that you proactively pursue experiences that make you feel satisfied.
Why Authenticity Makes You Feel More Successful
Some psychologists argue that authenticity (the ability to express who you really are) is essential to your overall sense of wellbeing. Studies reveal that authentic people are generally happier than inauthentic people. For example they:
Experience more positive emotions
Have higher self-esteem
Have better relationships
Feel more satisfied
Have lower stress levels
Maltz argues that you’re more likely to develop a negative self-image, which leads to negative personality symptoms, if you constantly seek external validation and try to live up to the expectations of others. In other words, if you’re more conscious of what you think others think about you more than how you feel about yourself.
Your environment (social circle, media) is constantly trying to shape you into something that you should be. You’re constantly fed opinions about how wealthy, beautiful, and happy you should be—the underlying message is that you should be, do, or have more to “be good enough.” Negative personalities are sensitive to these opinions and focus more on satisfying the expectations of others than they do on figuring out what they need to feel inner fulfillment—this external focus inhibits them from acting authentically.
(Shortform note: Another way to understand Maltz’s definition of authenticity and inauthenticity is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Some experts believe that all behavior is driven by the need to fulfill one of two motivation types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation comes from your internal self—you engage in an activity because you find it rewarding (for example, you listen to a particular song because you enjoy it). Extrinsic motivation comes from your environment—you engage in an activity because you receive an external reward for doing it (For example, you perform work you dislike because you get paid for it).)
Maltz argues that inauthentic behavior tends to develop in two ways:
When you make a habit of comparing yourself to others, you’re always going to fall short. You’ll always find someone who is better at something than you are—this habit of comparison leads you to develop feelings of insecurity and inferiority which can make you come across as having an “inferiority complex” or a “superiority complex.” Both are manifestations of feeling insecure; however, people with an inferiority complex tend to try and make themselves “invisible,” while people with a superiority complex over-inflate their sense of self-importance to cover up their insecure feelings.
In both cases, your feelings of discomfort make you feel self-conscious and overly sensitive to the feedback you receive—you misinterpret your environment and get caught up in negative feedback loops (remember Bob’s tendency to self-sabotage his attempts to form friendships).
Feelings and Tendencies That Lead to Inauthentic Behavior
Maltz claims that your insecurities can make you act as if you have either an inferiority complex or a superiority complex. But how can you know if you’ve developed these inauthentic traits? Psychologists agree that the more self-aware you are, the more you’ll be able to figure out if you’re showing others your “true self” or if some situations make you feel like you should wear a mask and act the way that “you should” (act inauthentically).
Developing the ability to honestly assess your feelings and behaviors takes time and patience. However, you can detect if you’re prone to acting inauthentically by assessing the level of discomfort you feel around others. Ask yourself if you have the tendency to feel:
Embarrassed by things you’ve done or said
Awkward and self-conscious in daily interactions
Resentful and misunderstood
Afraid of what others think of you
Rejected and unheard
These feelings reflect and encourage inauthentic behavior. For example, sometimes shy people come across as loud and overbearing. This is because their discomfort around others leads them to overact to compensate for their shyness. As a result, they find themselves acting inauthentically. This leads them to question whether people like them for who they are or for the act they put on. As a result, they feel more uncomfortable about interacting with others and this encourages more inauthentic behavior.
How the Self-Help Industry Promotes Inauthentic Behavior
The self-help industry is designed to help you improve yourself but sometimes it makes you feel even more insecure about the problems you’re trying to solve. It does this by focusing on the insecurities you have about yourself and setting standards for you to live up to. These books and programs target an inadequacy that you’re already feeling (for example, Psycho-Cybernetics targets your “lack of success”), and emphasize how things should be (you should be more successful).
The further you are from the (often unrealistic) ideals expressed in these books and programs (you should be happier, more mindful, more grateful, or richer, and so on), the more inadequate you feel. The more you try to live up to the expectations and standards that the self-help industry promotes, the more likely you are to find “flaws” within yourself that fuel inauthentic behavior. For example, if you find yourself faking a positive attitude because these books and programs make you feel guilty for feeling unhappy.
If you’ve internalized criticism from others by identifying with their opinions about you, this also serves to inhibit you—you hold back from fully engaging in what you want to experience because you associate what you want with the negative feedback you’ve internalized. For example, when you were a child, your mom told you off for talking too much. You internalized this criticism and now associate “talking too much” with getting scolded. You formed this belief many years ago and it now lives in your subconscious mind. Even though you’re not aware of it and may not even remember the original experience with your mother, the belief continues to inhibit your ability to engage with others.
(Shortform note: Maltz’s claim that you’ve internalized feedback from your childhood that continues to impact your personality may lead you to think about how to help children to internalize positive feedback and develop authentic personalities. Bringing up emotionally healthy kids starts with ensuring they know how to process and effectively deal with their environment (the feedback they receive). Based on the latest neuroscience research, The Whole-Brain Child explains how children’s brains are wired and offers resources and strategies to promote healthy brain development. )
How to Live More Authentically and Develop a Positive Personality
Like Maltz, shame and vulnerability expert Brené Brown says that inauthentic behaviors result from feelings of fear and shame. In The Power of Vulnerability, Brown argues that you’re more likely to engage in authentic behavior when you accept that you’re inherently worthy, choose to share your feelings of shame, and allow your vulnerability to be a sign of strength, not weakness. Her suggestions to help you develop a better sense of self-worth and practice authentic living include:
Letting go of other people’s expectations: Be willing to say no to things you don’t want to do without worrying about what others will think of you. For example, if there are certain social situations you get invited to that you find boring, you should feel free to say no without worrying that your friends will feel hurt or upset by your absence.
