Transcript for:
Psycho-Cybernetics Overview

in many ways psycho-cybernetics is the original science of self-improvement I make that statement for three principal reasons first Dr maltz was the first researcher and author to understand and explain how the self-image a term he popularized for certain processes within the subconscious mind has complete control over an individual's ability to achieve or fail to achieve any goal second everything written said recorded or taught about self-improvement since maltz wrote has derived from his work try and find any book on success or self-improvement written since 1960 right through to yesterday that does not include a discussion of self-image and the techniques for improving and managing it notably including visualization mental rehearsal and relaxation and you'll realize how crucial the work of malt still is the relatively young science of sports psychology relied on heavily by professional golfers sports franchises coaches and Olympians owes an enormous debt occasionally acknowledged the psycho-cybernetics third unlike philosophical musings about success psycho-cybernetics is in fact scientific it provides practical things to do not just think about that yield quantifiable results what is unique about psycho cybernetics is that it offers techniques that help make whatever was once difficult easy in short whether you set out to lose weight and keep it off lower your golf score double your income in selling become a confident public speaker write the Great American novel or achieve any other imaginable goal in order to succeed you will use psycho-cybernetics techniques either directly from Dr maltz or some other source influenced by his work by acquiring this program you have gone to the first and still foremost source it is significant that with very little publicity or marketing the original psycho-cybernetics book has had such amazing longevity and is now a classic in its field today just as 10 20 and 30 years ago sales managers tell recruits coaches tell athletes Consultants tell clients get and read this book now I dare to update the classic in doing so I have set out to preserve much of the original content much of it in fact is unchanged some has been modestly updated in language or example to integrate it with other works of Dr maltz I have added my own observations and Lessons Learned From teaching psycho-cybernetics techniques along with examples and stories submitted by many users of these techniques and called from others books referencing these techniques throughout I have tried to maintain maltz's original voice over the years since 1960 Dr maltz and those who followed him devoted increasing emphasis to translating the principles and concepts of psycho-cybernetics into actual practical mental training exercises and I've included a number of those as well all things combined this is the most complete psycho-cybernetics work ever published I sincerely believe that you hold in your hands one of the most powerful tools for self-improvement and goal achievement available anywhere at any time at any price it has been my privilege to have a small part in bringing it to you if you aren't achieving everything you want in life it is probably because your goals are being ineffectively communicated to or rejected by your self-image and your Servo mechanism is underutilized and uninspired this statement May initially strike you as psychobabble in gobbledygook but by the time you listen to this program just once you will fully understand that this single statement reveals the master key to all Personal Achievement including whatever Improvement in performance and outcomes you desire in any area of Life personal health relationships career business or Finance Dr Maxwell maltz died in 1975. yet he is the primary author of this program written in 2001 and he contributed in a very active and Lively way in addition to writing the original psycho-cybernetics on which the new edition is based Dr maltz was a remarkably prolific researcher and writer by the time of his death he had written over a dozen books and three complete courses of study on different aspects of psycho-cybernetics thousands of pages of unpublished counseling session notes interviews speeches and radio broadcasts and more all of this material was put into a computer carefully sorted and organized so that Dr maltz could continue contributing to new works even today although Mr Kennedy has also contributed to this program to prevent confusion and clutter you are hearing everything spoken by one voice Dr moltzes it reads as if Dr maltz wrote it today in its entirety we are certain he would be proud of this work and that you will benefit from it enormously chapter one the self-image your key to Living Without Limits Bruce Barton wrote nothing Splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was Superior to circumstance a revolution in Psychology began in the late 1960s and exploded in the 1970s when I wrote the first edition of psycho-cybernetics in 1960 I was at the Forefront of a sweeping change in the fields of psychology Psychiatry and Medicine new theories and Concepts concerning the self began emerging from the work and findings of clinical psychologists practicing psychiatrists and even cosmetic or so-called plastic surgeons like myself new methods growing out of these findings resulted in dramatic changes in personality in health and even in basic abilities and talents chronic failures became successful F students changed into straight A pupils with no extra tutoring shy retiring inhibited personalities became happy and outgoing at the time I was quoted in the January 1959 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine in which T.F James summarized these results obtained by various psychologists and MDS as follows quote understanding the psychology of the self can mean the difference between success and failure love and hate bitterness and happiness the discovery of the real self can rescue a crumbling marriage recreate a faltering career transform victims of Personality failure on another plane discovering your real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of Conformity unquote this was barely predictive of everything that has occurred in the four decades that followed when psycho cybernetics was first published if you visited a bookstore to obtain a copy you might have found it nestled on an obscure Shelf with only a dozen or so other so-called self-help books today of course self-help is one of the largest sections in the entire bookstore psychologists psychiatrists and therapists have proliferated new Specialists have emerged such as Sports psychologists and corporate performance coaches and the stigma of seeking such help has disappeared to such an extent that in some circles doing so is trendy self-help psychology has become so popular it even has found a place in television infomercials once difficult now easy I'm gratified that much of this modern explosion of ideas information and people to assist you with everything from conquering procrastination to shaving Strokes off your golf score appears to be based on psycho-cybernetics you might say that my original work was ahead of its time or you might say that it is aged well whatever you conclude the most important thing for you personally is that the fundamental promise of psycho-cybernetics has been proven true Beyond any doubt or argument that is once difficult now easy whatever is now difficult for you whatever may have prompted your listening to this program can be transformed from difficult to easy through the use of certain sound psychological Concepts easily understood and mastered mental training techniques and a few practical steps your secret blueprint I would argue that the most important psychological discovery of modern times is the discovery of the self-image by understanding your self-image and by learning to modify it and manage it to suit your purposes you gain incredible confidence and Power whether we realize it or not each of us carries within us a mental blueprint or picture of ourselves it may be vague and ill-defined to our conscious gaze in fact it may not be consciously recognizable at all but it is there complete down to the Last Detail this self-image is our own conception of the sort of person I am it has been built up from our own beliefs about ourselves most of these beliefs about ourselves have unconsciously been formed from our past experiences our successes and failures our humiliations our triumphs and the way other people have reacted to us especially in early childhood from all these we mentally construct a self or a picture of a self once an idea or a belief about ourselves goes into this picture it becomes truth as far as we personally are concerned we do not question its validity but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true the self-image then controls what you can and cannot accomplish what is difficult or easy for you even how others respond to you just as certainly and scientifically as a thermostat controls the temperature in your home specifically all your actions feelings Behavior even your abilities are always consistent with this self-image note the word always in short you will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be more important you literally cannot act otherwise in spite of all your conscious efforts or willpower this is why trying to achieve something difficult with teeth gridded is a losing battle willpower is not the answer self-image management is the Snapback effect the person who has a fat self-image whose self-image claims to have a sweet tooth to be unable to resist junk food who cannot find the time to exercise will be unable to lose weight and keep it off no matter what he tries to do consciously in opposition to that self-image you cannot long outperform or Escape your self-image if you do Escape briefly you'll be snapped back like a rubber band extended between two fingers coming loose from one the person who perceives himself to be a failure type person will find some way to fail in spite of all his good intentions or his willpower even if opportunity is literally dumped in his lap the person who conceives himself to be a victim of Injustice one who was meant to suffer will invariably find circumstances to verify his opinions you can insert any specific into this your golf game sales career public speaking weight loss relationships the control of your self-image is absolute and pervasive the Snapback effect is universal the self-image is a premise a base or a foundation upon which your entire personality your behavior and even your circumstances are built as a result our experiences seem to verify and thereby strengthen ourselves images and either a vicious or a beneficent cycle as the case may be is set up for example a student who sees himself as an F-Type student or one who is dumb in mathematics will invariably find that his report card Bears him out he then has proof in the same manner as a sales professional or an entrepreneur will also find that her actual experiences tend to prove that her self-image is correct whatever is difficult for you whatever frustrations you have in your life they are likely proving and reinforcing something ingrained in your self-image like a Groove in a record because of this objective proof it very seldom occurs to us that our trouble lies in our self-image or our own evaluation of ourselves tell the student that he only thinks he cannot Master algebra and he'll doubt your sanity he has tried and tried and still his report card tells the story tell the sales agent that it's only an idea that she cannot earn more than a certain figure and she can prove you wrong by her order book she knows only too well how hard she has tried and failed yet as we shall see almost miraculous changes have occurred both in grades of students and the earning capacity of salespeople once they were prevailed upon to change their self-images obviously it's not enough to say it's all in your head in fact that's insulting it is more productive to explain that it is based on certain ingrained possibly hidden patterns of thought that if altered will free you to tap more of your potential and experience vastly different results this brings me to the most important truth about the self-image it can be changed numerous case histories have shown that you are never too young or too old to change your self-image and start to live a new amazingly different life here is another illustration of how the self-image operates picture yourself living inside two boxes one smaller than the other the bigger box farthest away from you represents real or realistic limits the box within the smaller one that is tightly confining yourself represents self-imposed limits the area between the two boxes is your area or range of underutilized potential as you discover the means of strengthening and liberating your self-image you expand the smaller box bringing it closer to the size of the larger one permitting greater use of your true potential success From the Inside Out not the outside in one of the reasons it seems so difficult for a person to change habits personality or a way of life has been that nearly all efforts of change have been directed to the circumference of the self so to speak rather than to the center numerous patients have said to me something like the following if you're talking about positive thinking I've tried that before and it just doesn't work for me however a little questioning invariably brings out that these individuals employed positive thinking or attempted to employ it either on particular external circumstances or on some particular habit or character defect I will get that job I will be more calm and relaxed in the future this business venture will turn out right for me and so on but they never thought to change their thinking of the self that was to accomplish these things Jesus warned us about the Folly of putting a patch of new material on an old garment or of putting new wine into Old bottles positive thinking cannot be used effectively as a patch to the same old self-image in fact it is literally impossible to really think positively about a particular situation as long as you hold a negative concept of self numerous experiments have shown that once the concept of self is changed other things consistent with the new concept of self are accomplished easily and without strain a system of ideas one of the earliest and most convincing experiments along this line was conducted by the late Prescott Leckie one of the Pioneers in self-image psychology Leckie conceived of the personality as a system of ideas all of which must be consistent with each other ideas that are inconsistent with the system are rejected not believed and not acted on ideas that seem to be consistent with the system are accepted at the very center of this system of ideas the Keystone or the base on which all else is built is the individual's self-image or his conception of himself lucky was a school teacher and had an opportunity to test his theory on thousands of students he theorized that if a student had trouble learning a certain subject it could be because from the student's point of view it would be inconsistent for him to learn it lucky believed however that if the student could be induced to change his self-definition his learning ability should also change this proved to be the case one student who misspelled 55 words out of 100 and flunked so many subjects that he lost credit for a year made a general average of 91 the next year and became one of the best spellers in school a girl who was dropped from one college because of poor grades entered Colombia and became a straight A student a boy who was told by a testing Bureau that he had no aptitude for English one honorable mention the next year for a literary prize the trouble with these students was not that they were dumb or lacking in basic aptitudes the trouble was an inadequate self-image I don't have a mathematical mind I'm just naturally a poor speller they identified with their mistakes and failures instead of saying I failed that test which is factual and descriptive They concluded I am a failure instead of saying I flunked that subject they said I am a flunkout for those who are interested in learning more of Lucky's work try to find a copy of his book self-consistency a Theory of Personality leki also used the same method to cure students of such habits as nail biting and stuttering my own files contain case histories just as convincing the woman who was so afraid of strangers that she seldom ventured out of the house and who now makes her living as a public speaker the salesman who had already prepared a letter of resignation because he just wasn't cut out for selling and six months later was number one man on a force of 100 sales people the minister who was considering retirement because nerves and the pressure of preparing a sermon every week were getting him down and who now delivers an average of three outside talks a week in addition to his weekly sermons and doesn't know he has a nerve in his body following Dr Lucky's breakthrough thinking on this subject born from observation as well as my own observations and thoughts chronicled in the earlier editions of this book a mountain of more sophisticated scientific research and anecdotal evidence has led to the acceptance of the controlling self-image by most of the academic psychological community how a plastic surgeon became interested in self-image psychology my story offhand there would seem to be little or no connection between surgery and psychology yet it was the work of the plastic surgeon that first hinted at the existence of the self-image and raised certain questions that led to important psychological knowledge when I first began the practice of plastic surgery many years ago I was amazed by the dramatic and sudden changes in character and personality that often resulted when a facial defect was corrected changing the physical image in many instances appeared to create an entirely new person in case after case the scalpel that I held in my hand became a magic wand that transformed not only patients appearance but their whole life the shy and retiring became bold and courageous a stupid boy changed into an alert bright youngster who went on to become an executive with a prominent firm a Salesman who had lost his touch and his faith in himself became a model of self-confidence and perhaps the most startling of all was the habitual hardened criminal who changed almost overnight from an incorrigible who had never shown any desire to change into a model prisoner who won a parole and went on to assume a responsible role in society some 60 years ago I reported many such case histories in my book new faces new Futures written more for my peers than the public following its publication and similar articles in leading magazines I was besieged with questions by criminologists psychologists sociologists and psychiatrists they asked questions that I could not answer but they did start me on a search ly enough I learned as much from my failures as from my successes if not more it was easy to explain the successes the boy with the two big ears who had been told that he looked like a taxi cab with both doors open had been ridiculed all his life often cruelly association with others meant humiliation and pain why shouldn't he avoid social contact why shouldn't he become afraid of people and retire into himself terribly afraid to express himself in any way he became known as stupid when his ears were corrected it would seem only natural that since the cause of his embarrassment and humiliation had been removed he should assume a normal role in life which he did or consider the salesman who suffered a facial disfigurement as the result of an automobile accident each morning when he shaved he could see the horrible disfiguring scar on his cheek and the grotesque twist to his mouth for the first time in his life he became painfully self-conscious he was ashamed of himself and felt that his appearance must be repulsive to others the scar became an obsession with him he was different from other people he began to wonder what others were thinking of him soon his self-image was even more mutilated than his face he began to lose confidence in himself he became bitter and hostile soon almost all his attention was directed toward himself and his primary goal became the protection of his ego and the avoidance of situations that might bring humiliation it is easy to understand how the correction of his facial disfigurement and the restoration of a normal face would overnight change this man's entire attitude and Outlook his feelings about himself resulting in Greater success in his work the mystery inspired me if the scalpel was magic why did some people who acquired new faces go right on wearing their old personalities what about the exceptions those who didn't change what about the duchess who all her life had been terribly shy and self-conscious because of a tremendous hump in her nose although surgery gave her a classic nose and a face that was truly beautiful she continued to act the part of the ugly duckling The Unwanted sister who could never bring herself to look another human being in the eye if the scalpel itself was magic why did it not work on the duchess or what about all the others who acquired new faces but went right on wearing the same old personality how to explain the reaction of people who insist that the surgery has made no difference whatever in their appearance every plastic surgeon has had this experience and has probably been as baffled by it as I was no matter how drastic the change in appearance may be certain patients will insist that I look just the same as before you didn't do a thing friends even family may scarcely recognize them may become enthusiastic over their newly acquired Beauty yet the patients themselves insist that they can see only slight or no improvement or in fact deny that any change at all has been made comparison of before and after photographs does little good and may even arouse hostility by some strange Mental Alchemy the patient will rationalize of course I can see that the hump is no longer in my nose but my nose still looks just the same or the scar may not show anymore but it's still there scars that bring Pride instead of Shame still another clue In Search Of The elusive self-image is the fact that not all scars or disfigurements bring shame and humiliation when I was a young medical student in Germany I saw many a student proudly wearing his saber scar much as an American might wear the Medal of Honor the dualists were the elite of college society and a facial scar was the badge that proved you a member in good standing to these boys the acquisition of a horrible scar on the cheek had the same psychological effect as the eradication of the scar from the cheek of my salesman patient I began to see that a knife itself held no magical powers it could be used on one person to inflict the scar and on another to erase a scar with the same psychological results the mystery of imaginary ugliness to a person handicapped by a genuine congenital defect or suffering an actual facial disfigurement as a result of an accident plastic surgery can indeed seemingly perform Magic from such cases it would be easy to theorize that the cure-all for all neuroses unhappiness failure fear anxiety and lack of self-confidence would be wholesale plastic surgery to remove all bodily defects however according to this Theory persons with normal or acceptable faces should be singularly free from all psychological handicaps they should be cheerful happy self-confident free from anxiety and worry we know only too well this is not true nor can such a theory explain the people who visit the office of a cosmetic surgeon and demand a facelift to cure a purely imaginary ugliness there are for example the 35 to 45 year old women who are convinced that they look old even though their appearance is perfectly normal and in many cases unusually attractive there are the young girls who are convinced that they are ugly merely because their mouth nose or bust measurement does not exactly match that of the current reigning Hollywood celebrity teen pop star or the most popular girl in their school there are the men who believe that their ears are too big or their nose is too long such imagined ugliness is not at all uncommon surveys of everyone from teenagers and college students to mature men and women consistently show high numbers 78 even 90 percent dissatisfied in some way with their appearance if the words normal or average mean anything at all it is obvious that ninety percent of our population cannot be abnormal or different or defective in appearance yet surveys have shown that approximately the same percentage of our general population find some reason to be ashamed of their body image of course in some cases this becomes constructive dissatisfaction that motivates healthy weight loss and exercise many other times though it either stimulates attempts at Weight Loss or Fitness doomed to failure because of strong self-image based restrictions or simply cause people profound unhappiness these people react just as if they suffered an actual disfigurement they feel the same shame they develop the same fears and anxieties their capacity to really live fully is blocked and choked by the same sort of psychological roadblocks their scars though mental and emotional rather than physical are just as debilitating why are the rich and Powerful unhappy why do the popular successful wealthy beautiful people of Hollywood athletes awarded Mega Million Dollar contracts and set for life and enormously influential and Powerful business or political leaders engage in amazingly unhappy and self-sabotaging acts of alcohol or drug abuse and addiction or in all manner of publicly humiliating and destructive Behavior you see it reported every day they've bought the BMW and they had the three million dollar Mill Valley house and they still wake up in the morning and say I don't feel good about myself that's a quote from Dr Stephen goldbard a psychologist treating many.com and tech industry millionaires in Silicon Valley for what is characterized as undeserved wealth syndrome wealth success power and celebrity are no more guarantees of happiness and peace of mind than surgical Improvement of some personal appearance flaw the self-image the real Secret discovery of the self-image explains all the apparent discrepancies we've been discussing it is the common denominator the determining factor in all our case histories the failures as well as the successes the secret is this to really live that is to find life reasonably satisfying you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with you must find yourself acceptable to you you must have a wholesome self-esteem you must have a self that you can trust and believe in you must have a self that you are not ashamed to be and one that you can feel free to express creatively rather than hide or cover up you must know yourself both your strengths and your weaknesses and be honest with yourself concerning both your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of you being neither more nor less than you are when this self-image is intact and secure you feel good when it is threatened you feel anxious and insecure when it is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of you feel self-confident you feel free to be yourself and to express yourself you function at your Optimum when the