Choosing to focus on self-compassion instead of perfectionism: Practice mindfulness so that you can catch yourself when you start to berate yourself for making a mistake. Make the conscious effort to be kind to yourself more often, but particularly when you judge yourself for making mistakes or acting inappropriately. For example, if you routinely obsess over conversations you’ve had with others, make an effort to stop this self-analysis and instead do something that enhances your sense of wellbeing, like taking a relaxing bath or reading a good book.
Detaching yourself from self-doubt by focusing on what you care about: Think about what’s important to you and invest your time in creating more fulfilling experiences in your life. The more you focus on what’s satisfying to you, the less attention you’ll give to thoughts that undermine your sense of self-worth.
Creating outlets for emotional expression: Play with different forms of self-expression to express and release any negative emotions you feel. Choose an activity that works with your personality to vent your emotions—choose anything from journaling to taking martial arts lessons.
Give up your inhibitions and accept that you’ll never be perfect: Be aware of when you’re limiting your joy due to your fear of failure or what others think of you. Above all, remember that how you feel about yourself is more important than how others think of you.
In the previous part, we learned how crucial your self-image is to your happiness and success. This is due to the influence it has on whether or not you pursue your goals, via its influence on your subconscious. We also learned that Maltz uses the process of hypnotism to argue that your self-image is not a real thing. It’s simply a construct of thoughts you chose to think about past experiences: thoughts that often don’t reflect reality because they’re fuelled by your imagination.
Maltz concludes from all of this that since your self-image is a result of hypnotization and imagination, you can use your imagination to “dehypnotize” yourself and improve your self-image. The more you improve your self-image, the more you improve the way your subconscious is programmed to act.
In this chapter, we’ll explore how you can use your imagination to replace negative thoughts and feelings with positive ones to reprogram your self-image. Next, we’ll discuss the benefits of mental practice and visualization, and how you can effectively hypnotize yourself into acting more successfully. Finally, we’ll briefly outline the process you need to follow to change your self-image.
Maltz argues that the first step to reprogramming your self-image is becoming conscious of whether you’re using your imagination constructively (to create positive thoughts and feelings) or deconstructively (to create negative thoughts and feelings).
If you’re using your imagination deconstructively, Maltz argues that you need to make a conscious effort to instead use it to form a clear mental picture of yourself as successful—this will allow you to practice feeling successful, and will ultimately improve your approach to life. To replace existing negative beliefs with new successful beliefs, you need to create equally strong impressions in your mind—that is, you need to create positive feelings of excitement and desire. These positive feelings must outweigh your negative feelings so that your self-image can take notice of them and begin to accept them.
How to Shift Your Negative Thoughts to Positive Thoughts
Maltz argues that you must imagine positive feelings that outweigh your negative feelings so that they can create a strong enough impression to replace your unwanted beliefs. However, when you’re in a state of anxiety or fear, it’s not so easy to jump to a positive thought. This is because your thoughts and your state of mind reinforce one another to create an internal feedback loop that’s difficult to break out of:
Your thoughts determine your state of mind: You think about the worst-case scenario so you feel anxious.
Your state of mind determines your thoughts: You feel anxious so you think about the worst-case scenario.
Further complicating the negative-to-positive switch is that, according to Abraham Hicks, your emotions aren’t just positive or negative—they’re a lot more complex than that. The emotional guidance scale lists 22 categories of emotions, ranging from despair to joy, to effectively describe your state of mind and the kinds of thoughts and feelings you’re “attracting.”
Hicks argues that it’s impossible to jump from very negative emotions to very positive emotions, or vice-versa. If you want to think and feel more positive, you need to identify what you’re feeling and make a conscious effort to release your negative feelings, and move up the scale of emotions one step at a time.
For example, imagine that you’re aware that you’re worried about a job interview. Hicks suggests that you first need to let go of your worries (imagining the worst-case scenario) and let yourself feel doubt. Next, you need to release your feelings of doubt (questioning whether you’re capable) and let yourself feel disappointment (you’re disappointed with yourself for feeling insecure), and so on until you eventually move towards more positive emotions.
Visualization is a vital step to changing your self-image because when you form a clear mental picture of how you intend to perform and how successful you’ll feel, you can improve your skills almost as much as if you really practice. Maltz provides scientific evidence that supports the benefits of using your imagination to practice the feeling of success: he cites one research experiment that analyzed the effect of mental practice on improving basketball free throws. The first group of participants practiced throwing the ball every day. The second group of participants only imagined throwing the ball into the hoop every day. The results revealed that after 20 days, the group engaged in physical practice had improved by 24%, whereas the group engaged only in mental practice improved by 23%.
This experiment helps explain why elite athletes and musicians often place as much emphasis on their mental training as they do on their physical training.
(Shortform note: This research has held up well over time. A 2018 study tested the effectiveness of mental practice on basketball free throws: The results confirmed that mental practice does significantly improve participants’ motor skills and their ability to successfully make the shot. However, mental practice doesn’t always lead to success, especially when people find it difficult to imagine performing a task successfully—one reason for this difficulty could be that they’re not giving themselves enough sensory material to use—they attempt to use their imagination to practice things that they haven’t practiced in reality. For mental practice to be effective, you need to have first practiced the skill in reality in order to form the correct mental picture and feeling to practice in your mind.)
Maltz explains that changing your self-image uses the same machine-like process you follow to successfully achieve any goal:
The Success Process According to the Law of Attraction
Maltz’s ideas and techniques continue to inform and inspire self-help practitioners, motivational gurus, and sports psychologists. Some self-help practitioners use his techniques to present an entirely different premise to Psycho-Cybernetics. For example, Law of Attraction practitioners claim that the universe creates your reality according to your thoughts, and amend Maltz’s process as follows:
Focus on the end result (what you want) and let the universe find the way.