self-image is an object of Shame you attempt to hide it rather than express it creative expression is blocked you become hostile and hard to get along with if a scar on the face enhances the self-image as in the case of the German duelist self-esteem and self-confidence are increased if a scar on the face detracts from the self-image as in the case of the salesman loss of self-esteem and self-confidence result when a facial disfigurement is corrected by plastic surgery dramatic psychologic changes result only if there is a corresponding correction of the mutilated self-image sometimes the image of a disfigured self persists even after successful surgery much the same as the Phantom limb may continue to feel pain years after the physical arm or leg has been amputated I begin a new career these observations led me into a new career in 1945 or so I became definitely convinced that many of the people who consult a plastic surgeon need more than surgery and that some do not need surgery at all if I were to treat these people as patients as a whole person rather than as merely a nose ear mouth arm or leg I needed to be in a position to give them something more I needed to be able to show them how to obtain a psychological emotional and spiritual facelift how to remove emotional scars how to channel their attitudes and thoughts as well as modify their physical appearance this determination launched me on a continuing process of pointed observation documenting my own case histories lecturing both the peers and to the public then writing this book first published in 1960. this book caught the Public's imagination in a special way it was excerpted in popular magazines including Readers Digest and Cosmopolitan purchased by the thousands by corporations for their sales people and other employees adopted by top athletes coaches and teams including the Vince Lombardi coached Green Bay Packers its success LED quickly to many speaking engagement seminar tours radio and television interviews even my own radio program invitations to speak about my discoveries came from churches colleges and corporations ultimately I also wrote several other books extensions of this one including the magic power of self-image late in my life three decades after its first publication I was gratified that psycho-cybernetics continues to sell tens of thousands of copies each year almost entirely thanks to Word of Mouth recommendations and is inspiring new interpretations with each passing year as I accumulated more experience teaching the power of self-image counseling and monitoring the results people achieved with this information I became more convinced than ever that what each of us really wants deep down is more life something I termed aliveness the experience of living a life unrestricted by self-image imposed artificial limits happiness success Peace of Mind whatever your own conception of supreme good may be is experienced in its Essence as more life when we experience expansive emotions of Happiness self-confidence and success we enjoy more life and to the degree that we inhibit our abilities frustrate our god-given talents and allow ourselves to suffer anxiety fear self-condemnation and self-hate we literally choke off the life force available to us and turn our back on the gift that our creator has made to the degree that we deny the gift of life we Embrace death your new program for Liberated Living in my opinion the professions of psychology and Psychiatry are often far too pessimistic regarding people and their potential for self-directed change even greatness since psychologists and psychiatrists deal with so-called abnormal people the literature is almost exclusively taken up with various abnormalities with some people's Tendencies towards self-destruction many people I am afraid have read so much of this type of viewpoint that they've come to regard such things as hatred the destructive Instinct guilt self-condemnation and all the other negatives as normal human behavior average persons feel awfully weak and impotent when they think of the prospect of pitting their puny will against these negative forces in human nature in order to gain health and happiness If This Were a true picture of human nature and The Human Condition self-improvement would indeed be a rather futile thing however I believe and the experiences of my many patients have confirmed the fact that you do not have to do the job alone there is within each of us a life instinct which is forever working toward health happiness and all that makes for more life for the individual this life Instinct works for you through what I call the creative mechanism or when used correctly the automatic success mechanism that is built into each human being in this program I will endeavor to give you very practical ideas and instructions for liberating your own self-image fully activating your own automatic success mechanism if you will give all this a reasonable chance I'm confident you too will be pleasantly amazed at all the positive changes you will experience new scientific insights into the subconscious mind there is admittedly debate about the actual structural makeup of the human mind crammed into your brain are more neurons than there are stars in the Milky Way hundreds of billions of them an unimaginable number each of these neurons receives input from tens of thousands of the other neurons and sends messages to tens of thousands of others adding up to over one million billion Connections in his book about the brain bright air brilliant fire neuroscientist Gerald Adelman speculated that if you were to attempt counting the links one per second you might finish 32 million years later the operation is something roughly akin to your clicking on the You've Got Mail beeping icon on your computer and finding ten thousand or Twenty Thousand email messages that require sorting prioritizing organizing and responding to just to get everything right so that you can accomplish the first simple task of your day such as tying your shoelaces you would melt down at the prospect but your brain handles it in nanoseconds with a plum the brain is roughly three pounds yet it contains the equivalent of entire cities full of giant buildings full of computer circuitry it is surely the most complex and amazing thing we will ever discover and it is still a frontier because research keeps uncovering New Revelations about how the human mind operates on top of the mechanical aspects there are psychological and spiritual matters the issue of Mind as the pathway to the soul the conscious and subconscious the Freudian concept of ID the idea of three operating systems rather than two reptilian limbic and cerebral left brain right brain and on and on my take on all this has been criticized by some as simplistic it's possible that research continuing long after my departure will eventually demonstrate that I've been partly right and partly wrong and will produce even better insights into practical self-improvement if and when that occurs I'd applaud but for now let me just say that to you it shouldn't matter much whether some professor of psychology with lots of letters after his name looks down his nose at what we are discussing as over simplistic lets you and I focus on the most important Point what works and I can assure you that what we are discussing here has worked for thousands and thousands and thousands of people and will work for you by work I mean Empower you to get more of what you want out of life my exploration of the science of cybernetics convinced me that the so-called subconscious mind is not a mind at all but a goal-striving Servo mechanism consisting of the brain and nervous system which is used and directed by the mind the most usable concept is that man does not have two minds but rather a mind or Consciousness which operates an automatic goal-striving machine this automatic goal striving machine functions in much the same way as electronic Servo mechanisms function but it is much more marvelous much more complex than any electronic brain computer or guided missile ever conceived by man the creative mechanism within you is impersonal it will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness or unhappiness and failure depending upon the goals you set for it present it with success goals and it functions as a success mechanism presented with negative goals and it operates just as impersonally and just as Faithfully as a failure mechanism like any other Servo mechanism it must have a clear-cut Target objective or problem to work upon in short the goals you attempt to convey to this mechanism are filtered through the self-image and if they are inconsistent with the self-image they are rejected or modified by discovering how to alter your self-image you end its conflict with your goals then if you can communicate your goals directly to your creative mechanism it will do what is necessary for you to achieve them like any other Servo mechanism our creative mechanism uses the information and the data that we feed into it our thoughts beliefs interpretations through our attitudes and interpretations of situations we describe the problem to be worked on if we feed information and data into our creative mechanism to the effect that we ourselves are unworthy inferior undeserving incapable our negative self-image this data is processed and acted on as any other data in giving us the answer in the form of objective experience when someone we know Acts or when we behave in a way that is astoundingly wrong and wonder why the answer is basically miscommunication with the servo mechanism the servo mechanism is functioning perfectly but acting on a severe misunderstanding self-image imprinting this is most controlled by three factors authoritative Source intensity and repetition what we hear from a source we accept as authoritative such as the father we see as omnipotent from whom we desperately seek acceptance as a child is given far more weight than the same statements if heard from what is to us at the time a less credible source what we see hear or experience with intensity such as the father yelling at us in front of others making us humiliated has added weight and what we hear repetitively from authoritative sources has even more weight years after this programming has ceased it may still be governing all sorts of behavior because the servo mechanism continues acting upon it as current your program for more Liberated Living consists in first of all learning something about this creative mechanism or automatic guidance system within you in the process you will learn how to use it as a success mechanism rather than as a failure mechanism second you will actually program and reprogram or engineer the personality and the life experiences you desire it is not widely known but the controversial Dr Timothy Leary a 1960s hippie icon but also a scientist was as fascinated with the link between mechanical cybernetics and the workings of the human mind as I in an interview in 1992 Leary stated it is a genetic imperative to explore the brain because it's there if you're carrying around in your head 100 billion mainframe computers you just have to get in there and learn how to operate them unquote I think it is your personal imperative to invest the time energy and study needed to better understand and use your mind power including your self-image power he also said we can only understand our inner workings in terms of the external mechanical or teleological models that we build unquote this program now in your hands is exactly that a path to Greater understanding of your own mind based on teleological models such as guided missile and computer Technologies the method itself consists in learning practicing and experiencing new habits of thinking imagining remembering and acting in order to one develop an adequate and realistic self-image and two use your creative mechanism to bring success and happiness in achieving particular goals while the human mind is an endlessly complex creation and while you could read hundreds of texts by neuroscientists and be no further along in improving your use of your own mind self-improvement with psycho-cybernetics can be remarkably simple and it offers rapid results if you can remember worry or tie your shoe you can succeed with psycho-cybernetics as you will see later the method to be used consists of creative mental picturing creatively experiencing through your imagination and the formation of new automatic reaction patterns by acting out and acting as if you may already have read or heard quite a bit about such techniques and tried them with mixed or disappointing results if so it does not necessarily mean that you use them improperly nor does it mean that you are somehow unable to use them successfully it more likely means that you attempted applying the techniques in conflict with your self-image once you use them in concert with modifying managing and strengthening your self-image you will see positive results I often told my patients that if you can remember worry or tie your shoe you will have no trouble applying this method the things you are called upon to do are simple but you must practice and experience visualizing creative mental picturing is no more difficult than what you do when you remember a scene out of the past or worry about the future acting out new action patterns is no more difficult than deciding then following through on tying your shoes in a new and different manner each morning instead of continuing to tie them in your old habitual way without thought or decision all those who have benefited from psycho-cybernetics you might be encouraged by a quick list of those who use these methods exactly as I'm going to describe them to you as we proceed through this program athletes psycho-cybernetics and athletes have long been linked in 1967 the newspapers reported that the big thing now with the Green Bay Packers is psycho cybernetics this was the Vince Lombardi era Packers and Coach Lombardi as well as famous players Jerry Kramer and Bart Starr all carried their copies of the book with them and shared it with their teammates a New York Times article from July 1968 reported on Yankee great Mickey Mantle uncovering Jim button's copy of psycho-cybernetics and finding it full of handwritten margin notes Jack Nicklaus the late Payne Stewart and many other top golfers have made very specific statements about their Reliance on the mental side of golf in a forward to the book Mind Over golf referring to his victories in the 1989 PGA Championship and the 1991 U.S open Payne Stewart wrote with my old mindset I don't think I would have been able to Prevail in either of those major championships but with my new mental approach I was able to raise my game to the highest level when I had to unquote Mind Over golf incidentally is written by Dr Richard Coop a professor of educational psychology at the University of North Carolina a contributing Editor to Golf Magazine and a coach to many golfers I recommend his book as a companion to this one should golf be your Recreation or vocation in this program you will also discover Rodeo Riders Olympic athletes football players and many coaches who rely on psycho-cybernetic strategies in general or specifically by name to succeed coaches in 1997 the psycho-cybernetics foundation received a letter from Linda Tyler Rollins assistant athletic director for academic Affairs at the University of North Texas she wrote that she had been teaching from psycho-cybernetics for years and that in a course for incoming scholarship athletes quote the vocabulary they become accustomed to during their academic and athletic careers at UNT is based on the concepts presented by Dr maltz before these students were born unquote a Boston psychologist now coaching pro golfers profiled in Golf Magazine Dr Gloria spitani says by my calculations the average golfer spends about 86 percent of their time doing nothing but wrestling with their thoughts and emotions feeling one way or another about what is taking place feeling exhilaration or anger struggling to keep focused worrying about what's happened or what is up ahead unquote it only stands to reason that if 86 percent of the time spent playing the game is dominated by thought and emotion not physical action that 86 percent of the success failure determination is due to management of thoughts and emotions not swing mechanics or putting prowess the same thing is true in every athletic activity so more and more coaches are devoting more and more time and energy to mental preparation and psychological motivation several top coaches have written their own books about these subjects notably including Pat Riley and Phil Jackson of the NBA Brendan sir former assistant head coach with Chuck Daly at the Detroit Pistons and the Orlando Magic is a fan of psycho-cybernetics and in a video program about psycho-cybernetics explained that he used the principles in suggesting new mental pictures to players struggling with different aspects of the game entrepreneurs and Business Leaders consider Ray Kroc the milkshake machine salesman who looked at the McDonald Brothers little Hamburger Stand and envisioned something amazing long after McDonald's hamburger shops were everywhere Mr Croc was asked in an interview how he felt about the tendency of competitive fast food restaurant chains to copy every new McDonald's idea product or promotion so quickly he replied we can invent faster than they can copy he was making a statement of self-image an affirmation of confidence initiative and Power in regard to a set of circumstances that many people would complain about and feel threatened by every business Visionary and leader of note has a similar Bring It On approach which from a psycho-cybernetic standpoint I admire let me tell you one quick story about a remarkable young business Leader by the name of Joe polish Joe is a carpet cleaner by trade who discovered certain effective albeit unorthodox methods for marketing and promoting such a business and use that as a springboard to develop a company that teaches and assists other carpet cleaners with their marketing at last count Joe's organization had nearly four thousand carpet cleaners as members from all over the United States and several foreign countries with combined sales of over 800 million dollars in cleaning services and products each year several hundred of those carpet cleaning business owners belong to Joe's telephone coaching program too Joe is a young man who has risen above a difficult family background without a college education and with no formal education in marketing to become the leading figure in his entire industry in fact he was named the person of the year by the number one industry trade Journal Joe says that he has worn out his copy of psycho cybernetics and recommends it to all his members and has even held a special seminar for his members built around psycho cybernetics with the editor of this book as a guest speaker the reason as Joe says all the business and marketing knowledge and technical skills in the world coupled with the best products prices and positioning are of far less value than they should be if the person who possesses them lacks the inner confidence needed to use them one of the things we teach is how to sell at prices higher than your competition and that has more to do with the individual business owner's self-image than it does with anything else unquote sales professionals Bill Brooks a founding member of the board of the psycho-cybernetics foundation has devised complex and sophisticated sales training systems for sales forces of some of America's biggest corporations his high impact sales system has been the subject of several very fine books including you're working too hard to make a living bill has succeeded personally as a Salesman and assisted thousands of others and while he is very focused on methodology he freely admits that the most sophisticated perfectly engineered system for selling cannot produce results in the hands of salespersons attempting to function in conflict and combat with their own self-images Zig Ziglar is arguably America's most celebrated motivational speaker and sales trainer in his book secrets of closing the sale which has sold well over 250 000 copies zigg writes the salesman self-image has a direct bearing on his sales success when your self-image is solid you can go from one Prospect to the next regardless of the reception you get as a salesperson it will help you enormously to understand that nobody on the face of this Earth can make you feel inferior without your permission once you get your image right then your sales world and your personal world will improve Dr Maxwell maltz author of psycho-cybernetics said the purpose of all Psychotherapy is to build the self-esteem that is the image of the patient your self-image is important so build a good one and you'll be able to build your sales career bigger better and faster unquote in this program you'll be privy to a handful of case histories involving sales professionals including the man with the two big nose and two big ears you will see that psycho-cybernetics crosses all occupational vocational educational or situational borders to work almost as reliably and consistently as gravity chapter 16 of this program features five amazing stories of individuals successes with psycho-cybernetics but what about genetics or natural Talent the argument of genetic predestination is utterly without Merit bunk in his outstanding book profiles of power and success Dr Jean lundrum provides in-depth analytical psychological profiles of 14 extraordinarily successful Visionaries and Achievers and flatly concludes that nurture not nature is the basis for success quote based on the family histories of these Visionaries Heritage had little or nothing to do with their success unquote instead he identifies certain characteristics with which he says they were programmed and they programmed themselves if genetic Talent were the barrier to success you cannot overcome or the ultimate secret behind achievement you would expect Walt Disney to have come from breeding stock evidencing extraordinary creativity and entrepreneurial accomplishment Walt Disney's father failed in five different businesses including a Florida Motel Master architect Frank Lloyd writes sire was an unemployed itinerant minister so inept he never kept any one job for more than a year Picasso's father was a mediocre artist at best no this isn't like breeding horses or show dogs evidence abounds that the conditioned program nurtured and directed self-image controls success not a genetic transfer over which you have no control you cannot select your parents you can select your self-image with psycho-cybernetics someone can argue this by pointing a finger at Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods while it is true they each exhibit exceptional raw physical talent that Talent alone would surely have gone to waste without the healthy self-image conditioned through a variety of influences not the least of which were authoritative sources such as Tiger's father or Michael's college coach Dean Smith and for every Jordan I can point my finger to an athlete of admittedly average physical Talent who Rises to the very top of his sport in baseball Ty Cobb and Pete Rose come to mind in football Fran Tarkenton or Doug Flutie both erroneously judged by the experts as too small to play the game are examples do not tolerate for a minute the idea that you are prohibited from any achievement by the absence of inborn Talent OR ability This Is A Lie of the grandest order an excuse of the saddest kind here's a prescription to help you along begin collecting scrapbooks on Persons past or present who exhibit both the qualities of character and personality and the life achievements to which you aspire select a different representative for each characteristic each aspiration become the reigning expert in these people's lives by collecting and reading their biographies autobiographies articles about them speeches made by them others analyzes of them that can be found in books like Dr lundrums Napoleon Hills and others discover the almost Universal absence of predisposition from genetics and often from the early environment and upbringing for the personality they developed and the accomplishments of their lives ferret out the forces thoughts and influences that actually shaped them by making this your hobby you will feed your imagination with valuable raw material that it can utilize to build the stronger more goal-oriented self-image you require to achieve your life aspirations in Mind Over golf Richard Coop tells golfers if you've attended a PGA or LPGA Tour event and found your own swing seemed to contain a little more Rhythm and Tempo than usual the next time you played it was no accident by watching the tour professionals swing their clubs with proper Pace you were able to absorb some of their talent and it showed in your game this is common for many golfers of all Talent levels even the most disjointed golfer begins to look rhythmical after observing smooth swingers such as Marco Mira Gene littler or Nancy Lopez the problem is that the Newfound Tempo doesn't last very long unless you're able to reinforce your visualization by regularly watching the tour Pros unquote this is exactly what I'm suggesting you do watch the people who best exemplify the characteristics you wish to strengthen and who are living as you aspire to live by studying them through every media and Source available try this mental training exercise someone to thoroughly study for a month to get so intimately familiar with the way he or she thinks that you can sit down and have a conversation with the person and solicit advice and coaching in your imagination chapter 2. how to awaken the automatic success mechanism within you Henry David Thoreau wrote if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and Endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours when I first began getting serious about pondering the inner workings of the mind I was amused to read an article by r.w Gerard in the June 1946 issue of scientific monthly on the brain and Imagination in which he stated that it was sad but true that most of our understanding of the mind would remain as valid and useful if for all we knew the cranium were stuffed with cotton wadding since then of course understanding of how the human mind operates has expanded exponentially much of the Thanks goes to the computer industry when humans set out to build an electronic brain and to construct goal-striving mechanisms within computers we had to discover and utilize certain basic principles having discovered them scientists began to ask themselves could this be the way the human brain works also could it be that in making man our creator had provided us with a Servo mechanism more marvelous and wonderful than any electronic brain or guidance system ever dreamed of by man but operating according to the basic principles in the opinion of famous cybernetic scientists like Dr Norbert Weiner and Dr John Von Neumann and others the answer was an unqualified yes your built-in guidance system every living thing has a built-in guidance system or goal striving device put there by its creator to help it achieve its goal which is in Broad terms to live in the simpler forms of life the goal to live simply means physical survival for both the individual and the species the built-in mechanism in animals is limited to finding food and shelter avoiding or overcoming enemies and Hazards and procreating