Understand that the universe is impersonal. It will deliver things that match your frequency. You must visualize and feel what you want internally before you can experience it in reality—the universe can’t produce results that are inconsistent with your frequency.
Remember that you get what you focus on—if you focus on what you don’t want (your mistakes and limitations), the universe will interpret this as an instruction to deliver more disappointing experiences. Knowing what you don’t want is only useful for providing signals about what you do want—only ever focus on what you do want.
Relax as much as possible and trust that the universe is on your side. The more relaxed you are, the more likely the universe is to respond to your positive suggestions.
While both Maltz and Law of Attraction practitioners assert that how you perceive yourself impacts your reality, there’s an important distinction between the two theories: Maltz encourages you to take action, whereas the Law of Attraction encourages you to be passive.
Active: Maltz encourages you to change your inner life so that you can feel motivated and take actions that lead you to success. You’re instructed to visualize and practice being the person you want to be. Your goal is to align your thoughts, emotions, and desires, so that you can become a better version of yourself and “act” successfully.
Passive: The Law of Attraction encourages you to change your inner life so that you can trust that success will come to you. Your goal is to align your thoughts, emotions, and desires, with what you want so that you can “attract” objects and experiences into your reality.
While both Maltz and the Law of Attraction promote psychological well-being (positive thinking does make you feel better and reduce stress), it’s ultimately up to readers to interpret and act on the information—they decide if and how to take action to improve their lives.
To improve your self-image, you first need to think about the type of person you want to be. Next, you need to replace your negative thoughts and feelings with positive ones.
Is there a particular area of life where you would like to feel more self-confident? What is it?
How has this lack of confidence affected you?
Where do you think this particular lack of self-confidence comes from? For example, was there a specific experience in your childhood that led you to feel this way?
Imagine acting confidently in this area of your life. Describe how you would feel and behave if you were confident.
Now that you understand how your imagination can change your self-image, we’ll work through constructive, actionable ways you can generate successful feelings and reprogram your self-image to create goals aligned with success.
First, we’ll explain why it’s important to commit at least 21 days to the process that Maltz suggests. Then, we’ll explore specific methods you can use to finetune your imagination to align your subconscious actions with your conscious goals.
Maltz argues that self-improvement requires action to be effective. Therefore, if you want to improve your self-image, you need to actively engage with the concepts presented in the book.
He advises that you practice the concepts without overanalyzing them for at least 21 days. This is because, according to Maltz, the mind takes 21 days to identify with physical and mental changes. This means that the only way you can prove whether the methods work is by following the process for at least 21 days. So, although you might not see immediate results from engaging with the concepts, you need to wait several weeks before you can accurately judge whether or not they are effective.
(Shortform note: The popular myth that habits take 21 days to form can be traced back to Maltz (he discusses this concept in various books) and his influence on the self-help movement. Maltz observed that his patients needed an average of 21 days to identify with the changes produced after cosmetic surgery. Subsequent self-help authors accepted this observation as a fact and the false concept quickly spread into mainstream “knowledge.” Research has revealed that it actually takes 18-254 days, or an average of 66 days for habits to become automatic.)
Maltz describes five methods you can use to direct your imagination towards thoughts and feelings of success related to specific goals and the improvement of your self-image.
Maltz suggests that you choose a habit that you perform daily—one that’s not tied to your self-image, such as brushing your teeth or putting your shoes on—and commit to doing it differently over the course of the 21 days. Every time you make the effort to change this particular habit, affirm to yourself that if you can break this habit, you can also break any negative thought patterns by replacing them with successful thought patterns. For example, if you normally put your right shoe on first, start making the conscious effort to put your left shoe on first. Use the act of putting your shoes on differently to remind yourself that you can choose to think differently.
Successful Habit Formation
Maltz suggests that you focus on changing a current habit to reinforce your commitment to change your self-image. But he doesn’t provide advice on how to successfully change this habit. Since this is the first step to improve your self-image, it’s necessary to set yourself up to succeed—the more you succeed, the more motivation you’ll have to move forward with the process.
According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, habits are linked to four stages: cue, craving, response, and reward.
Cue: This is the trigger that leads you to take action.
Craving: This is the reward you expect to receive after you take action.
Response: This is the action you take (the habit).
Reward: This is the actual reward you receive after you take action.
Clear explains that you can alter each of the four stages to break existing habits or to create new habits. According to him, you’ll be more likely to stick to the habit you’ve chosen to change if you plan ahead and:
Make the cue obvious (put a reminder on top of your shoes)
Anticipate your reward (remind yourself that you’re doing this to improve your self-image so that you can feel happier and more successful)
Ensure you make it easy to respond in the way you want to (lay your shoes out in the order you want to put them on so that it takes no extra effort)
Reinforce your habit with instant gratification (congratulate yourself for the effort you’re making in changing your habits and your self-image)
Maltz argues that practicing physical relaxation will enable you to consciously control your imagination and, subsequently, your self-image. When your mind is relaxed, it’s more receptive to positive suggestions. This is because negative thoughts create tension in the body—this tension makes it difficult for your subconscious to accept new ideas or possibilities. On the other hand, when you’re in a state of relaxation, negative thoughts tend to disappear. Relaxing your mind and body will create space for your positive suggestions to thrive.
(Shortform note: In addition to creating tension that blocks your subconscious from accepting new thoughts and ideas, negative and stressful thoughts impact your ability to think about what you’re experiencing. This is because, when you feel stress, your amygdala acts as if you’re in danger: It ensures that you respond automatically to threats by inhibiting the thinking part of your brain (the hippocampus). In other words, stress and tension stop you from thinking objectively and lead you to act in irrational ways.)
Relaxation doesn’t only prime you to receive positive thoughts—additionally, Maltz explains that your subconscious requires relaxation to come up with solutions and ideas to help you achieve the goals that you set for it.
(Shortform note: In Deep Work, Cal Newport discusses the benefits of “productive meditation”—using your relaxation time as a constructive way to solve problems. He suggests that you’re more likely to do your best work when you alternate between periods of intense focus and relaxation. While you’re relaxing, your mind will work through the problems you’ve lined up for it and, without your conscious interference, can more quickly or creatively arrive at a solution)
Maltz claims that tranquilizers help to relax you because they reduce or eliminate your response to external stimuli. He cautions against the use of tranquilizers for relaxation because they don’t actually change the environment or the thing that is disturbing you—they only numb your emotional response to all stimuli. Instead, he recommends that you develop the habit of relaxation because it will help you to become more aware of how you respond to external stimuli, tone down any excessive reactions, think rationally, and introduce positive thought patterns with little resistance from your subconscious.
(Shortform note: Even though we’re more aware of the benefits of mindful living, over 60 million people take prescribed tranquilizers every year to combat stress and relieve anxiety. Tranquilizers are highly addictive and often lead to dependency: Users quickly build up their tolerance to the drugs—this means that the more tranquilizers they take, the more they need to feel the calming effect. This addiction impacts users’ physical and psychological well-being, and contributes to a third of all reported drug-related deaths.)
Maltz suggests that you set aside 15-30 minutes a day to imagine yourself as relaxed and calm as possible. The more you practice relaxation, the more accustomed your mind and body will become to feeling this way. Practicing relaxation every day will help you to be more aware of your thoughts, think more rationally, and allow your subconscious mind to solve problems for you.
The Benefits of Walking Meditation
If you’re not keen on the idea of sitting or lying down to relax, consider walking meditation: the process of practicing mindfulness as you walk. Walking meditation offers the same benefits as sitting meditation: You’ll feel more relaxed, more aware of your inner self, healthier (mentally and physically), and maybe even a little joyful.
In addition, according to some neuroscientists, walking improves your ability to deal with stressful situations because it naturally amplifies the neural activation necessary to solve problems. This happens because your cognitive mapping functions—otherwise known as your “internal GPS” (the part of your brain that stores all of the information you need about your environment)—are supported by the same systems that you use to solve problems. So when you walk, your brain activates the same area of your brain that works to solve problems.
In addition to spending time every day to practice relaxation, Maltz suggests that you clearly imagine a relaxing and peaceful room in your mind that you can retreat to throughout the day whenever you need a break or a mental pick-me-up. You’ll find it particularly useful to visit this peaceful room when you need to switch between different tasks that require different mindsets. For example, when you need to switch from working intensely on a project to reading your kids a calm bedtime story.
(Shortform note: If you find it difficult to visualize a peaceful room in your mind, Abraham Hicks provides a useful Law of Attraction technique to help you switch mindsets when you need to: segment intending. To use this process, set an intention about how you aim to feel before moving into a new situation. For example, if you’ve just returned home after a stressful day, and need to get your kids to bed, you could set the following intention: “I intend to feel relaxed and to engage with my kids in a meaningful way.” Declaring your intent in this way encourages self-awareness and self-control—you’re more likely to be aware of your automatic reactions and, therefore, more able to choose your behaviors.)
Maltz suggests that you use your imagination to think about the person you want to be and to recall your successful memories.
Maltz argues that each time you create or recall successful feelings, your subconscious will record them and imprint them into your self-image. These successful feelings will accumulate in your self-image and will lead to new, automatic responses to your experiences—in other words, you’ll gradually find yourself naturally feeling and acting more successfully.
In addition to your relaxation time, set aside 15-30 minutes a day to visualize and think about what sort of person you would be if you freed yourself from everything that is holding you back—such as your negative self-image, the expectations of others, or specific fears. Come up with different situations and imagine how your “positive and successful self” would react. Make your images as vivid and as detailed as possible.
When Visualization Creates a False Sense of Achievement
While visualizing a successful version of yourself can lead you to act in successful ways, in Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday claims that it can also confuse your subconscious mind and create the opposite effect: When your subconscious believes that you’ve already achieved something, you feel that you’ve made progress despite not having taken any measurable steps toward achieving your goal.
This feeling of progress feels good, but it’s based on a false sense of achievement that may cause you to lose sight of the actions you need to take to move forward. In fact, researchers examining the effects of visualization on goal achievement found that participants often lost the energy required to fulfill their goal because once they convinced themselves they’d already achieved the goal, they lost interest in trying to progress toward it.
In addition, make the effort to remember successful experiences from your past—times when you felt satisfied and self-confident. Your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between past, present, or future, so memories of your past successes will impact your subconscious and accumulate alongside all of the successful feelings you create.
(Shortform note: Successful experiences can be hard to recall because people are programmed to forget good memories. To make this process easier, keep a journal to record all of your successful experiences when you remember them. This way, you’ll have a collection of memories to refer to each time you take the time to practice.)
Maltz argues that you need to find a reason to change your self-image before you can develop the skills to change it. In other words, you should know what results you hope to achieve with an improved self-image. Without a clear reason, you’re unlikely to find the motivation you need to make the required changes.
So, if you want to change your self-image so that you can feel more inner peace, think about why you want this—what you’ll get, or what improvements you hope to see in your life once you make this change. For example, will you get along better with your family, or feel more productive at work?
Once you’ve thought of something that your successful self would want to achieve, break it down and think of the first step that you can realistically achieve—Maltz argues that it’s important to develop the habit of success early on so that you can gradually build up your self-confidence to achieve more demanding goals.