to ensure the survival of the species in humans the goal to live means more than mere survival humans have certain emotional and spiritual needs that animals do not have consequently for them to live encompasses More Than Physical survival and procreation of the species it requires certain emotional and spiritual satisfactions as well the built-in human success mechanism is also much broader in scope than in animals in addition to avoiding or overcoming danger and the sexual Instinct that helps keep the race alive the human success mechanism can help him get answers to problems invent write poetry run a business sell merchandise explore New Horizons in science attain more peace of mind develop a better personality or achieve success in any other activity that is intimately tied into living or that makes for a fuller life it is important to accept that you possess just such a success mechanism the success Instinct in action a squirrel does not have to be taught how to gather nuts nor does it need to learn that it should store them for winter a squirrel born in the spring has never experienced winter yet in the fall of the year it can be observed busily storing nuts to be eaten during the winter months when there will be no food to be gathered a bird does not need to take lessons in nest building nor does it need to take courses in navigation yet Birds navigate thousands of miles sometimes over Open Sea they have no newspapers or TV to give them weather reports no books written by Explorer or Pioneer Birds to map out for them the warm areas of the Earth nonetheless the bird knows when cold weather is imminent and the exact location of a warm climate even though it may be thousands of miles away in attempting to explain such things we usually say that animals have certain instincts to guide them analyze all such instincts and you will find they assist the animal to successfully cope with its environment in short animals have a success instinct we often Overlook the fact that humans also have a success Instinct much more marvelous and much more complex than that of any animal our creator did not shortchange us on the other hand we are especially blessed in this regard animals cannot select their goals their goals self-preservation and procreation are pre-set so to speak and their success mechanism is limited to these built-in goal images which we call instincts humans on the other hand have something animals haven't creative imagination thus humans of all creatures are more than creatures they are also creators with imagination they can formulate a variety of goals they alone can direct their success mechanism by the use of imagination or Imaging ability you might say that animals are hardwired and that is that but we operate with software and can continually alter our output thus a formula emerges you as creator of your own life experiences one conscious mind decision plus two imagination that communicates a goal or Target to three your self-image equals four work order instructions to your Servo mechanism we often think of creative imagination as applicable only to poets inventors and the like but imagination is creative in everything we do although they did not understand why or how imagination sets our creative mechanism into action serious thinkers of all ages as well as hard-headed practical men have recognized the fact and made use of it imagination rules the world said Napoleon Doug old Stewart the famous Scottish philosopher said the faculty of imagination is the great spring of human activity and the principal source of human Improvement destroy this faculty and the condition of man will become as stationary as that of the brutes unquote you can imagine your future said hard-nosed industrialist Henry J Kaiser who attributed much of his success in business to the constructive positive use of creative imagination contemporary Business Leaders also acknowledge the importance and power of imagination consider the role of imagination in the remarkable rise of Starbucks coffee in his book pour your heart into it how Starbucks built a company one cup at a time its CEO Howard Schultz talks of strolling the streets of Italian towns and having his imagination captured by the little sidewalk coffee or espresso bars packed with Happy People infused with energy even Romance Schultz saw an opportunity as he puts it to reinvent a routine company coffee he noted if it captures your imagination it will Captivate others the Starbucks shop you visit today is the result of Schultz's imaginative efforts to replicate the Romantic happy experience of the Italians and their espresso bars in your downtown or your shopping center Mr Schultz writes every Starbucks store is carefully designed to enhance the quality of everything the customers see touch hear smell or taste what's the first thing you notice when you approach a Starbucks store almost always it's the aroma aroma triggers memories more strongly than any of the other senses and it obviously plays a major role in attracting people to our stores keeping that coffee Aroma pure is no easy task unquote he goes on to describe how they banned smoking before it became the norm and do not sell certain foods in deference to the purity of the aroma how they carefully select only certain kinds of background music over which the hiss of the espresso machine and the swish of the metal scoop shoveling out fresh beans can be heard and on and on such intense attention to every minute detail requires imagination Howard Schultz's creation of the Starbucks experience Echoes the phenomenal imagination to reality leadership of Walt Disney pick just about any Disney attraction and look closely and you will notice amazing attention to detail born of the imagination former Disney Confidant and creative thinking consultant to companies like Apple computer and GE Mike Vance gives us this insight into the creation of the Blue Bayou Restaurant inside Disneyland then replicated at Disney World in his book think outside the box quote if you were designing a restaurant with a New Orleans theme the Blue Bayou Restaurant what would you picture in your mind the Louisiana Bayou Country shadowy swamps and what else no shadowy mysterious swamp is complete without fireflies darting about what about the distinctive Aromas lingering in the air of old New Orleans roasting coffee with chicory adulterating The Brew adds to the unmistakable Ambience of the French Quarter The Chicory Aroma of fresh coffee was circulated through the restaurant's air conditioning system add the strains of that Dixieland band in the background combined with the distinctive sounds of crickets chirping and alone banjo picking out a lazy melody in the distance unquote Mike notes that you may not identify each of these and other details but that combined they transport you to a different time and place virtually every person who visits Disneyland or Disney World once as a child or adult returns more than once a hundred percent retention of customers it is no happy accident it is Imagination power put to the most practical abuses for corporate profit of course many people waste much of their imagination power frittering it away on aimless daydreaming and fantasy with no real appreciation for what it might do if applied purposefully the Sun's light diffused is a gentle warmth directed through a magnifying glass in a certain way it is incendiary the imagination aimless May provide Pleasant entertainment applied purposefully it can effectively program your self-image and in turn your automatic success mechanism to realize whatever goals you choose how your automatic success mechanism works you are not a machine not a computer but in a very real sense you have an awesomely powerful computer-like success machine at your disposal your physical brain and nervous system make up a Servo mechanism that you use and that operates very much like a computer a mechanical goal-seeking device your brain and nervous system constitute a goal striving mechanism that operates automatically to achieve a certain goal very much as a self-aiming torpedo or missile seeks out its Target and steers its way to it your built-in Servo mechanism functions both as a guidance system to automatically steer you in the right direction to achieve certain goals or to make correct responses to environment and also as an electronic brain which can function automatically to solve problems give you needed answers and provide new ideas or inspirations the word cybernetics comes from a Greek word meaning literally the steersman Servo mechanisms are so constructed that they automatically steer their way to a goal Target or answer in 1948 the physicist Dr Norbert weiner began using cybernetics to denote the field of study of control and communication in animals humans and machines in Psycho cybernetics we are learning to more effectively communicate with and through the self-image so as to better control the servo mechanism Within your Servo mechanism is capable of being an automatic success mechanism or an automatic failure mechanism that depends on what marching orders or programming it gets through your self-image when we conceive of the human brain and nervous system as a form of Servo mechanism operating in accordance with cybernetic principles we gain a new insight into the why and wherefore of human behavior I chose to call this New Concept psycho cybernetics the principles of cybernetics as applied to the human brain I must repeat psycho-cybernetics does not say that a human being is a computer rather it says that we have a computer that we use let us examine some of the similarities between mechanical servo mechanisms such as computers and the human brain understanding the two general types of Servo mechanisms Servo mechanisms are divided into two general types one where the target goal or answer is known and the objective is to reach it or accomplish it two where the Target or answer is not known and the objective is to discover or locate it the human brain and nervous system operate in both ways an example of the first type is the self-guided torpedo or the interceptor missile the Target or goal is known an enemy ship or plane the objective is to reach it such machines must know the target they are shooting for they must have some sort of propulsion system that propels them forward in the general direction of the target they must be equipped with sense organs radar sonar heat preceptors Etc which bring information from the target these sense organs keep the machine informed when it is on the correct course positive feedback and when it commits an error and gets off course negative feedback the machine does not react or respond to positive feedback it is doing the correct thing already and just keeps on doing what it is doing there must be a corrective device however that responds to negative feedback when negative feedback informs the mechanism that it is off the beam for example too far to the right the corrective mechanism automatically causes the router to move so that it will steer the machine back to the left if it over corrects and heads too far to the left this mistake is made known through negative feedback and the corrective device moves the rudder so it steers the machine back to the right the torpedo accomplishes its goal by going forward making errors and continually correcting them by a series of zigzags it literally gropes its way to the goal Dr Norbert weiner who pioneered the development of goal-seeking mechanisms in World War II believes that something very similar to the foregoing happens in the human nervous system whenever you perform any purposeful activity even in such a simple goal-seeking situation as picking up a pencil from a table we are able to accomplish the goal of picking up the pencil because of an automatic mechanism not by will or conscious thinking alone all that the conscious thought does is to select the goal trigger it into action by desire and feed information to the automatic mechanism so that your hand continually corrects its course in the first place said Dr Weiner only an anatomist would know all the muscles involved in picking up the pencil and if you knew you would not consciously say to yourself I must contract my shoulder muscles to elevate my arm now I must contract my triceps to extend my arm Etc you just go ahead and pick up the pencil and are not conscious of issuing orders to individual muscles nor of computing just how much contraction is needed when you select the goal and Trigger it into action an automatic mechanism takes over first of all you have picked up a pencil or performed similar movements before your automatic mechanism has learned something of the correct response needed next your automatic mechanism uses feedback data furnished to the brain by your eyes which tell it the degree to which the pencil is not picked up this feedback data enables the automatic mechanism to continually correct the motion of your hand until it is steered to the pencil picking up a pencil probably isn't very exciting but it should be because the little process just described that we use to pick up a pencil or perform any number of other routine unchallenging tasks is exactly the same process we can use to achieve much more complex and seemingly challenging goals what's exciting is that you own the process and use it constantly no new goal achieving capabilities are needed and none are lacking in other words if you can pick up a pencil you can speak confidently and persuasively to large audiences or write compelling advertising or start a business or play golf or you name it you already own the process in a baby just learning to use its muscles the correction of the hand in reaching for a rattle is very obvious the baby has little stored information to draw upon it's hand zigzags back and forth and gropes obviously as it reaches as learning takes place correction becomes more and more refined we see this in a person just learning to drive a car who over corrects and zigzags back and forth across the street once however a correct or successful response has been accomplished it is remembered for future use the automatic mechanism then duplicates this successful response on future trials it has learned how to respond successfully it remembers its successes forgets its failures and repeats the successful action as a habit this is why the most Adept successful Achievers in different fields appear to be succeeding so effortlessly top performing sales professionals respond to prospects objections or concerns without missing a beat say just the right thing at just the right time their responses have become habits instinctive in a way you already have reached this point with any number of things you do well this fact that you have done so guarantees that you can do so again for any other purpose you choose how your brain finds answers to problems let's return to our examination of the process now let us suppose that the room is dark so that you cannot see the pencil you know or hope there's a pencil on the table along with a variety of other objects instinctively your hand begins to grow back and forth performing zigzag motions or scanning rejecting one object after another until a pencil is found and recognized this is an example of the second type of Servo mechanism recalling a name temporarily forgotten is another example a scanner in your brain roams through your stored memories until the correct name is recognized an electronic brain solves problems in much the same way first a great deal of data must be fed into the machine this stored or recorded information is the machine's memory a problem is posed to the machine it scans back through its memory until it locates the only answer that is consistent with and meets all the conditions of the problem problem and answer together constitute a whole situation or structure when part of the situation or structure the problem is given to the machine it locates the only missing parts or the right size brick so to speak to complete the structure you are familiar with this in search engines on the internet and search functions within computer software the earliest versions of these in computers were relatively slow awkward and inefficient today's versions are lightning fast by comparison but still very limited in scope and power if compared to the equivalent search engine included in your own mind people who become very committed practitioners of psycho-cybernetics get very very good at using their internal search engines many writers and speakers for example tell me of giving their subconscious instructions about their need for a good anecdote story joke or forgotten details of a story for a writing task or speech then taking a nap to awake with exactly the material they wanted on their minds a look at the automatic mechanism in action we Marvel at the awesomeness of Interceptor missiles that can compute in a Flash the point of interception of another missile and be there at the correct instant to make contact the smart bombs we witnessed during the Desert Storm Conflict utilized technology of this kind today's technology is far superior to what guided Torpedoes in World War II submarines and it is arguably possible for the so-called Star Wars defense system advocated by President Reagan to eventually become a reality yet are we not witnessing something just as amazing each time we see a center fielder catch a fly ball to compute where the ball will fall or where the point of interception will be he must take into account the speed of the ball its curvature of fall its direction windage initial velocity and the rate of progressive decrease in velocity he must compute just how fast he must run and in what direction in order to arrive at the point of interception at the same time or before the ball does the center fielder doesn't even think about this his built-in goal striving mechanism computes it for him from data that he feeds it through his eyes and ears the computer in his brain takes this information Compares it with stored data memories of other successes and failures in Catching fly balls all necessary computations are made in a Flash and orders are issued to his leg muscles and he just runs science can build the computer but not the operator Dr Weiner said that at no time in the foreseeable future will scientists be able to construct an electronic brain anywhere near comparable to the human brain he says I think that our Gadget conscious public has shown an unawareness of the special advantages and special disadvantages of electronic Machinery as compared with the human brain the number of switching devices in the human brain vastly exceeds the number in any Computing machine yet developed or even thought of for design in the near future unquote his prophecy remains true as of this writing to be sure many miraculous computer type machines and gadgets have come into our hands since Dr Weiner first tinkered with cybernetics what once consumed rooms of space now fits in a hard drive that sits on your desktop still nothing compares with your system of imagination self-image Servo mechanism but even should such a computer be built it would lack a programmer a computer cannot pose problems to itself it has no imagination and cannot set goals for itself it cannot determine which goals are worthwhile and which are not it has no emotions it cannot feel it works only on new data fed to it by an operator by feedback data it secures from its own sense organs and from information previously stored are you connected to an infinite Storehouse of ideas knowledge and Power many great thinkers of all ages have believed that a human being's stored information is not limited to personal memories of past experiences and learned facts there is one mind common to all individual men said Emerson who compared our individual Minds to the inlets in an ocean of universal mind Thomas Edison believed that he got some of his ideas from a source outside himself once when complemented for a creative idea he disclaimed credit saying that ideas are in the air and if he had not discovered it someone else would have Dr JB Ryan once head of Duke University's parapsychology laboratory has proved experimentally that people have access to knowledge facts and ideas other than their own individual memories or stored information from learning or experience telepathy Clairvoyance and precognition have been established by countless scientific laboratory experiments our government the Russian government and other nations have quietly invested huge sums and many years of ongoing Research into such matters in recent years people have brought these subjects to the public more as entertainment than science such as Yuri Geller or the amazing crescan while much of what passes for telepathy in magicians and Mentalist stage performances is nothing but trickery both Geller and Kreskin have had their abilities documented in laboratory settings Kreskin himself insists that everybody possesses the same abilities as he does the difference is in development and Youth I am admittedly more interested in the thinking of a Thomas Edison than a Kreskin on this but if you look at the entire span of research and relevant writings from the 1920s to the present you'll find one common thread of great potential use to you and directly related to psycho-cybernetics you can give problem solving or idea getting tasks to your Servo mechanism send it off on a search while you do other things even while you sleep and have it return with useful material you didn't know you knew and might never have obtained through conscious thought or worry when you set out to do creative work whether in selling managing a business writing a sonnet improving human relations or whatever you begin with a goal in mind an end to be achieved a Target answer which although perhaps somewhat vague will be recognized when achieved if you really mean business have an intense desire and begin to think intensely about all angles of the problem your creative mechanism goes to work and the scanner we spoke of earlier scans back through stored information or groups its way to an answer it selects an idea here a fact there a series of former experiences and relates them or ties them together into a meaningful whole that will fill out the incomplete portion of your situation complete your equation or solve your problem when the solution is served up to your Consciousness often at an unguarded moment when you are thinking of something else or perhaps even as a dream while your Consciousness is asleep something clicks and you at once recognize this as the answer you have been searching for in this process does your creative mechanism also have access to stored information in a universal mind numerous experiences of creative workers would seem to indicate that it does how else for example can you explain the experience of Louis Agassi told by his wife he had been striving to decipher the somewhat obscure impression of a fossil fish on the stone slab in which it was preserved weary and perplexed he put his work aside at last and tried to dismiss it from his mind shortly after he waked one night persuaded that while asleep he had seen his fish with all the missing features perfectly restored he went early to the Jardin De plant thinking that on looking Anew at the impression he would see something to put him on the track of his vision in vain the Blurred record was as blank as ever the next night he saw the fish again but when he waked it disappeared from his memory as before hoping the same experience might be repeated on the third night he placed a pencil and paper beside his bed before going to sleep towards morning the fish reappeared in his dream confusedly at first but at last with such distinctness that he no longer had any doubt as to its Zoological characteristics still half-dreaming in perfect Darkness he traced these characters on the sheet of paper at the bedside in the morning he was surprised to see in his nocturnal sketch features which he thought it impossible the fossil itself would reveal he hastened to the Jordan de plant and with his drawing as a guide succeeded in chiseling away the surface of the stone under which portions of the fish proved to be hidden when holy exposed the fossil corresponded with his dream and his drawing and he succeeded in classifying it with ease you're no Einstein sometimes a parent or teacher frustrated at a Young Person's seeming inability to grasp mathematics will utter the critical disparaging negative affirmation he's no Einstein walking away in disappointment and frustration well it turns out that Einstein was no Einstein either in the book Sparks of Genius researchers and authors Robert and Michelle root Bernstein disclose that Einstein's peers knew that Einstein was relatively weak in mathematics often needing the assistance of mathematicians to do the detail work to push his ideas forward Einstein wrote to one such person do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics I can assure you that mine are far greater much of Einstein's celebrated success came about in his imagination in very unscience-like ways he once described an experiment in which he imagined himself to be a photon moving at the speed of light imagined what he has a photon saw and felt then imagined himself as a second Photon pursuing the first what kind of scientific experimentation is this where is the Blackboard filled with chalky logarithms and formulas we typically associate with Einstein my own analysis of everything I've read about Albert Einstein is that he was a great practitioner of psycho-cybernetics he acted as if a theoretical idea was a factual conclusion then turned the figuring out over to his own Servo mechanism as well as to other worker bees I'm convinced he connected with intelligence outside the realm of his own stored data through his imagination he was a brilliant Target Setter his accomplishments stand as Testament to an individual's opportunity to rise above and beyond his or her stored knowledge education experience or skill through the power of imagination you can too so what exactly is psycho-cybernetics you might think of psycho-cybernetics as a collection of insights principles and practical methods that enable you to do all of the following one conduct an accurate inventory and Analysis of the contents of your self-image two identify erroneous and restrictive programming embedded in your self-image and systematically alter it to better suit your purposes three use your imagination to reprogram and manage your self-image four use your imagination in concert with your self-image to effectively communicate with your Servo mechanism so that it acts as an automatic success mechanism moving you steadily towards your goals including getting back on course when confronted with obstacles five effectively use your Servo mechanism as something like a giant search engine to provide precisely the idea information or solution you need for any particular purpose even reaching beyond your own stored data to obtain it in a way psycho-cybernetics is a communication system for effectively communicating with yourself get a new mental picture of yourself the unhappy failure type personality cannot develop a new self-image by pure willpower or by arbitrarily deciding to there must be some ground some justification some reason for deciding that the old picture of self is in error and that a new picture is appropriate you cannot merely imagine a new self-image unless you feel that it is based upon truth experience has shown that when people change their self-image they