For example, if you’d love to compete in a marathon but you don’t currently have an exercise routine, your realistic goal would be to go for a short run a couple of times a week. Clearly visualize yourself going for a run and imagine how good you’ll feel about yourself after your first run. Remember, your subconscious can’t tell the difference between real feelings and imagined feelings so, if you feel successful while you’re imagining yourself going for a run, your subconscious will believe that you’re capable of going for a run, and make it easier for you to achieve.
How to Overcome Your Mind’s Resistance to Change
Maltz argues that your habits are a result of your current self-image. If you want to create new habits to support a more positive self-image, you need to take small achievable steps to develop the habit of success. This is because the bigger the change you want to make, the more your mind is going to resist it—your mind’s job is to protect you. If it believes that you’re attempting to do things that will cause it harm, it will resist every attempt that you make with feelings of fear or inhibition.
- For example, imagine that you’re afraid of heights and your goal is to jump out of a plane (because this is your version of a successful and fearless self-image). Your mind is so accustomed to being afraid of heights that even the suggestion of jumping out of a plane causes it to stimulate your nervous system into producing a panic attack.
So how can you get past this resistance so that you can achieve what you want? In The Kaizen Way, Psychologist Rober Maurer claims that you’re more likely to make successful changes if you take very small but regular steps toward the large goal you intend to achieve. This is because small changes are more likely to bypass your brain’s instinctive reaction to resist new behavioral changes.
So, if you’re afraid of heights but want to achieve the goal of jumping out of a plane, begin by taking the tiniest step toward combating your fear of heights you can imagine, such as standing on a chair. The next day, stand on a low table, and so on. Each time you take another step, you’ll demonstrate to your brain that you’re safe regardless of how high up you are, and you’ll eventually succeed without fear or resistance.
Your current personality traits and habits are a result of your current self-image. When you have clear goals in mind, you can more easily check that the habits you’ve chosen to develop reinforce your efforts to achieve those goals, and strive to develop more successful habits. These success habits will help you to see yourself in a more positive light and encourage you to take actions that lead to the results that you want. This positive feedback loop will train your mind to approach your goal with an attitude of success.
For example, to achieve your long-term goal of running a marathon, you’ll need to develop a healthier lifestyle. You begin by introducing a light exercise routine into your life so that you can start to view yourself as a healthy person. The more you view yourself as a healthy person, the more likely you are to continue exercising and feel the benefits. The more benefits you feel from exercising, the more likely you are to see yourself as a healthy person.
(Shortform note: In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins expands upon Maltz’s concept that feedback loops reinforce specific behaviors by arguing that neuro-associations—the way your brain links certain experiences with pain and others with pleasure—influence all of your decisions and behaviors. According to Robbins, your brain relies on these neuro-associations to direct your behavior toward feeling pleasure and away from feeling pain, and you have to reprogram these associations to create new patterns of behavior. So, for the example above, you need to program your mind to associate healthy behaviors with pleasurable feelings in order for this habit to stick. For example, you could take the scenic route when you go for a run, or plan to reward yourself every time you complete a run.)
Maltz argues that your levels of stress and anxiety increase when you allow yourself to get distracted by too many thoughts. But when you decide to pursue a well-defined goal, you set priorities for what you choose to focus your attention on, and this reduces your mind’s propensity to wander.
He believes that you’re more likely to achieve success if you focus on one thing at a time, and do it to the best of your ability without distractions. This will increase your sense of self-satisfaction and contribute to your successful feedback loop. So, focus on the moment—give your full attention to what you’re doing and don’t move on to another task until you’ve completed the first one.
(Shortform note: Like Maltz, Gary Keller, author of The One Thing, believes that you’re more likely to achieve the success you want when you focus on one thing at a time. This is because success builds on success. He suggests that you prioritize the actions you need to complete to reach your goals—break down your goal into a series of logical steps that take you from where you are to where you want to be—and focus exclusively on completing each step in sequential order. With each step you complete, you’ll build your momentum and find it easier to complete each subsequent step.)
Maltz argues that genuine success and wellbeing come from cultivating and developing the habit of happiness in your life. Further, he claims that your mental attitude influences the way that your body heals.
This idea came about from an observation that Maltz made repeatedly throughout his career: Patients who were optimistic and had things to look forward to in life generally recovered from surgery faster than patients who didn’t feel any satisfaction in life. In other words, Maltz claims that happy people are generally healthier and more resilient to physical setbacks because they expect to get well and have a reason to get well.
On the other hand, unhappy people suffer from poor health and wellbeing because they don’t have a reason to get better—they don’t have anything to look forward to. Studies have shown results that support his idea that negative attitudes are bad for your health. For example, stressed out and unhappy people often suffer from ulcers and high blood pressure and are more likely to develop addictive behaviors and less likely to engage in healthy routines.
How Negative Thought Patterns Impact Health
Multiple research experiments confirm Maltz’s claim that mental attitudes impact health. Studies on the impact of negative mental states (depression, stress, anxiety) on health confirm that negative attitudes are bad for your health. Prolonged negativity affects your:
Hormones: Leads to increased heart rate and high blood pressure.
Immune system: Makes you more vulnerable to illnesses and infections.
Sleep: Prevents your mind from relaxing.
Brain: Increases cognitive decline.
Digestion: Damages your gut (indigestion, vomiting, constipation).
These researchers suggest that you can reduce your levels of stress and negativity by undertaking a daily ritual such as meditation, therapy, or physical exercise.
The realization that success comes from cultivating happiness led Maltz to think about what makes people feel happy. Maltz argues that your mind is designed to achieve goals. You’re more likely to feel interested and engaged in your life when you give your mind goals to pursue. The more you pursue satisfying goals, the more you have to look forward to and engage with. This makes you want to look after your health and your wellbeing. As a result, you're more inclined to feel happy.
(Shortform note: Like Maltz, the author of Flow argues that people are more likely to feel happy when they focus all of their attention on completing tasks and achieving goals. He claims that the more you direct your focus to achieve a goal, the more absorbed you feel in what you’re doing. This sense of absorption makes it difficult for your mind to wander and get distracted by negative thoughts. This process trains your mind to feel satisfied and happy—your mind gets used to experiencing satisfaction and this feeling impacts your overall mood and behavior.)
In contrast, if you stop pursuing goals, you find it difficult to find meaning in your life, and your physical health reflects this. For example, it’s common to hear about people that suffer from depression or severe illness within a few months of retirement. Maltz argues that this is because they no longer feel satisfied—their jobs gave them active goals and made them feel important and valued. When they don’t provide themselves with meaningful goals to replace their jobs, they feel useless and worthless and their bodies literally give up.
Why Retirement Leads to Illness
Maltz’s conclusion that retired people suffer illnesses when they don’t replace their jobs with meaningful goals was confirmed in a recent study. It revealed that retirement increases the chances of suffering from clinical depression by 40%, and of being diagnosed with a physical illness by 60%. This is because it leads to:
Loneliness—if there is no social life outside of the workplace.
Inactivity—if the motivation to leave the house was only linked to the daily commute to work.
Old age—if poor lifestyle choices such as smoking and drinking create health problems.
Experts agree that you can enjoy a happy retirement if you plan ahead and create ways to stay engaged in meaningful activities, look after your health, and make the effort to socialize with friends and family.
It’s important to note that, while the pursuit of goals will increase your chances of feeling happy, you’ll only experience the benefits if you let yourself feel happy and satisfied throughout the process. People tend to delay their happiness—they wait until they’ve achieved or acquired something until they let themselves feel happy. Life is full of problems, minor annoyances, and challenges—there’s always an excuse to be unhappy.
However, Maltz argues that you shouldn’t wait to achieve your goals to feel happy—you should choose to see the best in every experience and decide to feel happy now. This becomes easier the more you remember that your opinions about experiences determine how you feel, not the experiences themselves.
(Shortform note: Throughout the book, Maltz argues that you need to experience success and happiness internally before you see the results externally. Similarly, The Happiness Advantage applies the latest research in neuroscience and positive psychology to argue that happiness isn’t the result of success, but the cause of it. When you choose to cultivate the habit of thinking positive thoughts, you train your brain to find opportunities in adversity and find it easier to overcome challenges and setbacks. This creates positive momentum in your life and fuels further opportunities to feel happy.)
Maltz claims that your current habits and behaviors are a result of your self-image. If you want to improve your self-image, you need to define new habits to support this change.
Think of two of your current habits. What do you think these habits say about the type of person you are?
Visualize yourself as successful. Does this version of yourself engage in the same habits?
What kind of habits does this successful version of yourself have?
What small step can you take today to support the successful person you want to become?
Now that you understand how to create and focus on successful feelings to improve your self-image, we’ll explore methods you can use to let go of existing negative thought patterns that hold you back from success.
Maltz argues that the more you free yourself from responding to and identifying with negative thoughts—by deliberately creating successful feedback loops like a machine—the more likely you are to develop a happy and successful state of mind.
Your negative traits are nothing to be ashamed of—you originally adopted them as a way to solve a problem or protect yourself from future failures. However, if you wish to move forward and create more success in your life, you do need to make a conscious effort to replace those negative thoughts and feelings with positive thoughts and feelings.
(Shortform note: It’s often difficult to figure out if your thoughts are protecting you or holding you back from happiness. In The Work, Byron Katie presents a process to question the rationality of the thoughts and emotions that hold you back from feeling happy and successful. Katie argues that the more you question the validity of your existing negative thoughts and behaviors, the more you free yourself from identifying with them and relying on them to protect you. Katie claims that following this process leads to inner peace and empowers you to become the person you want to be.)
Maltz prescribes two methods you can use to replace existing negative thoughts and feelings with positive thoughts and feelings, and redirect yourself towards achieving successful outcomes.
A challenge is any situation that takes you out of your comfort zone. It’s important to see this type of situation as an opportunity rather than a crisis. Maltz argues that negative personalities often confuse challenges (opportunities to advance) with crises (life-threatening situations) because they’re so sensitive to external stimuli and perceive threats to be bigger than they are. They find excuses to avoid challenges, and they waste time and energy worrying or evading discomforting situations.
Maltz argues that when you feel stressed or anxious—such as when you see a challenge as a crisis—you’re less able to think clearly, find solutions, or react appropriately. Your anxiety literally shuts down your brain and your ability to deal with situations.
According to Maltz, positive personalities recognize the difference between an actual crisis and a challenge. In contrast to the negative personality’s tendency to freeze up, they proactively seek ways to overcome challenges, and they spend their time visualizing and planning how to make the best out of every situation.
Positive people are more relaxed: Maltz claims that the more relaxed you are, the more effective you are at dealing with pressure—you’re more able to think clearly and react appropriately and spontaneously to situations that come up. Consequently, if you visualize yourself responding to challenges while in a relaxed state, you’ll be more able to respond to real challenges as and when they come up.
Growth Mindset Versus Fixed Mindset
In her book Mindset, Carol S. Dweck discusses the difference between “growth mindset” and “fixed mindset”—although Maltz doesn’t use these terms, his theories regarding the way positive and negative personalities respond differently to challenges correspond to these concepts. According to Dweck, the two mindsets describe a person’s attitude to challenges and setbacks:
Growth mindset: People see challenges as an opportunity to learn—they believe that they can improve their natural abilities through effort and practice, and eventually overcome obstacles.
Fixed mindset: People see challenges as proof of their inability to achieve success—they believe that they can’t improve their abilities and this prevents them from moving past their limitations.