have the feeling that for one reason or another they see or realize the truth about themselves the truth in this chapter can set you free of an old inadequate self-image if you listen to it often think intently about the implications and Hammer home its truths to yourself in her book Revolution from within a book of self-esteem Gloria Steinem tells the story of the royal Knights of Spanish Harlem a prize-winning championship School chess club improbably made up of a dozen Tufts from Spanish Harlem these kids were hanging out on the street engaging in minor crime and violence one foot mired in delinquency experimenting with drugs most people who observed them quickly concluded they were useless hopeless dangerous very unlikely to achieve anything much Beyond a jail sentence and Unworthy of any investment but Bill Hall an ordinary school teacher somehow saw potential here that no one else could see and through the activity of a chess club he engineered an environment and a series of experiences that changed the way these kids saw themselves quite often a person voted unlikely to succeed by others and by him or herself fortunately encounters someone who sees a potential no one else sees believes in Him far more than he does in himself and literally directs a change in that person's self-image through a determined influence however there is no need to wait for someone else to do this for you you can do it for yourself with psycho cybernetics and as you'll discover in this program thousands have the fundamental message of psycho-cybernetics is that every human being has been literally engineered for success by the Creator every human being has access to a power greater than him or herself this means you if you were engineered for success and happiness then any old picture of yourself as Unworthy of happiness or inherently unable to excel in a certain aspect of life of a person who was meant to fail must be in error here's a prescription to help you along listen to this chapter at least three times per week for the first 21 days study it and digest it listen for examples in your experiences and in the experiences of your friends that illustrate the creative mechanism in action think about limiting ideas about yourself that may be held firmly in the self-image that may be the cause of effects you no longer desire try this mental training exercise memorize the following basic principles by which your success mechanism operates you do not need to be a computer genius or a neurophysicist to operate your own Servo mechanism any more than you have to be able to engineer an automobile in order to drive one or become an electrical engineer in order to turn on the light in your room you do need to be familiar with the following however because having memorized these points they will throw new light on what is to follow one aim your built-in success mechanism must have a goal or Target this goal or Target must be conceived of as already in existence now either in actual or potential form it operates either one by steering you to a goal already in existence or two by discovering something already in existence two Trust the automatic mechanism is teleological that is it operates on or must be oriented to end results or goals do not be discouraged because the means may not be apparent it is the function of the automatic mechanism to supply the means when you supply the goal think in terms of the end result and the means will often take care of themselves three relax do not be afraid of making mistakes or of temporary failures all Servo mechanisms achieve a goal by negative feedback or by going forward making mistakes and immediately correcting course automatic course correction is one of the many benefits of psycho-cybernetics 4. learn skill learning of any kind is accomplished by trial and error mentally correcting your aim after an error until you achieve a successful motion movement or performance after that further learning and continued success are accomplished by forgetting the past errors and remembering the successful response so that it can be imitated five do you must learn to trust your creative mechanism to do its work and not jam it by becoming too concerned or too anxious as to whether it will work or not or by attempting to force it by too much conscious effort you must let it work rather than make it work this trust is necessary because your creative mechanism operates below the level of Consciousness and you cannot know what is going on beneath the surface moreover its nature is to operate spontaneously according to the present need therefore you have no guarantees in advance it comes into operation as you act and as you place a demand on it by your actions you must not wait to act until you have proof you must act as if it is there and it will come through do the thing and you will have the power said Emerson with all this in mind select a Target whether it is that thinner healthier you a more confident persuasive you a you free of constant worry a sales professional free of procrastination who begins each day with an organized to-do list and ends each day with it completed or a golfer who hits perfectly straight drives devote just 10 or 15 minutes every day to taking that mental picture from a vague idea to a good sketch to a finely detailed fully fleshed out and colored Vision that occurs to you exactly the same way whenever called upon if it helps to write out descriptions or to draw illustrations on paper or to collect relevant pictures from magazines do so just stick to 10 or 15 minute sessions when you close your eyes to the outer world and open them only to this picture's continuing development try this little experiment for 21 days and see what happens the strengthened and empowered automatic success mechanism you accelerate personal development and goal achievement by providing your ASM with a clear precisely detailed vividly imagined and perfectly communicated Target as the target gets clearer the ASM responds by doing its job more efficiently chapter 3 imagination the ignition key to your automatic success mechanism industrialist Charles M Schwab wrote to carry on a successful business a man must have imagination he must see things as in a vision a dream of the whole thing imagination plays a far more important role in our lives than most of us realize I've seen this demonstrated many times in my practice a particularly memorable instance concerned a patient who was literally forced to visit my office by his family he was a man of about 40 unmarried who held down a routine job during the day and kept to himself in his apartment when the work day was over never going anywhere never doing anything he'd had many such jobs and never seemed able to stay with any of them for any great length of time his problem was that he had a rather large nose and ears that protruded a little more than normal he considered himself ugly and funny looking he imagined that the people he came into contact with during the day were laughing at him and talking about him behind his back because he was so odd his imaginings grew so strong that he actually feared going out into the business world and moving among people he hardly felt safe even in his own home the poor man even imagined that his family was ashamed of him because he was peculiar looking not like other people actually his facial deficiencies were not serious his nose was of the classical Roman type and his ears though somewhat large attracted no more attention than those of thousands of people with similar ears in desperation his family brought him to see me to see if I could help him I saw that he did not need surgery only an understanding of the fact that his imagination had brought such Havoc with his self-image that he had lost sight of the truth he was not really ugly people did not consider him odd and laugh at him because of his appearance his imagination alone was responsible for his misery his imagination had set up an automatic negative failure mechanism within him and it was operating full blast to his extreme misfortune fortunately after several sessions with him and with the help of his family he was able gradually to realize that the power of his own imagination was responsible for his plight and he succeeded in building up a true self-image and achieving the confidence he needed by applying creative imagination rather than destructive imagination you might say he needed emotional surgery not physical surgery with an actual scalpel in the latter years of my surgical practice I became quite skilled at talking myself out of business this is an analogy for the experiences of thousands of people quite possibly in one way or another including you no you may not feel ashamed of your nose or ears or any other physical feature and you may not be a recluse but many people believe there is something about them that causes others to look down on them to ridicule them behind their backs to reject them something that prevents them from progressing in certain ways one of the smartest most successful and prolific idea man I've ever known in the advertising field has had a lifelong pattern of rising to high income then suddenly experiencing circumstances that pull the rug out from under him so that he must rebuild from scratch his reputation and his finances one month he was living in a mansion the next in a motel he is admitted to me and to others that he has spent his entire life trying to escape the iron-fisted grip of what he calls his white trash ancestry and to paraphrase Al Pacino in one of The Godfather movies just as he gets out he is again pulled back of course this thing that keeps pulling him back does not exist in the physical world only inside his own self-image it's his ugly nose and big ears what's yours ironically even though his entire business is the imagination business he has yet to discover how to use his imagination as a scalpel in emotional surgery to rid his self-image of its big nose creative imagination is not something reserved for The Poets the philosophers the inventors it enters into our Every Act imagination sets the goal picture that our automatic mechanism works on WE act or fail to act not because of will as is so commonly believed but because of imagination this is the most important statement to be gleaned from this entire program human beings always act and feel and perform in accordance with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their environment you cannot long Escape or outperform that picture you can dissect it analyze it uncover what is in it that is not true about yourself and alter it you can modify it without archaeological examination of the past but you cannot Escape it you will always act and perform and experience appropriate results in accordance with what you imagine to be true about yourself and your environment this is a basic and fundamental law of mind it is the way we are built when we see this law of Mind graphically and dramatically demonstrated in a hypnotized subject we are prone to think that there is something occult or supernormal at work or to discredit it a simple stage illusion actually what we are witnessing often is the normal operating process of the human brain and nervous system for example if a good hypnotic subject is told that she is at the North Pole she will not only shiver and appear to be cold her body will react just as if she were cold and Goose pimples will develop the same phenomena have been demonstrated on Wide Awake college students by asking them to imagine that one hand is immersed in ice water thermometer readings show that the temperature drops in the treated hand tele-hypnotized subject that your finger is a red-hot poker and he will not only Grimace with pain at your touch but as cardiovascular and lymphatic systems will react just as if your finger were a red hot poker and produce inflammation and perhaps a blister on the skin in one demonstration when college students Wide Awake have been told to imagine that a spot on their foreheads was hot temperature readings documented an actual increase in skin temperature these are Elementary experiments just one step away from the rather cruel but common children's game the practical joke played at school and sometimes by adults at work in this prank a person is secretly targeted by the group then one person after another engages the Target in conversation asking aren't you feeling well Bob you look pretty white-faced Bob are you feeling all right soon poor Bob is in the restroom checking himself out in the mirror before long bob is feeling queasy and weak Bob may even actually become so sick he must lie down or go home your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real one your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you think or imagine to be true this phenomenon that can be produced as a practical joke or by a hypnotist on stage for entertainment is actually identical to or illustrative of the basic process that governs much of our behavior and that can be taken hold of and deliberately used to Advantage how the hypnotic power of negative imagination can be a fatal disease when I wrote my book for physicians in 1936 new faces new Futures about the impact of plastic surgery on personality I reprinted in it a newspaper article from a St Louis newspaper headlined inferiority complex caused by long nose drives college student to commit suicide this article reported the suicide of a 24 year old student of Washington University named Theodore Hoffman ironically the article reported that those who knew him considered him popular here is the text of this young man's suicide note quote to the world when I was a child other children abused and mistreated me because I was weaker and uglier than they I was a sensitive bashful boy and was teased because of my face and Long Nose the more they offended me the more they teased I became afraid of people I knew that many of them hated me for things that I was not responsible for my sentimental nature and my appearance I was unable to speak to anyone my confidence was gone a teacher spelled my name with two F's although it has only one yet I became so backward I was unable to correct her and therefore spelled it with two F's throughout my school career God forgive everyone for this I am afraid of the world but I'm not afraid to die unquote at the time a professor at the University judged this to be the most severe case of an inferiority complex ever known nonsense believe me this young man's desperation which first killed his self-image and then led him to take his own life mirrors the same desperation affecting thousands and thousands of people and missed entirely or underestimated in importance by the people around them in fact suicide among teenagers in recent years has reached epidemic proportions though rarely discussed in the media anorexia is a chilling demonstration of the hypnotic power of negative imagination in battling the inner dummy the authors David Weiner and Dr Gilbert hefter describe an encounter with a 15 year old girl Ellen shown on the CBS television program 48 hours in 1998. Ellen weighed only 82 pounds and looked like a sickly child wasting away but she was firmly convinced she was fat as a result she avoided meals refused to eat or would even Purge herself after eating in this child's hospital room the television reporter interviewing Ellen got her to stand in front of a full-length mirror and asked her if she saw how gaunt and weak she looked I think I look fat Ellen insisted the reporter then tried fact but you now weigh only 82 pounds do you think that that is a person who is fat Ellen sensibly replied no but then she immediately said that she was fat and would grow fatter if she ate so determined not to eat Ellen would pull out the intravenous feeding needles if not closely supervised for parents teachers counselors and coaches this should be a cautionary tale a vivid reminder of the need to be ever vigilant for some young person whose self-image is shrinking so dramatically that self-inflicted physical harm is likely to follow for all it is a vivid illustration of the incredible power of imagination a person can so magnify the importance of some flaw and of the world's response to the flaw with his own negative imagination that he commits suicide a person can similarly sow color her perceptions of her strengths and opportunities with her own positive imagination that she accomplishes the most amazing things The Secret of hypnotic power in the 1950s Dr Theodore xenophon Barber conducted extensive research into the phenomena of hypnosis both when he was associated with the psychology department of American University in Washington DC and also after becoming associated with the laboratory of social relations at Harvard writing in the January 1958 issue of science digest he said we found that hypnotic subjects are able to do surprising things only when convinced that the hypnotist's words are true statements when the hypnotist has guided the subject to the point where he is convinced that the hypnotist's words are true statements the subject then behaves differently because he thinks and believes differently the phenomena of hypnosis have always seemed mysterious because it has always been difficult to understand how belief can bring about such unusual behavior it always seemed as if there must be something more some unfathomable force or power at work however the plain truth is that when a subject is convinced that he is deaf he behaves as if he is deaf when he is convinced that he is insensitive to pain he can undergo surgery without anesthesia the mysterious force or power does not exist unquote note that his comments were published in 1958. today hypnosis as a tool of therapy is widely accepted and used for many hypnosis and self-hypnosis to facilitate weight loss makes the surgical Quick Fix of liposuction unnecessary A Perfect Analogy to my examples of emotional surgery versus actual surgery in these cases hypnosis is the scalpel in dentistry hypnosis is used to facilitate treatment of the phobic patient with virtually uncontrollable anxiety and in many instances proves to be a perfectly successful alternative to the problematic solution of anesthesia with regard to the links between childhood programming past experiences and peer programming on one hand and the imagination the self-image and the servo mechanism on the other my conclusion is that people are literally hypnotized by their own self-images in fact many people virtually Sleepwalk through their entire lives under unrecognized hypnotic suggestion in Quentin Reynolds book intuition your secret power a hypnotist is quoted as saying clients visit me hoping that I will put them in a trance and fix their lives in fact many of them live in a trance and need a dose of reality unquote if you are stuck in a dark elevator for a couple of frightening hours as a child you may still be fearful of elevators unable to get into an elevator 40 years later regardless of all the safety statistics factual information demonstration observation of thousands using elevators or even the daunting task of hiking up a dozen flights of stairs you are still in the hypnotic trance from 40 years ago still a little reflection will show why it is a very good thing for us that we do feel and act according to what we believe or imagine to be true all of this does not mean the system itself is bad it only requires learning how to better use the system truth determines action and behavior the human brain and nervous system are engineered to react automatically and appropriately to the problems and challenges in the environment for example A man does not need to stop and think that self-survival requires that he run if he meets a grizzly bear on a trail he does not need to decide to become afraid the fear response is both automatic and appropriate first it makes him want to flee the fear then triggers bodily mechanisms that soup up his muscles so that he can run faster than he has ever run before his heartbeat is quickened adrenaline a powerful muscle stimulant is poured into the bloodstream all bodily functions not necessary to running or shut down the stomach stops working and all available blood is sent to the muscles breathing is much faster and the oxygen supply to the muscles is increased many fold all of this of course is nothing new most of us learned this in high school what we have not been so quick to realize however is that the brain and nervous system that reacts automatically to environment is the same brain and nervous system that tells us what the environment is the reactions of the man meeting the bear are commonly thought of as due to emotion rather than to ideas yet it was an idea information received from the outside world and evaluated by the mind that sparked the so-called emotional reactions thus it was basically idea or belief that was the true causative agent rather than emotion which came as a result in short the man on the trail reacted to what he thought believed or imagined the environment to be the messages brought to us from the environment consist of nerve impulses from the various sense organs these nerve impulses are decoded interpreted and evaluated in the brain and made known to us in the form of ideas or mental images in the final analysis it is these mental images that we react to note that I've used the terms thought believed and imagined as synonymous in affecting your entire system they are the same you act and feel not according to what things are really like but according to the image your mind holds of what they are like you have certain mental images of yourself your world and the people around you and you behave as though these images were the truth the reality rather than the things they represent suppose for example that the man on the trail had not met a real bear but a movie actor dressed in a bear costume if he thought and imagined the actor to be a bear his emotional and nervous reactions would have been exactly the same or suppose he met a large Shaggy Dog which his fear-ridden imagination mistook for a bear again he would react automatically to what he believed to be true concerning himself and his environment it follows that if our ideas and mental images concerning ourselves are distorted or unrealistic then our reaction to our environment will likewise be inappropriate can these causative factors change certainly consider the child raised in an intentionally segregated environment by racists the child could be a white person in a family of white supremacists who devoutly believe that blacks are mud people evil and a threat to their well-being or the child could be black in a family with comparable hatred for whites either way a child is programmed with certain beliefs that will govern her behavior in Her Imagination she constructs certain truth that would be very difficult to modify as she matures however some people make 180 degree change in their beliefs and behavior at some point in their lives these days this has even become a popular staple of the confrontation style daytime TV talk shows how does a person change through life experience broader and more diverse than her family upbringing societal pressure being befriended by people of the race she was programmed to hate one way or another challenging what she believed to be true discovering it is based on illusion and replacing that truth with another truth now consider the child raised in a poor family made up of people who profoundly believe that their unhappy circumstances are the fault of evil rich people and a corrupt government who constantly program the child with class Warfare ideas and to insist that they just cannot get ahead no matter what they do this truth may very well block that person's academic achievement direct him away from college have him blindly follow his father to work in the factory or the coal mine well I show my age with coal mine I suppose yet even today the basic path of accepting poverty as fact is prevalent in many many people but how does one person rise out of such a background to become a highly successful entrepreneur for example through books he's exposed to people he sees on television the influence of a mentor life experiences one way or another challenging what he believed to be true discovering it is based on illusion and replacing that truth with another truth just as the Royal Knights of Spanish Harlem I mentioned earlier transformed from Street Tufts to chess champions from likely criminals to model citizens pursuing adult careers as doctors lawyers and business persons you can change from anything to anything by changing your self-image by providing it with new truth from fat and flabby to fit and strong from mousy and timid to assertive and confident from clumsy and awkward to capable and graceful new evidence actual experiential evidence and or vividly imagined synthetic evidence and or reinforcement from other authoritative influencers convinces the self-image in turn it relays the appropriate new directives to your Servo mechanism and a new truth exists a new reality occurs why not imagine yourself successful realizing that our actions feelings and behavior are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the lever that psychology has always needed for changing personality it opens a powerful psychological door to gaining skill success and happiness mental pictures offer us an opportunity to practice new traits and attitudes which otherwise we could not do this is possible because again your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and one that is vividly imagined if we picture ourselves performing in a certain manner it is nearly the same as the actual performance mental practice is as powerful as actual practice when I first made this assertion and when others began making it it was a radical idea that you could practice in your imagination and Achieve comparable results to actual physical practice today it is widely accepted having been proved by countless trials and experiments athletes of every stripe routinely rely on mental or imagination practice for example consider Dr Richard Coop's advice to Golfers as follows quote before you play any shot you need to have a mental picture of how you want the ball to react once you deliver the club head to the ball you need to have a definite positive visualization of what your shot will look like the picture should indicate the trajectory the direction the spot where you intend the ball to land and how far you want the ball to roll when it lands if the flight of a shot is difficult for you to picture try visualizing a strip of Highway that Curves in the manner you wish your ball to travel your options in this visualization are limited only by your imagination you might see the green as a pin cushion ready to accept your shot pick visual images that work for you visualization is one of the most individual aspects of golf psychology unquote Jack Nicklaus has said I never hit a golf shot without having a sharp picture of it in my head first I see where I want the ball to finish then I see it going there it's trajectory and Landing the next scene shows me making the swing that will turn the previous images into reality unquote take note of the Striking similarities between the Golden Bears description of what he actually does Dr Coop's instructions and the instructions in this program it is important to understand that imagination practice need not be restricted to your golf or tennis swing the same principles of mental practice apply to virtually anything including broader behaviors such as