Fortunately, Dweck argues that even if you have a tendency toward a fixed mindset, you can develop a growth mindset through conscious awareness and effort. Many of the methods Maltz prescribes complement Dweck’s argument that you can improve the way you approach and overcome the challenges in your life.
Maltz argues you can turn any situation into an opportunity to improve your self-image. The more you practice relaxation and successful visualization, the more likely you’ll be able to perceive challenges in your life as opportunities. He suggests doing this by planning ahead for challenges as much as you can by taking the time to investigate your fears and visualize yourself responding to situations calmly and competently.
For example, you’re thinking about applying for a new job but you feel nervous about getting to the job interview stage. Maltz argues that your negative feelings signal that you haven’t mentally prepared yourself to meet your circumstances, and you’re reactivating memories of past failures rather than memories of past successes. To move past your fears, ask yourself:
Use your answers to better prepare yourself for this challenge—imagine yourself interacting in various job interview scenarios and pre-empt the various questions that may be asked. Practice responding to these questions calmly and confidently—overwrite your fearful thoughts by practicing feeling successful at this job interview.
This state of calm and confidence will carry over into any challenge you meet, not just the job interview—this process trains your mind to calmly solve all problems, and to confidently respond to every new situation and challenge.
Focus on Your Fears, Not Your Goals to Achieve Success
Like Maltz, Tim Ferriss suggests that you should investigate your fears. But his approach is slightly different—Ferriss argues that focusing on your worst-case scenarios will empower you to approach any challenge.
Ferriss argues that you’re more likely to hold back from taking action when your fears are unknown—vague possibilities that could happen. The more you think about the unknown, the more powerless you feel to overcome your fears. As a result, you postpone taking steps toward what you want—this inaction leads to feelings of disappointment and regret.
On the other hand, when you think about what you want to do and define the actual worst-case scenario, you give your mind something specific and productive to work on. If you’re afraid to take action, Ferriss suggests that you:
Envision your worst-case scenario in detail
Plan how you would get back in control of the situation
Ask yourself how you could benefit from this situation
Your answers to these questions will make you realize that you can overcome anything, even the worst possible thing you can imagine and will provide clues about how to move forward towards your goals.
Maltz argues that your negative feelings (anxiety, discomfort, lack of self-confidence) are not an indication of reality, just how you feel about reality—and those feelings are a result of your habitual thought process. That is, if you habitually think negative thoughts, you’ll often misunderstand events and draw false conclusions that keep you stuck in a negative feedback loop.
When you feel negative thoughts, feelings, or memories surface, choose to replace them with rational thoughts that encourage positive beliefs. For example, if you find yourself feeling insulted by someone’s comments, Maltz suggests that you ask the following questions:
Use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Challenge Your Negative Thoughts
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps people examine and challenge their uncomfortable thoughts so that they can find alternative ways to think about their triggers. The more you question the validity of your uncomfortable thoughts, the less likely you are to accept them as truth and allow them to rule your emotions.
Similar to Maltz’s method, CBT focuses on asking questions to assess the rationality of your uncomfortable thoughts and to explore other perspectives. Unlike Maltz’s general questions, CBT proposes a number of specific questions with concrete answers to help you more easily find clarity in the midst of discomfort:
Facts
What evidence is there to support your thoughts about this?
What evidence disproves or contradicts your thoughts about this?
Are your opinions getting in the way of the facts?
Other explanations
Can you think about this differently?
Is your mood impacting the way you’re thinking about this?
Are you likely to change your opinion about this over time?
Moving forward
What impact are these thoughts having on you?
Are these thoughts good for you or would you prefer to feel better?
What has helped you to feel positive after experiencing similar situations?
Maltz explains that one way you can train yourself to focus on facts and take control of how you react to situations is by delaying your response to stimuli.
When you consciously delay your response to a stimulus, you interrupt the automatic reaction of your subconscious and give yourself the chance to objectively view the fact, instead of getting caught up in your automatic emotional reaction. This delay gives you the space to calm down, take conscious control over your emotions, and decide how you want to respond. The more you practice delaying your negative reactions, the more control you have over your ability to respond positively and create positive feedback loops. Eventually, you’ll find that things that once triggered you into negative emotional states will no longer have any control over you.
Use Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) to Calm Your Automatic Responses to Stimuli
Maltz argues that you should delay your responses to triggers. This sounds easy, but it’s difficult to practice when you’re in the middle of a trigger. You’re more likely to delay your automatic responses if you find ways to deal with your triggers before you’re faced with them.
EFT—otherwise known as “tapping” is an effective way to reduce stress and anxiety, and calm down your response to triggers that upset you. Unlike most self-help programs, EFT doesn’t expect you to just ignore or avoid your negative thoughts and emotions. The process involves:
Accepting that you feel these emotions and calming your body’s response to them.
Understanding why certain things trigger you.
Releasing your negative emotions.
Replacing your unwanted emotions with calm or positive emotions.
The first step of the process involves using your fingertips to tap on specific meridian (acupuncture) points on your face and body while you focus on the negative emotion that you’re feeling. The process of tapping on these points sends signals to the part of your brain that’s responsible for triggering the stress response in your body.
When you tap on the points and focus on the negative thought or emotion, your brain automatically calms down its stress response and associates this feeling of calm with your point of focus. In other words, your brain no longer feels the need to fuel your negative reactions when you think about this specific emotion or trigger—you’re able to think more calmly and objectively. Once you feel more objective, you then continue to tap on the points until you no longer feel any emotion around the issue.
This process is often done in advance of a trigger—for example, if you know that you lash out at your kids every time they make a mess, you can tap through the points before you get home or even while you feel the urge to lash out. Each time you follow the process, you’ll become more conscious of how you’re responding to triggers and weaken your automatic responses. As a result, you’ll find it easier to improve your responses and act the way you choose to.