speaking up confidently and asserting your opinions in business meetings versus remaining intimidated and silent and regretting it later or directly asking prospects for orders rather than leaving sales presentations hanging with wimpy vague endings and so on I have developed a very specific regimen from mental or imagination practice using what I call the theater of the mind which I will get to later Dr Coop also goes on to describe virtually the same mental movies technique I first began teaching in the late 1950s and wrote about in the original version of this book Jack Nicklaus uses the word scene he is playing out his successful shot as a little mental movie literally stepping out of actual play and into the theater of the mind to watch the movie then stepping back out to experience the deja vu effect in a July 2000 article in Golf Magazine Jack Nicklaus said the more deeply you ingrain what I like to call my going to the movie's discipline the more effective you will become at hitting the shots you want to hit unquote in his four-step process in step four he even says select the club that the completed movie tells you is the right one remarkably Jack Nicklaus has found his way to virtually the same mental movies technique I prescribe even going so far as to turn the pesky details of correct Club selection over to his automatic success mechanism rather than attempting conscious choice I say remarkably because as far as I know Mr Nicholas has never read psycho-cybernetics although he has likely been influenced by the many other golfers and golf coaches who have however it's really not all that remarkable since it seems almost all Peak performers find their way to this technique one way or another in a few moments we'll talk more about the specifics of these mental movies let me first tell you about some of the scientific documentation that supports the entire idea of imagination practice in one of the first controlled experiments I read about psychologist R.A Vandal proved that mental practice in throwing darts at a Target wherein the person sits for a period each day in front of the Target and imagines throwing darts at it improves aim just as much as actually throwing darts research quarterly reported an experiment on the effects of mental practice on improving skill and sinking basketball free throws one group of students actually practiced throwing the ball every day for 20 days and were scored on the first and last days a second group was scored on the first and last days and engaged in no sort of practice in between a third group was scored on the first day then spent 20 minutes a day imagining that they were throwing the ball at the goal when they missed they would imagine that they corrected their aim accordingly the first group which actually practiced 20 minutes every day improved in scoring 24 percent the second group which had no sort of practice showed no improvement the third Group which practiced only in their imagination improved in scoring 23 percent this particular experiment has been widely reported and referenced and since repeated at many universities over the years of course none of this is infallible after all Shaquille O'Neal's problem with foul shots remains a mystery however while an inexact science the use of imagination practice is nevertheless an effective science a proven and practical means of improving skills or altering embedded truths in order to alter Behavior mental pictures are powerful medicine K Porter PhD and Judy Foster authors of the mental athlete inner training for Peak Performance provided an excellent detailed prescription for relieving pain and accelerating recovery from injury in an article in tennis World magazine they noted an important element of self-healing is a mental image that projects a positive future outcome this visualization stimulates your mind and body and creates an intention to heal through mental imagery it is possible to alter the body's autonomic physiological responses when you use imagination mental pictures and suggestion you can communicate with your body and make it respond unquote make no mistake this is medical scientific truth not mumbo jumbo if every Hospital patient and every person entering physical rehabilitation were given a copy of psycho-cybernetics they would be considerably better off keep this in mind if you ever have a loved one or friend in such circumstances this article is so revealing and useful we've posted more extensive excerpts at the psycho-cybernetics foundation's website www.cycle hyphen cybernetics.com should you care to read it or refer a friend to it you will also find other articles book reviews and book excerpts directly related to this program in a special section of this website mental pictures can help you sell at a higher level in his book how to make twenty five thousand dollars a year selling Charles B Roth told how a group of salespeople in Detroit who tried a new idea increased their sales 100 percent another group in New York increased their sales by 150 percent and individual sales people using the same idea had increased their sales up to 400 percent and what is this magic that accomplishes so much for salespeople the quote Mr Roth's book it is something called role playing and you should know about it because if you will let it it may help you to double your sales what is role-playing well it is simply imagining yourself in various sales situations then solving them in your mind until you know what to say and what to do whenever the situation comes up in real life the reason why it accomplishes so much is that selling is simply a matter of situations one is created every time you talk to a customer he says something or asks the question or raises an objection if you always know how to counter what he says or answer his question or handle the objection you make sales a role-playing salesman at night when he is alone will create these situations he will imagine the prospect throwing the widest kind of Curves at him then he will work out the best answer to them no matter what the situation is you can prepare for it beforehand by means of imagining yourself and your prospect face to face while he is raising objections and creating problems and you are handling them properly use Mental pictures to get a better job the late William Moulton Marston well-known psychologist recommended what he called rehearsal practice to men and women who came to him for help in job advancement if you have an important interview coming up such as making an application for a job his advice was plan for the interview in advance go over in your mind all the various questions that are likely to be asked think about the answers you're going to give then rehearse the interview in your mind even if none of the questions you have rehearsed come up the rehearsal practice will still work wonders it gives you confidence and even though real life has no set lines to be recited like a stage play rehearsal practice will help you to ad-lib and react spontaneously to whatever situation you find yourself in because you have practiced reacting spontaneously this should come as no surprise based on everything I just had to say about mental rehearsal for sales Professionals in a job interview you are selling yourself you are the product and its sales representative like The Negotiator you may even have the luxury of time several weeks maybe even several months to plan and prepare to search for a new or better position if so by all means use it to your advantage by using your imagination to construct and rehearse the perfect job interview so that when the actual interviews take place you'll be relaxed confident and comfortable a concert pianist practices in his head Arthur Schnabel the world famous concert pianist took lessons for only seven years he hated practice and seldom practice for any length of time at the actual piano keyboard when questioned about a small amount of practice as compared with other concert pianists he said I practice in my head CG cup of Holland a recognized Authority on teaching piano recommended that all pianists practice in their head a new composition he says should be first gone over in the mind it should be memorized and played in the mind before ever touching fingers to the keyboard practicing in the head has actually become the basis for quite a bit of modern piano instruction composer performer and instructor Patty Carlson achieved considerable Fame promoting her how to play piano overnight video program in which she teaches people how to feel the music rather than learning to read sheet music and engage in tedious practice imagination practice can lower your golf score golf has become an enormously popular Recreation and there's a long relationship between Golf and psycho cybernetics I've already mentioned the great Jack Nicholas's mental rehearsal as just one example Time Magazine reported that when Ben Hogan was playing in a tournament he mentally rehearsed each shot just before making it he made the shot perfectly in his imagination felt the club had striked the ball just as it should felt himself performing the perfect follow-through and then stepped up to the ball and depended on what he called muscle memory to carry out the shot just as he imagined it Ben Hogan was ahead of the curve of modern golf psychology which has become an industry unto itself and is largely based on visualization and relaxation techniques Alex Morrison perhaps the best known golf instructor in the world at the time I was writing the first edition of this book actually worked out a system of mental practice to improve your golf score while sitting in an easy chair and practicing mentally what he called the seven Morrison keys according to Morrison the mental side of golf represents 90 percent of the game the physical side eight percent and the mechanical side two percent in his book better golf without practice Morrison told how he taught Lou Lair to break 90 For the First Time with no actual practice whatsoever Morrison had Lara sit in an easy chair in his living room and relax while he demonstrated for him the correct swing and gave a brief lecture on the Morrison Keys Lair was instructed to engage in no actual practice on the links but instead spend five minutes each day relaxing in his easy chair visualizing himself attending to the Keys correctly Morrison goes on to report how several days later with no physical preparation whatever Lair joined his regular foursome and amazed them by shooting nine holes in an even par 36. the core of the Morrison system is you must have a clear mental picture of the correct thing before you can do it successfully Morrison by this method enabled many celebrities to chop as many as 10 to 12 Strokes off their scores clearly see the Target and let your automatic success mechanism take care of the details Johnny bulla a well-known professional golfer wrote an article in which he said that having a clear mental image of just where you wanted the ball to go and what you wanted it to do was more important than form in golf most of the pros said bulla have one or more serious flaws in their form yet they managed to shoot good golf it was bullet's theory that if you picture the end result see the ball going where you want it to go and have the confidence to know that it was going to do what you wanted your subconscious would take over and direct your muscles correctly if your grip was wrong and your stance not in the best form your subconscious would still take care of that by directing your muscles to do whatever was necessary to compensate for the error in form this describes the payoff of mastering these psycho-cybernetic techniques that you reach a point of efficiency where you can simply quickly hand a clear picture of the desired outcome over to your Servo mechanism and let it take care of the mechanical details of making that outcome take place golf is such an excellent laboratory for these techniques because unlike many other sports it is stripped down to pure competition with yourself Morrison's coaching of Lair exclusively with mental practice came many years before Tim Galway author of the inner game of tennis accepted the challenge of an experiment to see how much golf he could learn just by adapting the inner game that is mental skills he had developed in playing and coaching tennis he set the goal of breaking 80 while playing only once weekly receiving no technical instruction and otherwise relying on practice in his imagination in one year or less at that time he played only several times a year scoring between 95 and 105. his diary of that experiment is included in his book the inner game of golf his book is well worth reading whether you have any interest in golf or not as it is a thoroughly detailed case history in the Triumph of Mind Over mechanics or technical information actually the Triumph of psycho-cybernetics over the years I've had the pleasure of working with many top golfers and golf instructors although professional discretion requires me to maintain confidentiality for most of them some engineered Improvement in their performance with only this program and no other assistance from me here's one that is public knowledge in 1964 Dave Stockton was struggling to survive on the pro tour overall I was playing well but my putting was lousy Stockton told an LA Times Reporter my father a retired Pro insisted my putting problems were mental not physical and he gave me a copy of psycho-cybernetics to read I read it just one week before the PGA tournament then I went in knowing I was going to win Dave Stockton beat Arnold Palmer in that event and went on to enjoy a long and successful career in fact he became famous for his putting and 22 years later Dave won the 1996 U.S Senior Open the real secret of mental picturing successful men and women have since the beginning of time used mental pictures and rehearsal practice to achieve success Napoleon for example practiced soldiering in his imagination for many years before he ever went on an actual Battlefield Webb and Morgan in their book making the most of your life tell us that the notes Napoleon made from his readings during these years of study filled when printed 400 Pages he imagined himself as a commander and Drew maps on the island of Corsica showing where he would place his calculations with mathematical Precision unquote Conrad Hilton imagined himself operating a hotel long before he ever bought one as a boy he used to play that he was a hotel operator his earliest successes were in buying dilapidated Dowager properties and restoring their beauty rebirthing them as first-class properties he said that when he spotted such a property to acquire he ceased seeing its actual condition instead forming a vividly detailed collection of photographs in his mind of the hotel as it would appear after its makeover by seeing what would be he saw value invisible to others a strong mental picture can pull you towards success even when you have no logical argument for it Jane Savoy is one of the most respected horse riding coaches in America in 2000 she coached the U.S Olympic Equestrian Team competing in Sydney she describes an instance in which imagination power superseded probabilities quote take for example my experience at the screening trials for the North American championships in 1989. a whole bunch of facts that supported the improbability of my doing well at the screening trials I did have a top horse zapatero but the other facts were one zapatero was new to me and we had not had time to develop a solid relationship in real Communications two he was a young horse and not yet strong enough to do what was required these facts made it difficult to imagine the perfect test so I visualized the awards ceremony instead several times over the course of the day I would find a quiet spot close my eyes relax and visualize leading the Victory lap in the process I stopped thinking about the facts and thus prevented doubts and insecurities from creeping in when the results were posted zapatero and I were in fact there to lead the lap of Honor it sounds incredible and I in no way minimize the necessity for all the preparation and hard work involved but mentally zeroing in on desired results as if they were already in existence was a significant factor in our ultimate success it was important to focus on a positive outcome as a foregone conclusion rather than allow my rather vivid imagination to conjure up failure pictures my mind could then Supply the means to achieve my goal by helping me to ride skillfully and effectively unquote of course the skeptic would want to attribute this incident to coincidence or luck but Jane Savoy is a skilled practitioner of psycho-cybernetics with many evidentiary incidents to support her convictions in fact she has utilized psycho-cybernetics for many years as an instructor and coach of champion writers as noted most recently with the Olympic team even a single simple vividly imagined picture of successful achievement can be sufficient to block out doubts fears insecurities and worries and direct the success mechanism to the desired Target full-scale mental rehearsal is even more powerful there is simply no sensible case to be made anymore against incorporating mental rehearsal into your own daily regimen whether you are a pro or weekend athlete sales professional entrepreneur executive school teacher doctor whatever the evidence mandates that you learn to use this tool and do so regularly for a myriad of productive purposes it is fair to insist that if you are not utilizing this approach you are operating without benefit of one of the fundamental Universal most relied on psychological tools of success we know of it is much like being a carpenter choosing to operate without benefit of electric power and power tools you could but why why mental picturing is so powerful the science of cybernetics gives us insight into why mental picturing produces such amazing results I find that the more people understand about why this works so well the more likely they are to use it this automatic success mechanism within you a highly complex automatic goal-seeking machine that steers its way to a Target or goal by use of feedback data and stored information automatically correcting course when necessary can operate in only one way it must have a Target to shoot at as the famous golf instructor Alex Morrison said you must first clearly see a thing in your mind before you can do it as stated earlier this New Concept does not mean that you are a machine but that your physical brain and body functions as a machine that you operate when you see a thing clearly in your mind your creative success mechanism within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or willpower instead of trying hard by conscious effort to do the thing by Iron Jawed willpower all the while worrying and picturing to yourself all the things that are likely to go wrong you simply relax stop trying to do it by strain and effort picture the target you really want to hit and let your creative success mechanism take over you are not relieved thereafter from effort and work but your efforts are used to carry you forward toward your goal rather than in futile mental conflict which results when you want and try to do one thing the picture to yourself something else finding your best self this same creative mechanism within you can help you achieve your best possible self if you will form a picture in your imagination of the self you want to be and see yourself in the new role this is a necessary condition to personality transformation regardless of the method of therapy used somehow before you can change you must see yourself in a new role I myself have witnessed veritable miracles in personality transformation when an individual changes his or her self-image however today we are only beginning to Glimpse the potential creative power that stems from the human imagination particularly images concerning ourselves consider the implications for example in the following news release which appeared in 1958 under an Associated Press Dateline just imagine you're saying San Francisco some mental patients can improve their lot and perhaps shorten their stay in hospitals just by imagining they are normal to psychologists with the veterans administration at Los Angeles reported Dr Harry M Grayson and Dr Leonard B allenger told the American Psychological Association they tried the idea on 45 men hospitalized as neuropsychiatrics the patients first were given the usual personality test then they were asked flatly to take the test a second time and answer the questions as they would if they were a typical well-adjusted person on the outside three-fourths of them turned in improved test performances and some of the changes for the better were dramatic the psychologist reported unquote in order for these patients to answer the questions as a typical well-adjusted person would answer they had to imagine how a typical well-adjusted person would act they had to imagine themselves in the role of a well-adjusted person and this in itself was enough to cause them to begin acting like and feeling like a well-adjusted person I'm not certain what became of these good doctors and their Innovative experiments however we know that today every aspect of self-image psychology the very idea of self-image as steersmen and related techniques like act as if visualization are widely accepted and used in assisting the mentally ill the handicapped addict and incarcerated inmates involved with rehabilitation of course you are probably not clinically insane or addicted to chemicals but more likely a successful individual looking to psycho-cybernetics to help you do even better or to improve some aspect of your life the fact that these techniques have become part and parcel of most therapies and treatments for people with far more severe emotional and psychological difficulties than you face or can even imagine holds out for you the promise that they can be even more powerful fast acting and effective from your more favorable starting point discover the truth about yourself the aim of self-image psychology is not to create a fictitious self that is all-powerful arrogant egoistic all-important such an image is as inappropriate and unrealistic as the inferior image of self our aim is to find the real self however it is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us underrate ourselves shortchange ourselves set ourselves short actually there's no such thing as a superiority complex people who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority their Superior self is a fiction a cover-up to hide from themselves and others their deep down feelings of inferiority and insecurity how can you discover the truth about yourself how can you make a true evaluation it seems to me that here psychology must turn to religion the scriptures tell us that God created man a little lower than the angels and gave him Dominion that God created man in his own image if we really believe in an all-wise all-powerful all-loving Creator then we can draw some logical conclusions about what he has created man in the first place such an all-wise and all-powerful Creator would not turn out inferior products any more than a master painter would paint inferior canvases such a Creator would not deliberately engineer the product to fail any more than a manufacturer would deliberately build failure into an automobile the fundamentalists tell us that man's chief purpose and reason for living is to glorify God and the humanists tell us that man's primary purpose is to express himself fully however if we take the premise that God is a loving Creator and has the same interest in creation that an Earthly father has in his children then it seems to me that the fundamentalists and the humanists are saying the same thing what brings more Glory pride and satisfaction to a father than seeing his offspring do well succeed and express to the full their abilities and talents have you ever Sat by the father of a football star during a game Jesus expressed the same thought when he told us not to hide our light under a bushel but to let our light shine so that your father may be glorified I cannot believe that it brings any glory to God when his children go around with hang dog Expressions being miserable afraid to lift up their heads and be somebody over the years following the first publication of psycho-cybernetics I've been invited to speak at many different kinds of churches from Evangelical Christian to baptist to Episcopal to so-called new thought and science of mind I've had in-depth discussions about psycho-cybernetics with ministers priests a Zen monk agnostics even atheists I've had no difficulty navigating these different Waters and we have always found common ground in the basic premise of liberating individuals from their own inner mental often unconscious self-sabotage and the corollary premise of individuals being intended if not engineered to succeed not fail Dr Norman Vincent Peale had kind things to say about psycho cybernetics and he and I had several good discussions even though I have on occasion commented that simple positive thinking as most people think of it is too often destined to disappoint as it tries to force the issue from the circumference of our being rather than to reprogram at the core I don't think you can have a legitimate religious or spiritual disagreement with psycho-cybernetics the final word on imagination practice it doesn't matter what religious spiritual or philosophical background or Viewpoint you come from it doesn't matter how you describe it imagination practice visualization mental picturing or using my terminology theater of your mind what's important is that you do it if you will choose a Target to apply this to and give it a solid honest 21-day trial you will be so gratified with the results that you will certainly choose to continue using this tool for the rest of your life and benefit enormously by doing so just as countless athletes entertainers doctors lawyers Business Leaders and others have before you here are a few exercises to get you started try this mental training exercise your present self-image was built on your own imagination pictures of yourself in the past which grew out of interpretations and evaluations you placed on experience now you are to use the same method to build an adequate self-image that you previously used to build an inadequate one set aside a period of 30 minutes each day where you can be alone and undisturbed relax and make yourself as comfortable as possible now close your eyes and exercise your imagination many people find they get better results if they imagine themselves sitting before a large Motion Picture screen and imagine that they are seeing a motion picture of themselves the important thing is to make these pictures as Vivid and as detailed as possible you want your mental pictures to approximate actual experience as much as possible the way to do this is to pay attention to small details sights sounds objects in your imagined environment details of the imagined environment are all important in this exercise because for all practical purposes you are creating a practice experience and if the imagination is vivid enough and detailed enough your imagination practice is equivalent to an actual experience insofar as your nervous system is concerned the next important thing to remember is that during these 30 minutes you see yourself acting and reacting appropriately successfully ideally it doesn't matter how you acted yesterday you do not need to try to have faith you will act in the ideal way tomorrow your nervous system will take care of that in time if you continue to practice see yourself acting feeling being as you want to be do not say to yourself I'm going to act this way tomorrow just say to yourself I'm going to imagine myself acting this way now for 30 minutes today imagine how you would feel if you were already the sort of personality you want to be if you've been shy and timid see yourself moving among people with ease and Poise and feeling good because of it if you've been fearful and anxious in certain situations see yourself acting calmly and deliberately acting with confidence and courage and feeling expansive and confident because you are this exercise builds new memories or stored data in your midbrain and central nervous system it builds a new image of self after practicing it for a time you will be surprised to find yourself acting differently more or less automatically and spontaneously without trying this is as it should be you do not need to take thought or try or make an effort now in order to feel ineffective and act inadequately your present inadequate feeling and doing are automatic and spontaneous because of the memories real and imagined you have built into your automatic mechanism you will find it will work just as automatically upon positive thoughts and experiences as upon negative ones step one take pad and pen and write out a brief outline or description of the mental movie you intend to construct experiment with develop and view in the theater in the mind Step 2 set aside 30 minutes a day preferably at the same time each day to find a quiet private place relax close your eyes enter your theater and begin playing editing replaying your movie step 3 gradually massage your movies so that its star you performs exactly as you desire and achieves the experience and results you desire strive to arrive at this point within the first 10 days step four the remaining 11 days play and enjoy that movie repeatedly without change chapter 4. how to de-hypnotize yourself from false beliefs Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche wrote convictions are more dangerous enemies of Truth than lies a question that I have been asked many times about psycho-cybernetics equates as if imagination with fake it till you make it or Pure Fantasy nothing could be further from the truth fake it till you make it is external superficial and unrealistic it is sometimes taught to sales people to their financial and emotional detriment instead psycho-cybernetics including as if imagination practice is not about fraud but a search for hidden truth it is about uncovering your true self by creatively challenging ideas your self-image accepts as facts about you that may or may not have been valid once but need not be valid today or tomorrow this story from my original book illustrates this my friend Dr Alfred Adler had an experience with a young boy that illustrates just how powerful belief can be on behavior and ability he got off to a bad start in arithmetic and his teacher became convinced that he was dumb in mathematics the teacher then advised the parents of this fact and told them not to expect too much of him they too were convinced Adler passively accepted the evaluation they had placed on him and his grades in arithmetic proved they had been correct one day however he had a sudden flash of insight and thought he saw how to work a problem the teacher had put on the board and that none of the other peoples could work he announced as much to the teacher she and the whole class laughed whereupon he became indignant Strode to the Blackboard and worked the problem much to their amazement in doing so he realized that he could understand arithmetic he felt a new confidence in his ability and went on to become a good math student Dr Adler's experience was very much like that of a patient of mine some years back a business person who wanted to excel in public speaking because he had a vital message to impart about his outstanding success in a difficult field he had a good voice and an important topic but he was unable to get up in front of strangers and put his message over what held him back was his belief that he could not make a good talk and that he would fail to impress his audience simply because he did not have an imposing appearance he did not look like a successful executive this belief had burrowed so deeply into him that it threw up a roadblock every time he stood up before a group of people and began to talk he mistakenly concluded that if he could have an operation to improve his appearance he would then gain the confidence he needed an operation might have done the trick and it might not my experience with other patients had shown that physical change did not always guarantee personality change the solution in this man's case was found when he became convinced that his negative belief was preventing him from delivering the Vital Information he had he succeeded in replacing the negative belief with a positive belief that he had a message of extreme importance that he alone could deliver no matter what he looked like in due time he was one of the most sought after speakers in the business world the only change was in his belief and in his self-image now the point I want to make is this Adler had been hypnotized by a false belief about himself not figuratively but literally and actually hypnotized remember that we said in the last chapter that the power of hypnosis is the power of belief let me repeat here Dr Barber's explanation of the power of hypnosis quote we found that hypnotic subjects are able to do surprising things only when convinced that the hypnotist's words are true statements when the hypnotist has guided the subject to the point where he is convinced that the hypnotist's words are true statements the subject then behaves differently because he thinks and believes differently unquote the important thing for you to remember is that it does not matter in the least how you got the idea or where it came from you may never have met a professional hypnotist you may have never been formally hypnotized but if you've accepted an idea from yourself your teachers your parents friends advertisements or any other source and further if you are firmly convinced that idea is true it has the same power over you as the hypnotist's words have over the hypnotized subject scientific research has shown that Dr Adler's experience was not one in a million but typical of practically all students who make poor grades in chapter 1 we told of how Prescott Leckie had brought about almost miraculous Improvement in the grades of school children by showing them how to change their self-image after thousands of experiments and many years of research leki concluded that poor grades in school are in almost every case due in some degree to students self-conception and self-definition these students had been literally hypnotized by such ideas as I am dumb I am poor and arithmetic I am a naturally poor speller I do not have a mechanical type mind Etc with such self-definitions students had to make poor grades in order to be true to themselves unconsciously making poor grades became a moral issue with them it would be as wrong from their Viewpoint for them to make good grades as it would be to steal if they Define themselves as honest persons remember that this hypnotic programming gains permanence by coming from an authoritative Source through repetition and through intensity deprogramming and reprogramming requires you to provide these very same factors Dr Adler's childhood experience included authoritative sources his parents and teachers hearing it repeatedly and having it reinforced through intensely humiliating experience his Liberation began with another intense experience and emotional reaction which freed him and motivated him to question and challenge the belief the case of the hypnotized salesperson in the book secrets of successful selling John D Murphy tells how the famous sales expert Elmer wheeler used lecky's Theory to increase the earnings of a certain salesperson quote Elmer wheeler had been called in as a sales consultant to a certain firm the sales manager called his attention to a very remarkable case a certain salesman always managed to make almost exactly five thousand dollars per year regardless of the territory they assigned him or the commission he was paid because this salesman had done well in a rather small territory he'd been given a larger and much better one but the next year his commission amounted to almost the same amount as that he had made in the smaller one five thousand dollars the following year the company increased the commission paid to all salesmen but this salesman still managed to make only five thousand dollars he was then assigned one of the company's poorest territories and again made the usual five thousand dollars wheeler had a talk with this salesman and found that the trouble was not in the territory but in the salesman's own evaluation of himself he thought of himself as a five thousand dollar per year man and as long as he held that concept of himself outside conditions didn't seem to matter much when he was assigned to poor territory he worked hard to make that five thousand dollars when he was assigned a good territory he found all sorts of excuses to Coast when the five thousand dollars was in sight once when the goal had been reached he got sick and was unable to work anymore that year although doctors could find nothing wrong with him and he miraculously recovered by the first of the next year unquote obviously that's an old story dated by the five thousand dollar earnings number after it appeared in the first edition of this book I began to get letters about this story from sales manager after sales manager each citing a similar story they all would say that they had a person just like that in their organization with whom they were frustrated beyond all belief one sales manager wrote it is as if Howard has a preset income limit that he will not go past no matter the opportunities or circumstances and that is exactly right it is set deep in his self-image until it is reset he will manage to avoid going past it how a false belief age demand 20 years in my previous book adventures in staying young I gave a detailed case history of how Mr Russell aged 20 years almost overnight because of a false idea then regained his youth almost as quickly when he accepted the truth briefly the story is this I performed a cosmetic operation on Mr Russell's lower lip for a very modest fee under the condition that he must tell his girlfriend that the operation had cost him his entire lifetime savings his girlfriend had no objection to his spending money on her and she insisted that she loved him but explained she could never marry him because of his too large lower lip however when he told her this and proudly exhibited his new lower lip her reaction was just as I had expected but not as Mr Russell had anticipated she became hysterically angry called him a fool for having spent all his money and advised him in no uncertain terms that she had never loved him and never would she had merely played him for a sucker as long as he had the money to spend on her however she went further than I had counted on in her anger and disgust she also announced that she was placing a voodoo curse on him both Mr Russell and his girlfriend had been born on an island in the West Indies where Voodoo was practiced by the ignorant and superstitious his family had been rather well to do his background was one of culture and he was a college graduate When In the Heat of anger his girlfriend cursed him he felt vaguely uncomfortable but did not think too much about it however he remembered and wondered when a short time later he felt a strange small hard bump on the inside of his lip a friend who knew of the voodoo curse insisted that he see a Dr Smith who promptly assured him that the bump inside his mouth was the feared African bug which would slowly eat away all his vitality and strength Mr Russell began to worry and look for signs of waning strength he was not long in finding them he lost his appetite and his ability to sleep I learned all this from Mr Russell when he returned to my office several weeks after I had dismissed him my nurse didn't recognize him and no wonder the Mr Russell who had first called upon me had been a very impressive individual slightly too large lip and all he stood about six feet four a large man with the physique of an athlete and the bearing and manner that bespoke an inner dignity and gave him a Magnetic Personality the very pores of his skin seemed to exude an animal-like vitality the Mr Russell who now sat across the desk from me had aged at least 20 years his hands shook with the Tremor of age his eyes and cheeks were sunken he had lost perhaps 30 pounds the changes in his appearance were all characteristic of the process that medical science for want of a better name calls aging after a quick examination of his mouth I assured Mr Russell I could get rid of the African bug in less than 30 minutes which I did the bump which had caused all the trouble was merely a small bit of scar tissue from his operation I removed it held it in my hand and showed it to him the important thing is he saw the truth and believed it he gave a sigh of relief and it seemed as if there was an almost immediate change in his posture and expression several weeks later I received a nice letter from Mr Russell together with a photograph of him with his new bride he had gone back to his home and married his childhood sweetheart the man in the picture was the first Mr Russell is everyone hypnotized it is no exaggeration to say that all human beings are hypnotized to some extent either by ideas they have uncritically accepted from others or by ideas they have repeated to themselves or convinced themselves are true these negative ideas have exactly the same effect on our Behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist have you ever seen a demonstration of honest-to-goodness hypnosis if not let me describe just a few of the more simple phenomena that result from the hypnotist's suggestion the hypnotist tells a strong football player that his hand is stuck to the table and that he cannot lift it it is not a question of the football player not trying he simply cannot he strains and struggles until the muscles of his arm and shoulders stand out like cords but his hand remains fully rooted to the table he tells the championship weightlifter that he cannot lift a pencil from the desk and although normally he can hoist a 400 pound weight overhead he now actually cannot lift the pencil strangely enough in these instances hypnosis does not weaken the athletes they are potentially as strong as ever but without realizing it consciously they are working against themselves on the one hand they try to lift their hand or the pencil by voluntary effort and actually contract the proper lifting muscles but on the other hand the idea you cannot do it causes contrary muscles to contract quite apart from their will the negative idea causes them to defeat themselves they cannot express or bring into play their actual available strength the gripping strength of another athlete has been tested on a dynamometer and has been found to be 100 pounds all his effort and straining cannot budge the needle beyond the 100 pound mark now he is hypnotized and told you are very very strong stronger than you have ever been in your life much much stronger you are surprised at how strong you are again the gripping strength of his hand is tested this time he easily pulls the needle to the 125 pound mark again strangely enough hypnosis has not added anything to his actual strength what the hypnotic suggestion did was to overcome a negative idea that had previously prevented him from expressing his full strength in other words the athlete in his normal waking state had imposed a limitation on his strength by the negative belief that he could only grip 100 pounds the hypnotist merely removed this mental block and allowed him to express his true strength the hypnosis literally de-hypnotized him temporarily from his own self-limiting beliefs about himself as Dr Barber has said it is awfully easy to assume that the hypnotist himself must have some magical power when you see rather miraculous things happen during a hypnotic session the stutterer talks fluently the timid shy retiring Casper milk toast becomes outgoing poised and makes a stirring speech another individual who is not especially good in adding figures with a pencil and paper when awake multiplies two three-digit figures in his head all this happens because the hypnotist tells them that they can and instructs them to go ahead and do it to onlookers the hypnotist's word seems to have a magical power such however is not the case the power the basic ability to do these things was inherent in the subjects all the time before they met the hypnotist the subjects however were unable to use this power because they themselves did not know it was there they had bottled it up and choked it off because of their own negative beliefs without realizing it they had hypnotized themselves into believing they could not do these things and it would be truer to say that the hypnotist had de-hypnotized them than to say he had hypnotized them within you whoever you may be is the ability and the power to do whatever you need to do to be happy and successful within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible this power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs just as quickly as you can de-hypnotize yourself from the ideas of I can't I'm not worthy I don't deserve it and other self-limiting ideas you can cure your inferiority complex at least 95 percent of people have their lives blighted by feelings of inferiority to some extent and to Millions this same feeling of inferiority is a serious handicap to success and happiness every person on the face of the earth is inferior to some other persons or person I know that I cannot beat Jack Nicholas on the links throw football as straight and far as any NFL pro quarterback and the list goes on even though I have appeared as a speaker in front of a number of large audiences I know there's a long list of people who are more polished and stylish and charismatic on the platform I know this but it does not induce feelings of inferiority within me and blight my life simply because I do not compare myself unfavorably with them and do not feel that I am no good merely because I cannot do certain things as skillfully or as well as they I also know that in certain areas every person I meet from the Newsboy on the corner to the president of the bank is superior to me in certain respects but neither can any of these people repair a scarred face or do any number of other things as well as I and I'm sure they do not feel inferior because of it feelings of inferiority originate not so much from Facts or experiences but from our conclusions regarding facts and our evaluation of experiences for example the fact is that I am an inferior golfer to Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer this does not however make me an inferior person Arnold Palmer's inability to perform surgery makes him an inferior surgeon but not an inferior person it all depends on what and whose Norms we measure ourselves by it is not knowledge of actual inferiority in skill or knowledge that gives us an inferiority complex and interferes with our living it is the feeling of inferiority that does this and this feeling of inferiority comes about for just one reason we judge ourselves and measure ourselves not against our own Norm or par but against some other individual's Norm when we do this we always without exception come out second best but because we think and believe and assume that we should measure up to some other person's Norm we feel miserable and second rate and conclude that there is something wrong with us the next logical conclusion in this cockeyed reasoning process is to conclude that we are not worthy that we do not deserve success and happiness and that it would be out of place for us to fully express our own abilities and talents whatever they might be without apology or without feeling guilty about it all this comes about because we have allowed ourselves to be hypnotized by the entirely erroneous idea that I should be like so and so or I should be like everybody else the fallacy of the second idea can be readily seen through if analyzed for in truth there are no fixed standards common to everybody else everybody else is composed of individuals no two of whom are alike neither a new nose or new shoes guarantee success consider the famous advertising campaign constructed around Michael Jordan with the slogan I want to be like Mike the blunt truth is that very few young men have the physical talent to replicate Michael Jordan's performance even if they replicated his remarkable discipline commitment work ethic and competitive Spirit if this ad campaign harmlessly sells shoes and clothing so be it for some it will serve as positive stimulus and motivation to strive to achieve and that is constructive for others however sadly it will serve only to set up an impossible ideal to compare to or Worse send young people away from the core to the circumference of being guaranteed disappointment when they discover that a new pair of shoes has no more magic than a new nose provided by my scalpel the more mature intelligent Observer of Michael and of this ad campaign can choose not to be adversely hypnotized by it but to be motivated by it and look past it more thoughtfully at the characteristics and behavior other than innate exceptional physical talent that have contributed most to Michael Jordan's success that may be uncovered in oneself strengthened even emulated it is even true that a basketball player less innately physically gifted than Jordan could replicate or even surpass his success in the sport and do so in part thanks to Jordan as inspiration the person with an inferiority complex invariably compounds the error by striving for superiority her feelings spring from the false premise that she is inferior from this false premise a whole structure of logical thought and feeling is built if she feels bad because she is inferior The Cure is to make herself as good as everybody else and the way to feel really good is to make herself Superior this striving for superiority gets her into more trouble causes more frustration and sometimes brings about a Neurosis where none existed before she becomes more miserable than ever and the harder she tries the more miserable she becomes inferiority and superiority are reverse sides of the same coin The Cure lies in realizing that the coin itself is spurious the truth about you is this you are not inferior you are not Superior you are simply you you as a personality are not in competition with any other personality simply because there is not another person on the face of the Earth like you or in your particular class you are an individual you are unique you are not like any other person and can never become like any other person you're not supposed to be like any other person and no other person is supposed to be like you God did not create a standard person and in some way label that person by saying this is it he made every human being individual and unique just as he made every snowflake individual and unique God created short people and tall people large people and small people skinny people and fat people black yellow red and white people he has never indicated any preference for any one size shape or color Abraham Lincoln once said God must have loved the common people for he made so many of them he was wrong there is no common man no standardized common pattern Lincoln would have been nearer the truth had he said God must have loved uncommon people for he made so many of them and inferiority complex and its accompanying deterioration in performance can be made to order in the psychological Laboratory all you need to do is set up a norm or average then convince your subject he does not measure up in my original book I reported on a psychologist who wanted to find out how feelings of inferiority affected the ability to solve problems he gave his students a set of routine tests to quote from the February 1952 issue of science digest the article what's on your mind but then he solemnly announced that the average person could complete the test in about one-fifth the time it would really take when in the course of the test a bell would ring indicating that the average man's time was up some of the brightest subjects became very jittery and incompetent indeed thinking themselves to be morons unquote imagine if you didn't know any better being taken to the golf course for the first time shown the basics of the game and told that the average new player hit 80. if you were convinced that this was true how would you feel at the conclusion of your first round of golf or imagine if you didn't know any better if you were to enter the insurance business convinced that the average new agent instantly began making twenty thousand dollars a month in commissions how would you feel at the conclusion of the first month the second consider also the dangers of measuring yourself against a very unfair apples to oranges standard for example if I were to measure my worth as an author by comparing my book's number of copies sold to novelist Tom Clancy or Stephen King I would be comparing apples to oranges stop measuring yourself against their standards you are not them and can never measure up neither can they measure up to your standards nor should they as you utilize psycho-cybernetics to communicate with your self-image your objective should not be to feel Superior to others nor should you continue permitting feelings of inferiority to others your objective is to develop your own unique personality and accomplishments how to use relaxation to de-hypnotize yourself physical relaxation plays a key role in the de-hypnotization process our currently held beliefs whether good or bad true or false were formed without effort with no sense of strain and without the exercise of willpower our habits whether good or bad were formed in the same way it follows that we must employ the same process in forming new beliefs or new habits that is in a relaxed condition physical relaxation when practiced daily brings about an accompanying mental relaxation and a relaxed attitude which enables us to better consciously control our automatic mechanism physical relaxation also in itself has a powerful influence in de-hypnotizing us from negative attitudes and reaction patterns try this mental training exercise to be practiced for at least 30 minutes daily seat yourself comfortably in an easy chair or lie down on your back consciously let go the various muscle groups as much as possible without making too much of an effort of it just consciously pay attention to the various parts of your body and let go a little you will find that you can always voluntarily relax to a certain degree you can stop frowning and let your forehead relax you can ease up a little on the tension in your jaws you can let your hands your arms your shoulders your legs become a little more relaxed than they are spend about five minutes on this and then stop paying any attention to your muscles this is as far as you are going to try to go by conscious control from here on you will relax more and more by using your creative