Another way you can take control of habitually negative thought processes is by making an effort to think rationally, not emotionally, about your mistakes. Maltz stresses that you should never identify with, or think emotionally about, your mistakes. The only time you should think about your mistakes is when you’re using them constructively, as a rational guide to help reorient yourself towards your goals.
He suggests asking yourself logical questions about the facts of the situation as a way to force yourself to focus on figuring out the real cause of your mistake and your goals instead of focusing on identifying with the mistake. Further, questioning yourself rationally helps you to immediately seek solutions to the mistake so you can bolster your potential for success in the future. This process will turn every mistake and failure into an opportunity to learn and break your pattern of responding negatively to situations.
For example, you failed an exam. You could either mope around and identify with the failure: “I failed my exam (fact), therefore I am a failure (cause).” Or you could just state the fact: “I failed the exam,” and seek the real cause by asking yourself logical questions:
Ask Yourself “What” Instead of “Why”
Sometimes, when you’re feeling emotional, it’s difficult to think rationally about a mistake you’ve made. You may inadvertently ask yourself questions that reinforce your errors and the negative emotions you feel.
According to Tasha Eurich, author of Insight, you’re more likely to discover effective solutions to your problems, and train yourself away from identifying with your mistakes, when you ask yourself “what” instead of “why” questions in response to mistakes.
Asking “why” questions about your past mistakes will only lead you to focus on your failures and errors. You may end up engaging emotionally with your mistakes instead of switching your focus to the success you want to achieve.
- For example, you failed an exam because you didn’t study, you weren’t prepared enough, or you just didn’t know the right answers. In other words, your responses emphasize that you didn’t do enough and your failure is due to an error on your part.
On the other hand, asking “what” questions will allow you to bypass the act of focusing on your errors and lead you directly to the solutions you seek to make. This process will allow you to take a step back from your mistakes and focus objectively on the solutions that will serve you.
- For example, asking yourself “what do you need to do to pass the exam?” instead of “why did you fail the exam?” will lead you directly to the actions you need to take to improve your chances of success in the future.
Throughout his work as a plastic surgeon, Maltz noticed that many of his patients suffered more from “emotional scars” than they did from real physical flaws. Some of his patients failed to see the changes in their appearance after surgery because their self-image was so strongly fixated on an imaginary flaw. Maltz concluded that emotional scars are the real cause of distorted and negative self-images, and the only way to move forward is to release them.
(Shortform note: Emotional scars—otherwise known as psychological trauma—result from situations that threaten your sense of emotional or physical safety. Psychologists argue that your subjective emotional experience of a situation defines whether you find it traumatic—the more powerless you feel, the more likely you are to feel traumatized and form an emotional scar. This links back to Maltz’s argument that the self-image determines responses to the environment: Someone with a positive self-image responds to life experiences rationally. In contrast, someone with a negative self-image responds to the same experiences irrationally, is more likely to feel threatened, and form emotional scars.)
Maltz argues that an unwillingness or failure to forgive past mistakes and traumas holds people back from experiencing success in their lives—they form “emotional scars” to protect themselves from future hurts and humiliations. These scars don’t protect them, but rather prevent them from experiencing new things and keep them trapped in a state of resentment and misery.
Forgiveness, on the other hand, heals these emotional scars and allows you to move forward with your life. You need to accept that we all make mistakes and it’s okay—no one’s perfect. Holding onto blame only holds you back from success. Forgiving yourself and others for past mistakes will liberate you and allow you to focus on where you want to go.
The more you practice feeling successful and self-reliant, the less sensitive you’ll be to external circumstances (the things that happen and how people react to you). The more you practice responding to experiences rationally, the less likely you’ll be to form new emotional scars.
How to Let Go of Past Grievances
In How To Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie expands upon the idea that you should “forgive and forget” past hurts so that you can move forward and embrace success and happiness. He claims that holding onto past grievances takes away your power because it prevents you from focusing on what you want. These negative feelings can also harm your physical health and produce effects such as high blood pressure and insomnia. Carnegie’s suggestions for releasing grievances, or “emotional scars,” include:
Look for the good: Forgive the person for wronging you and simply stop thinking about them. You’ll achieve this faster if you can find the good in the situation and find something to be grateful for. For example, perhaps you knew deep down that your ex-partner wasn’t “the one” for you but you were too complacent to change the situation. The betrayal was actually a good thing because it put you in a position to find someone more suited to you.
Focus on something you’re passionate about: The more you commit to something you care about, the less likely you are to focus on how others have wronged you.
Try to imagine their point of view: When you allow yourself to think outside of your own worldview, and you consider why that person engaged in the behavior that you’re resenting them for, you open yourself up to empathy and create space to feel compassion for this person, rather than self-pity for yourself.
According to Maltz, your fears are a sign that you haven’t prepared yourself to meet challenges. Investigating your fears will help you to plan specific ways to overcome them.
What’s one thing you want to do but are too afraid to take action on?
Why are you afraid to take action? Try to be as specific as possible.
Now that you’ve identified your fears about taking action, pick one fear to investigate. Ask yourself if there are any rational reasons for believing that this fear could happen in reality.
If this fear did come true, what specific steps could you take to take control of the situation?
Maltz claims that you’re more likely to achieve success if you make the habit of replacing your negative thoughts with positive thoughts. For this exercise, think about something that triggers you into thinking negatively.
Describe a situation where you often find yourself reacting negatively.
What specific thoughts and feelings come up when you think about this situation?
Which of Maltz’s suggestions could help you plan ahead and prepare yourself to handle this situation positively? For example, you might reframe your negative thoughts to positive ones, or visualize yourself responding calmly.
Try describing the situation as rationally as possible (focus on being objective, not emotional). Does this process help you to think differently about the situation?