mechanism to automatically bring about a relaxed condition in short you are going to use goal pictures held in your imagination and let your automatic mechanism realize those goals for you mental picture one in your mind's eye see yourself lying stretched out upon the bed form a picture of your legs as they would look if made of concrete see yourself lying there with two very heavy concrete legs see these very heavy concrete legs sinking far down into the mattress from their sheer weight now picture your arms and hands as made of concrete they also are very heavy and are sinking down into the bed and exerting tremendous pressure against the bed in your mind's eye see a friend come into the room and attempt to lift your heavy concrete legs he takes hold of your feet and attempts to lift them but they're too heavy for him he cannot do it repeat this process with your arms neck Etc mental picture too your body is a big marionette doll your hands are tied Loosely to your wrists by strings your forearm is connected Loosely by a string to your upper arm your upper arm is connected very Loosely by a string to your shoulder your feet calves thighs are also connected together with a single string your neck consists of one very limp string the strings that control your jaw and hold your lips together have slackened and stretched to such an extent that your chin has dropped down Loosely against your chest all the various strings connecting the various parts of your body are loose and limp and your body is just sprawled Loosely across the bed mental picture three many people will find this the most relaxing of all just go back in memory to some relaxing and pleasant scene from your past there is always some time in everyone's life when he felt relaxed at ease and at peace with the world pick out your own relaxing picture from your past and call up detailed memory images yours may be a peaceful scene at a mountain lake where you went fishing if so pay particular attention to the little incidental things in the environment remember the quiet ripples on the water what sounds were present did you hear the quiet rustling of the leaves maybe you remember sitting perfectly relaxed and somewhat drowsy before an open fireplace long ago did the logs crackle and Spark what other sights and sounds were present maybe you choose to remember relaxing in the sun on a beach how did the sand feel against your body could you feel the warm relaxing Sun touching your body almost as a physical thing was there a breeze blowing were there gulls on the beach the more of these incidental details you can remember and picture to yourself the more successful you will be daily practice will bring these mental pictures or memories clearer and clearer the effective learning will also be cumulative practice will strengthen the tie-in between mental image and physical sensation you will become more and more proficient in relaxation and this in itself will be remembered in future practice sessions chapter 5. how to succeed with the power of rational thinking Bernard Baruch wrote I get the facts I study them patiently I apply imagination many of my patients were plainly disappointed when I prescribed something as simple as using their god-given power of reason as a method of changing negative beliefs and behavior to some it seemed incredibly naive and unscientific yet it does have one advantage it works and as we shall see later it is based on sound scientific findings there is a widely accepted fallacy that rational logical conscious thinking has no power over unconscious processes or mechanisms and that to change negative beliefs feelings or behavior it is necessary to dig down and dredge up material from the unconscious your automatic mechanism is absolutely impersonal it operates as a machine and has no will of its own it always tries to react appropriately to your current beliefs and interpretations concerning environment it always seeks to give you appropriate feelings and to accomplish the goals that you consciously determine upon it works only on the data that you feed it in the form of ideas beliefs interpretations opinions it is conscious thinking that is the control knob of your unconscious machine it was my conscious thought though perhaps irrational and unrealistic that the unconscious machine developed its negative and inappropriate reaction patterns and it is by conscious rational thought that the automatic reaction patterns can be changed you can get positive results now in movies and television programs therapy is usually portrayed as a psychiatrist guiding a patient into an archaeological dig of distant childhood memories as a result it is a popular notion that once in therapy you stay in therapy I recall an executive telling me that he had many issues he would like to work on and behavior he would like to change but that he would never agree to go to a psychiatrist's office week after week dredging up and endlessly discussing Matters from his childhood with all due respect to psychiatrists theirs is not the only path to a healthy self-image and to be fair this idea of Psychiatry is not accurately representative of all doctors methods in any case I asked the executive if he would seriously like to make some changes if he could do it without ever having to revisit his childhood when he said yes I talked with him about the ideas in this chapter the use of current rational thought in concert with the imagination to modify the self-image remember the formula you heard earlier one conscious mind decision plus two imagination that communicates a goal or Target to three your self-image equals four work order instructions to your Servo mechanism now we will simply add a precursor to the formula so that it becomes you as creator of your own life experiences rational thinking leads to one conscious mind decision plus two imagination that communicates a goal or Target to three your self-image equals four work order instructions to your Servo mechanism in simple terms sticking to the guided missile analogy Central to Psycho cybernetics we use deliberate rational conscious thought to choose the target then we use the imagination to communicate the target to the self-image in a manner that it will be accepted and acted upon how testing self-imposed limits with rational thinking can surprise you consider a very simple situation likes and dislikes of food I once had a friend who refused to ever eat green beans and bacon a side dish I enjoyed immensely often with a good steak many times I tried to get him to try some but he insisted that he hated beans finally I wore him down and one evening in a restaurant where we were sharing a meal he grudgingly agreed to taste your damn beans as he put it just to get you off my back after his first bite he murmured hmm he tried a second bite and a third he said these are quite tasty some months later when we again dined together he ordered green beans with bacon now there was some reason he believed it to be fact that he did not like the taste of green beans I don't know the reason and I don't know if he did either I'd suppose not since he never enunciated it but he didn't need to fare it through his childhood experiences holding all manner of youthful experiences up to the light contemplating overheard adult conversations while hiding on the stairs in order to challenge his belief and test it in his adult life in the current moment admittedly few psychologic issues are as innocuous as a like or dislike of green beans and bacon but many ways in which you might desire to improve or to feel more at peace with yourself are actually not all that much more complex than your taste for beans either I maintain acknowledging that members of the psychiatric profession May differ that most people can in fact resolve most of the self-sabotage plaguing them with psycho cybernetics and possibly other related self-improvement modalities without in-depth analysis of all prior life events it may be perfectly okay to let sleeping dogs lie the fact that buried in the unconscious are memories of past failures along with unpleasant and painful experiences does not mean that these must be dug out exposed or examined in order to affect personality changes as we pointed out earlier all skill learning is accomplished by trial and error by making a trial missing the mark consciously remembering the degree of error and making correction on the next trial until finally a hit or successful attempt is accomplished the successful reaction pattern is then remembered or recalled and imitated on future trials this is true for a man learning to pitch horseshoes throw darts sing drive a car play golf get along socially with other human beings or any other skill thus all Servo mechanisms by their very nature contain memories of past errors failures painful and negative experiences these negative experiences do not inhibit but contribute to the learning process as long as they are used properly as negative feedback data and are seen as deviations from the positive goal desired however as soon as the error has been recognized as such and correction of course made it is equally important that the error be consciously forgotten and the successful attempt remembered and dwelt upon these memories of past failures Do no harm as long as our conscious thought and attention is focused on the positive goal to be accomplished therefore it is best to let these sleeping dogs lie our errors mistakes failures and sometimes even our humiliations were necessary steps in the learning process however they were meant to be a means to an end not an end in themselves when they have served their purpose they should be forgotten if we consciously dwell on the error or consciously feel guilty about the error and keep berating ourselves because of it then unwittingly we make the error or failure itself the goal that is consciously held in imagination and memory the unhappiest of Mortals are those who insist on reliving the past over and over in their imagination continually criticizing themselves for past mistakes continually condemning themselves for past sins the new term for taking control of your emotions and self-image without probing your past for root causes is solution oriented therapy and if you are interested in a current book on this subject I recommend do one thing different by Bill O'Hanlon the power of forgetfulness when asked to name the most important characteristic of a truly great past receiver in football the great quarterback of the Cleveland Browns Otto Graham said a damn short memory players and coaches have explained that to me and echoed it year after year in media interviews what is meant is that the most important skill the receiver possesses is the ability to instantly forget about the catchable pass he just embarrassingly dropped so as to focus on the target successfully catching the next one thrown in his Direction I have many times watched a football game on television seen the field goal kicker hook a kick badly and miss a short 20 or 30 yard field goal only to return later in the game even with the entire game on the line and make a much longer more difficult field goal the kicker's ability to forget and refocus was every bit as important as his physical strength and kicking mechanics continually criticizing yourself for past mistakes and errors whether from years ago or minutes ago does not help matters but on the other hand tends to perpetuate the very Behavior you would change memories of past failures can adversely affect present performance if we dwell on them and foolishly conclude I failed yesterday therefore I will fail again today however this does not prove that unconscious reaction patterns have any power in themselves to repeat and perpetuate themselves or that all buried memories of failure must be eradicated before Behavior can be changed if we are victimized It Is by our conscious thinking mind and not by the unconscious for it is with the thinking part of our personality that we draw conclusions and select the goal images that we shall concentrate on the minute that we change our minds and stop giving power to the past the past with its mistakes loses its power over us ignore past failures and Forge ahead when a shy timid Wallflower is told in hypnosis and believes or thinks that he is a bold self-confident orator his reaction patterns are changed instantly he currently acts as he currently believes his attention is given over completely to the positive desired goal and no thought or consideration whatsoever is given to past failures Dorothea brand tells in her Charming book wake up and live how this one idea enabled her to become more productive and successful as a writer and to draw upon talents and abilities she never knew she had she had been both curious and amazed after witnessing a demonstration in hypnosis then she happened to read one sentence written by psychologist FMH Myers which she says changed her whole life the sentence by Myers explained that the talents and abilities displayed by hypnotic subjects were due to a purgation of memory of past failures while in the hypnotic state If This Were possible under hypnosis Dorothea brand asked herself if Ordinary People carried around within themselves talents abilities powers that were held in check and not used merely because of memories of past failures why couldn't a person in the wakeful state use these same Powers By ignoring past failures and acting as if it were impossible to fail she determined to try it she would act on the assumption that the powers and abilities were there and that she could use them if only she would go ahead and act as if instead of in a tentative half-hearted way within a year her production as a writer had increased many times so had her sales a rather surprising result was that she discovered a talent for public speaking became much in demand as a lecturer and enjoyed it whereas previously she had not only shown no talent for lecturing but disliked it intensely with psycho-cybernetics exercises like those described in many chapters in this program as well as even more extensive and sophisticated mental training exercises provided in my 12-week course on psycho-cybernetics one of the things I strive for is equipping you with ways to act as if within your own imagination and to encourage your doing so repetitively and creatively Bertrand Russell's method in his book the conquest of Happiness Bertrand Russell wrote I was not born happy as a child my favorite hymn was weary of Earth and Laden with my sin in adolescence I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide from which however I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics now on the contrary I enjoy life I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more very largely it is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself like others who had a Puritan education I had the habit of meditating on my sins Follies and shortcomings I seem to myself no doubt justly a miserable specimen gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies I came to Center my attention increasingly upon external objects the state of the world various branches of knowledge individuals for whom I felt affection unquote in the same book he describes his method for changing automatic reaction patterns based on false beliefs quote it is quite possible to overcome infantile suggestions of the unconscious and even to change the contents of the unconscious by employing the right kind of technique whenever you begin to feel remorse for an act which your reason tells you is not Wicked examine the causes of your feeling of remorse and convince yourself in detail of their absurdity let your conscious beliefs be so vivid and emphatic that they make an impression upon your unconscious strong enough to cope with the Impressions made by your nurse or your mother when you were an infant do not be content with an alternation between moments of rationality and moments of irrationality look into the irrationality closely with a determination not to respect it and not to let it dominate you whenever it thrusts foolish thoughts or feelings into your Consciousness pull them up by the roots examine them and reject them do not allow yourself to remain a vacillating creature swayed half by reason and half by infantile folly but if the Rebellion is to be successful in bringing individual happiness and in enabling a man to live consistently by one standard not to vacillate between two it is necessary that he should think and feel deeply about what his reason tells him most men when they have thrown off superficially the superstitions of their childhood think that there is no more to be done they do not realize that these superstitions are still lurking Underground when a rational conviction has been arrived at it is necessary to dwell upon it to follow out its consequences to search out in oneself whatever beliefs inconsistent with the new conviction might otherwise survive what I suggest is that a man should make up his mind with emphasis as to what he rationally believes and should never allow contrary irrational beliefs to pass unchallenged or obtain a hold over him however brief this is a question of reasoning with himself in those moments in which he is tempted to become infantile but the reasoning if it is sufficiently emphatic may be very brief unquote ideas are changed not by will but by other ideas it can be seen that Bertrand Russell's technique of searching out ideas that are inconsistent with some deeply felt conviction is essentially the same as the method tested clinically with such amazing success by Prescott Leckie lecky's method consisted of getting subjects to see that some negative concept of theirs was inconsistent with some other deeply held belief leki believed that it was inherent in the very nature of Mind itself that all ideas and Concepts making up the total content of Personality must seem to be consistent with each other if the inconsistency of a given idea is consciously recognized it must be rejected in my original book I told of my encounter with a salesperson in which I employed this technique of shining the spotlight on two conflicting beliefs to get rid of the unproductive one one of my patients was a salesperson who was scared to death when calling on Big Shots his fear and nervousness were overcome in just one counseling session during which I asked him would you physically get down on all fours and crawl into the man's office prostrating yourself before a superior personage I should say not he bristled then why do you mentally cringe and crawl another question would you go into a man's office with your hand out like a beggar and beg for a dime for a cup of coffee certainly not can't you see that you are doing essentially the same thing when you go in overly concerned with whether or not he will approve of you can't you see that you have your hand out literally begging for his approval and acceptance of you as a person two psychologic levers you can use to remove any mountain in your way leki found that there were two powerful levers for changing beliefs and Concepts there are standard convictions which are strongly held by nearly everyone these are one the feeling or belief that you are capable of doing your share holding up your end of the log exerting a certain amount of Independence and two the belief that there is something inside you that should not be allowed to suffer in dignities interestingly neuro-linguistic programming or NLP which is based on extensive work by doctors grindler and bandler and has been popularized by Tony Robbins offers a toolkit of two items pain and accomplishment I do not think it coincidental that pain and the deep-seated belief that you should not suffer great indignities are the triggers that most quickly or easily and definitively motivate people to action knowing this you can use it to motivate yourself to constructive action let me tell you of a person just so motivated today Jeff Paul one of the members of the psycho-cybernetics foundation's board of directors and a co-author of the psycho-cybernetics book zero resistance selling was once a certified financial planner with some significant success but horribly unhappy in his work he disliked the commute to the office wearing a suit and tie selling on the telephone and in person and the repetitive nature of the work one day he had the flash of rational thought that he need not continue making his living doing something he intensely disliked doing he correctly consciously acknowledged there must be any number of other ways he could meet his financial goals you know a great many people never take that simple realization seriously Jeff then set about doing what we now call backwards goal setting he mentally prepared a list of things he did not want to do at all his list included having to wear a suit and tie having to manage a staff some dozen or so items in total then he utilized his imagination to shop around for ideas about other careers and businesses that he might have some affinity for but that would never require him to do the things on his I never want to do these things again list after considerable thought he decided upon the mail order business he recognized that a great many financial planners could benefit from the methods he had perfected for successfully attracting clients he envisioned a business in which he would publish that information in the form of books manuals and recordings then sell the products to members of his profession by advertising and Direct Mail he could operate from an office in his home and have functions like order taking Printing and shipping done for him by outside contractors he convinced his self-image he could do this by focusing on his strength such as his intimate knowledge of the desires and frustrations of his peers his possession of useful knowledge to sell his evolving Avid interest in mail order and willingness to learn while his earliest attempts were markedly unsuccessful he course corrected by a number of means and ultimately achieved extraordinary success I will briefly enumerate here first Jeff built a mail order publishing business selling to financial planners and insurance agents that provided an income of more than one hundred thousand dollars a month from a small home office second Jeff created a home study course seminar and other materials to teach his mail order business model to others and he has thus inspired many others to create such businesses a book he wrote about his experience is to promote his course how to make four thousand dollars a day sitting at your kitchen table in your underwear has sold well over one hundred thousand copies third he developed such a high level of marketing and sales letter copywriting skills that he's become a much sought after highly paid consultant maybe most importantly he has developed his businesses and significant wealth without conflict with his I never want to do these things again list Jeff credits the use of psycho-cybernetics techniques but also emphasizes what he calls accurate thinking what I have called rational thought as the all-important starting point examine and re-evaluate your beliefs one of the reasons that the power of rational thinking goes unrecognized is that it is so seldom used Trace down the belief about yourself about the world or about other people that is behind your negative behavior does something always happen to cause you to miss out just when success seems within your grasp perhaps you secretly feel Unworthy of success or that you do not deserve it are you ill at ease around other people perhaps you believe you are inferior to them or that other people per se are hostile and unfriendly do you become anxious and fearful for no good reason in a situation that is relatively safe perhaps you believe that the world you live in is a hostile unfriendly dangerous place or that you deserve punishment how many people do you suppose would love to have a perfect lifestyle business like Jeff's but if asked about it would quickly produce a laundry list of reasons why they cannot do what he has done these reasons are not reasons based on current rational thought at all they're just beliefs subject to change remember that both behavior and feeling spring from belief to root out the belief responsible for your feeling and behavior ask yourself why is there some task you would like to do some channel in which you would like to express yourself but you hang back feeling that I can't ask yourself why why do I believe that I can't then ask yourself is this belief based on an actual fact or on an assumption or a false conclusion then ask yourself these four questions one is there any rational reason for such a belief two could it be that I am mistaken in this belief three would I come to the same conclusion about some other person in a similar situation four why should I continue to act and feel as if this were true if there's no good reason to believe it don't just pass these questions by casually wrestle with them think hard on them get emotional about them can you see that you have cheated yourself and sold yourself short not because of a fact but only because of an irrational and erroneous belief if so try to arouse some indignation or even anger indignation and anger can sometimes act as liberators from false ideas Alfred Adler got mad at himself and at his teacher and he was enabled to throw off a negative definition of himself this experience is not uncommon an old farmer said he quit tobacco for good one day when he discovered he had left his tobacco home and started to walk the two miles for it on the way he saw that he was being used in a humiliating Way by a habit he got mad turned around went back to the field and never smoked again Clarence Darrow the famous attorney said his success started the day that he got mad when he attempted to secure a mortgage for two thousand dollars to buy a house just as the transaction was about to be completed the lender's wife spoke up and said don't be a fool he'll never make enough money to pay it off Daryl himself had had serious doubts about the same thing but something happened when he heard her remark he became indignant both that the woman and it himself and determined he would be a success what rational thought can and cannot do remember that your automatic mechanism can as easily function as a failure mechanism as a success mechanism depending on the data you give it to process and the goals you set for it it is basically a goal striving mechanism the goals it works on are up to you many of us unconsciously and unwittingly by holding negative attitudes and habitually picturing failure to ourselves in our imagination set up goals of failure also remember that your automatic mechanism does not reason about or question the data you feed it it merely processes it and reacts appropriately to it the stage fright experienced by people called upon to speak in public is interesting it is according to many surveys one of the top three or four fears shared by all adults it can be paralyzing yet rationally you can understand that no one has been hanged for giving a poor public speech in quite a long time at least in this country in most situations there is no dire consequence of appearing a bit nervous for getting a few points or telling a joke that falls flat the fear felt is excessive in relationship to the possible penalty for making mistakes it is very important that the automatic mechanism be given true facts concerning the environment this is the job of conscious rational thought to know the truth to form correct evaluations estimations opinions in this connection most of us are prone to underestimate ourselves and overestimate the nature of the difficulty facing us in why be tired psychologist Daniel W Jocelyn wrote I have made extensive experiments to discover the common causes of that conscious effort which freezes the thinking mind practically always it seems to be due to the tendency to exaggerate the difficulty and importance of your mental labors to take them too seriously and fear they will find you incapable unquote it's just a game in his book golf's mental hazards overcome them and put an end to the self-destructive round Dr Alan Shapiro enumerates six mental hazards the first four of which are directly relevant to this discussion and have application far beyond the game of golf here are his descriptions in abbreviated form Hazard one the fear of fear golfers who fall prey to this experience anticipatory anxiety before around have first tea Jitters and choke during critical moments Hazard 2 losing your cool this is the golfer who slams The Club into the ground throws it into a water hazard or wraps it around a tree Hazard 3 getting 2 up or two down these golfers are quick to get down on themselves their emotions can range from Euphoria after making a difficult par to utter despair after knocking a tee shot out of bounds on the very next hole on the basis of performance on any given day these golfers can remain elated or depressed for days after a round of golf Hazard four worry what others think these individuals dread embarrassment on the golf course are prone to feelings of inferiority sensitive to ridicule and feel that others are always closely watching and judging any of these is obviously sufficient to jam the servo mechanism on analysis they are of course irrational Hazard 3 is classic overreaction to individual incidents in life most of which are never as important days or weeks after their occurrence as they seemed at the immediate moment persons cursed with the habit of overreaction are one step short of manic depressive will be profoundly an unnecessarily miserable at least half of their lifetime will gradually convince their self-image that they have no self-control and will cause others to avoid relationships with them and Hazard 3 worsens the others there's a classic golf story about the weekend Duffer returning home horribly depressed sulking and moping about the house until finally his wife says honey remember it's just a game he angrily snaps back you don't know the first damn thing about golf but it is just a game and today is just today a mistake is just a mistake we must use rational thinking to achieve perspective to rise above these paralyzing mental hazards however rational thought expressed as willpower I will not lose my cool I will not overreact is a losing proposition rational thought used creatively to develop entirely new mental pictures in the imagination feeding the self-image Dynamic new evidence transmitting a new Target to the servo mechanism is a winning process it ain't necessarily so it is the job of rational conscious thought to examine and analyze incoming messages to accept those that are true and reject those that are untrue many people are bowled over by the chance remark of a friend you don't look so well this morning if they are rejected or snubbed by someone they blindly swallow the fact that this means they are an inferior person most of us are subjected to negative suggestions every day if our conscious mind is working and on the job we do not have to accept them blindly it ain't necessarily so is a good motto in the book battling the inner dummy the author describes this as limbic hijacking a sort of abrupt uprising of the automatic failure mechanism that is always lurking about waiting to rest control away from both your rational thinking and your automatic success mechanism after all the automatic failure mechanism and automatic success mechanism are two sides of the same coin separated only by the thinnest Edge he wrote one of my tennis Partners said to me boy are you putting on weight within hours captured by an irrational fear of looking fat I was on a crash diet the scale showed I had put on only three pounds but it was the perception of looking fat rather than the reality that created the fear today when somebody tells me something like that I go into the bathroom close the door and scream at my inner dummy don't pay attention to that insensitive remark don't get upset do you hear me inside there so okay tonight we'll lay off the mashed potatoes and gravy but that's it unquote taking time out for a rational thought coaching session with yourself can be effective and is a precursor to installing rational thought-based mental pictures that can be recalled at a moment's notice to accomplish the same Interruption of overreaction the problem that can't be solved won't be solved it is the job of the conscious rational mind to form logical and correct conclusions I failed once in the past so I will probably fail in the future is neither logical nor rational to conclude I can't in advance without trying and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary is not rational we should be more like the man who was asked if he could play the piano I don't know he said what do you mean you don't know he said I've never tried Michael Vance the former dean of Disney University author of the book think outside the box and an authority on creative thinking tells of the corporate executive he queried about the company's biggest problem after listening to the problem described in all its magnitude and severity Vance asked who's working on solving it no one replied the executive why not Vance asked because it cannot be solved replied the executive I imagine that executive saying because it cannot be solved to Mr Vance in an exasperated impatient tone thinking Vance the dolt for not grasping this simple and obvious truth too many people live their entire lives just like this executive believing that their circumstances cannot be improved their problems cannot be solved even that somehow they are incapable of achieving the career or success or Prosperity or happiness that they see others achieving routinely as a result they are as vulnerable to mental hazards unleashing the automatic failure mechanism as a hemophiliac is to paper cuts proving fatal decide what you want not what you don't want it is the job of conscious rational thought to decide what you want select the goals you wish to achieve and concentrate on these rather than on what you do not want you have arrived at an understanding of what you want spending time and effort concentrating on what you do not want is not rational when President Eisenhower was General Eisenhower in World War II he was asked what would have been the effect on the Allied cause if the invasion troops had been thrown back into the sea from the beaches of Italy it would have been very bad he said but I never allow my mind to think in that way how do you let your mind think most people go about their daily business exercising no control whatsoever over what pops into or is popped into their minds television radio the newspaper casual conversation overheard conversation any critical remark even an advertising billboard takes control a cumbersome but Illuminating exercise is to carry a pad or bound notebook with you all day and jot down every thought that occurs to you take a look at this diary at the end of the day and see for yourself how little of what you thought you chose to think we are too often like the couch potato whose TV remote control battery goes dead and too lazy to go and install a new battery he simply sits there all evening watching whatever comes on the station he is stuck on can't you do better than this keep your eye on the ball it is the job of your conscious mind to pay strict attention to the task at hand to what you are doing and what is going on around you so that these incoming sensory messages can keep your automatic mechanism currently advised of the environment and allow it to respond spontaneously in baseball Pilots you must keep your eye on the ball it is not the job of your conscious rational mind however to create or to do the job at hand we get into trouble when we either neglect to use conscious thinking in the way that it is meant to be used or when we attempt to use it in a way that it was never meant to be used we cannot squeeze creative thought out of the creative mechanism by making a conscious effort we cannot do the job to be done by making strained conscious efforts and because we try and cannot we become concerned anxious frustrated the automatic mechanism is unconscious we cannot see the wheels turning we cannot know what is taking place beneath the surface and because it works spontaneously in reacting to present and current needs we can have no intimation or certified guarantee in advance that it will come up with the answer we are forced into a position of trust and only by trusting and acting do we receive signs and wonders in short conscious rational thought selects the goal gathers information concludes evaluates estimates and starts the wheels in motion it is not however responsible for results we must learn to do our work act on the best assumptions available and leave the results to take care of themselves try these mental training exercises one have a heart-to-heart talk with yourself and honestly assess whether you have any problems you're no longer attempting to resolve only because you've accepted as fact that they cannot be solved whether you are living out circumstances in your life that are unfulfilling or even demeaning to you because you have accepted as fact that you cannot alter them reconsider apply current rational thought to challenge these beliefs and then use your imagination to shop around and try out new and different possibilities consider the questions I suggested in this chapter about each of these facts you uncover in your heart to heart why do I believe that I can't then ask yourself is this belief based on actual fact or on an assumption or false conclusion is there any rational reason for such a belief could it be that I am mistaken in this belief would I come to the same conclusion about some other person in a similar situation why should I continue to act and feel as if this were true if there's no good reason to believe it two out of all this rational thought you may identify a new Target or goal to assign your automatic success mechanism if so review the exercises provided at the end of each of the prior chapters as a means of getting started summary checklist of the uses of rational thought one it is the job of rational conscious thought to examine and analyze incoming messages to accept those that are true and to reject those that are untrue two it is the job of the conscious rational mind to form logical and correct conclusions three it is the job of conscious rational thought to decide what you want select the goals you wish to achieve and concentrate on these rather than on what you do not want four it is the job of your conscious mind to pay strict attention to the task at hand to what you are doing and what is going on around you so that these incoming sensory messages can keep your automatic mechanism currently advised of the environment and allow it to respond spontaneously chapter 6. how to relax and let your automatic success mechanism work for you Abraham Lincoln wrote determined that the thing can and shall be done and then we shall find the way stress has recently become a popular word in our language we speak of this as the age of stress worry anxiety insomnia stomach ulcers have become accepted as a necessary part of the world in which we live I wrote that in 1960. in 1960 we didn't know what stress was we did not have the incessant cacophony of cellular phones beeper's email and other Technologies keeping us constantly accessible constantly communicating constantly Under Pressure to respond to everyone instantly we could never have foreseen the collapse of middle management in most corporate cultures forcing each person to do the work of three we did not even yet have the two career household as a norm today the typical person has less Leisure Time much less private recovery time longer and more congested commutes a much greater and faster flow of information and a more complex environment to deal with it is far more critical today to conquer Stress and Anxiety and to exert control over your life than it was when I first began talking about psycho-cybernetics as Stress Management I remain convinced that life need not be relentless pressure and stress we could relieve ourselves of a vast load of care anxiety and worry if we could but recognize the simple truth that our creator made ample Provisions for us to live successfully in this or any other age by providing us with a built-in creative mechanism changes in society or technology can easily be handled by our infinitely capable Servo mechanism in fact it does not understand the meaning of being overworked or stressed out because its capacity is unlimited our trouble is that we ignore the automatic creative mechanism and try to do everything and solve all our problems by conscious thought or willpower it is the job of the conscious mind to pose problems and to identify them but by its very nature it was never engineered to solve problems itself you pile on stress by striving to do it all you relieve stress by learning to assign problems to your automatic success mechanism then letting go of them don't be too careful the example I used early in this program had Dr weiner showing us that a man cannot even perform such a simple operation as picking up a pencil from a table by conscious thought or will when a person depends almost entirely upon conscious thought and willpower he becomes too careful too anxious and too fearful of results and the advice of Jesus to take no thought for the morrow or of Saint Paul to be careful in nothing is regarded as impractical nonsense yet this is precisely the advice that William James Dean of American psychologists gave us years ago if we would but have listened to him in his little essay The Gospel of relaxation he said that modern man was too tense too concerned for results too anxious this was in 1899. and that there was a better and easier way quote when once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome unclamp in a word your intellectual and practical machinery and let it run free and the service it will do you will be twice as good unquote incidentally this is different from simple intuition I am well aware that a great many people rebel at the thought of entrusting important decisions and responsibilities to something as ethereal as intuition what we are talking about I remind you is a practical formula beginning with conscious rational thought but then delegating via the imagination in concert with the self-image to an amazingly powerful search engine and Servo mechanism that will work for you toward the resolution of any problem entirely free of stress The Secret of creative thinking and creative doing proof of the fact that what we have been saying is true can be seen in the experience of writers inventors and other creative workers invariably they tell us that creative ideas are not consciously thought out by conscious thinking but come automatically spontaneously and somewhat like a bolt out of the blue when the conscious mind has let go of the problem and is engaged in thinking of something else these creative ideas do not come willy-nilly without some preliminary conscious thought about the problem all the evidence points to the conclusion that in order to receive an inspiration or a hunch the person must first of all be intensely interested in solving a particular problem or securing an answer he or she must think about it consciously gather all the information available on the subject consider all the possible courses of action and above all there must be a burning desire to solve the problem but having defined the problem having seen in the imagination the desired end result having secured all the information and facts then additional struggling fretting and worrying over it does not help but seems to hinder the solution in his classic best-selling book Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill tells of being put under pressure by his publisher to come up with an appropriate title for his book in just 24 hours such a title idea had been eluding Hill for months while he completed and submitted his manuscript at D-Day his editor told him he had only 24 hours to come up with a good idea or the book would go to press with the editor's best idea a title of use your noodle to get the boodle Hill protested the outrageous hype and tabloid nature of the title saying it would ruin him that he'd never be taken seriously 24 hours his publisher said that is stress briefly Hill tried to consciously create the title but soon gave up as he's been trying for months with no success he decided instead to turn the whole matter over to his subconscious and let whatever would be be then he awoke from a nap with the title on close examination we can easily see that all his automatic success mechanism did was rewrite the bad title noodle is think boodle is rich I believe every author has had this kind of experience some of us have gone out of our way to have it deliberately and repeatedly often letting whole chapters or lectures be written for us by our Servo mechanisms while we nap or play with our grandchildren or sit in a boat fish pole in hand the editor of this program the president of the psycho-cybernetics foundation Dan Kennedy has written nine books and numerous articles writes a monthly newsletter creates dozens of audio cassette programs and is a busy advertising copywriter as well he has made a point of mastering the application of psycho-cybernetics for this purpose so that he can go to sleep at night then awake and instantly sit at his computer keyboard and pour out the writing work that has been done for him as he slept While others tell of writing being enormously stressful and difficult for him it is virtually free of stress Dan Kennedy says he was first inspired to attempt this by my writing about Bertrand Russell's experience in the original edition of this book in the conquest of Happiness Bertrand Russell said I have found for example that if I have to write upon some rather difficult topic the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity the greatest intensity of which I am capable for a few hours or days and at the end of that time give orders so to speak that the work is to proceed Underground after some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done before I had discovered this technique I used to spend the intervening months worrying because I was making no progress I arrived at the solution none the sooner for this worry and the intervening months were wasted whereas now I can devote them to other Pursuits unquote what works for writers can work for you the delegation of creation that is problem solving they are one and the same to the servo mechanism is a universally applicable process Lennox Riley lore once president of the National Broadcasting Company wrote an article published in the March 1940 issue of American Magazine titled anyone can be an idea man in it he told how ideas that had helped him in business came to him quote ideas I find come most readily when you are doing something that keeps the Mind alert without putting too much strain upon it shaving driving a car sawing a plank or fishing or hunting for instance or engaging with some friend in stimulating conversation some of my best ideas came from information picked up casually and entirely unrelated to my work unquote CG suits once chief of research at General Electric said that nearly all the discoveries in Research Laboratories came as hunches during a period of relaxation following a period of intensive thinking and fact Gathering in other words when the stress of trying to force the answer through conscious thought is turned off the servo mechanism is liberated to function as an automatic success mechanism and often does just that you are a creative worker the mistake we make is assuming that this process of unconscious celebration is reserved for authors artists inventors and other so-called creative workers we are all creative workers whether we are Cooks working in a kitchen School teachers students sales professionals or entrepreneurs we all have the same success mechanism within us and it will work in solving personal problems running a business or selling Goods just as it will in writing a story or inventing a product Bertrand Russell recommended that the same method he used in his writing be employed by his readers in solving their mundane personal problems Dr JB rein of Duke University said that he was inclined to think that what we call genius is a process a natural way in which the human mind works to solve any problem but that we mistakenly apply the term genius only when the process is used to write a book or paint a picture Michael J gelb's fascinating book how to think like Leonardo da Vinci is based on the premise that genius is a process more so than genetic gift in effect each of us has genius within in most cases waiting to be awakened liberated energized and utilized right now being a genius might not be part of your self-image but soon I hope it will be based on this expanded idea of what genius really is and how it works The Secret of natural behavior and skill the success mechanism within you can work in the same way to produce creative doing as it does to produce creative ideas skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you creative performance is spontaneous and natural as opposed to self-conscious and studied the most skilled pianist in the world could never play a simple composition if she tried to consciously think out just which finger should strike which key while she was playing she has given conscious thought to this matter previously while learning and is practiced until her actions become automatic and habit-like she was able to become a magnificent performer only when she reached the point where she could cease conscious effort and turn the matter of playing over to the unconscious habit mechanism that is a part of the success mechanism you may have read elsewhere about this in the context of four steps or levels of learning one unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence three conscious competence for unconscious competence in the first you don't even know what you don't know As you move to the second level you are painfully aware of what is difficult for you in the third level you become able to do the thing but you are still doing it the hard way relying on conscious thought possibly willpower as well rising to the fourth level what was difficult becomes automatic this is a reasonably accurate depiction of each learning experience whether it is tying a shoelace as a child or operating a computer as an adult what is very important and exciting is how much you can accelerate the movement up this four rung ladder and how much stress you can surgically remove from it through Psycho cybernetics most notably by using theater in your mind techniques in place of or in supplement 2 actual physical fumbling don't Jam your creative machinery conscious effort inhibits and jams the automatic creative mechanism the reason some people are self-conscious and awkward in social situations is simply that they are too consciously concerned too anxious to do the right thing and too fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing they are painfully conscious of every move they make every action is thought out every word spoken is calculated for its effect we speak of such persons as inhibited and rightly so but it would be more true were we to say that the person is not inhibited but that the person has inhibited the creative mechanism if these people could let go stop trying not care and give no thought to the matter of their behavior they could act creatively spontaneously and be themselves in sports it said you can't win by playing not to lose in life even in everyday situations we might say the same in fact playing not to lose only serves to manufacture and magnify stress thus increasing the likelihood of making mistakes not vice versa five prescriptions for freeing your creative machinery prescription number one once a decision is made focus on supporting it not second guessing it in the original book I told of the business executive with a penchant for gambling on roulette who gave me the idea do your worrying before you place your bet not after the wheel starts turning I happen to quote to him the advice of William James mentioned earlier to the effect that emotions of anxiety have their place in planning and deciding on a course of action but that quote when once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome unclamp in a word your intellectual and practical machinery and let it run free unquote several weeks later he burst into my office to report it hit me all of a sudden he said during a visit to Las Vegas I've been trying it and it works what hit you and what works I asked that advice of William James it didn't make too much of an impression when you told me but while I was playing roulette it came back to me I noticed any number of people who appeared not to worry at all before placing their bets apparently odds meant nothing to them but once the wheels started turning they froze up and began to worry whether the number would come up or not how silly I thought if they want to worry or be concerned or figure odds the time to do that is before the decision is made to place a bet there's something you can do about it then by thinking about it you can figure out the best odds possible or decide not to take the risk at all but after the bets are placed and the wheel starts turning you might as well relax and enjoy it thinking about it is not going to do one bit of good and it is wasted energy then I got to thinking that I myself have been doing exactly the same thing in my business and in my personal life I often made decisions or embarked upon courses of action without adequate preparation without considering all the risks involved and the best possible alternative but after I had set the wheels in motion so to speak I continually worried over how it would come out whether I'd done the right thing I made a decision right then that in the future I would do all my worrying all my conscious thinking before a decision was made and that after making a decision and setting the wheels in motion I would dismiss absolutely all care or responsibility about the outcome believe it or not it works I not only feel better sleep better and work better but my business is running much smoother he continued I also discovered that the same principle Works in a hundred different little personal ways for example I used to worry and fume about having to go to the dentist and other unpleasant tasks then I said to myself this is silly you know the unpleasantness involved before you make the decision to go if the unpleasantness is all that important to cause so much concern and not worth the worry involved you can simply decide not to go but if the decision is that the trip is worth a little unpleasantness and a definite decision is made to go then forget about it consider the risk before the wheel starts turning I used to worry the night before I had to make a speech at a board meeting then I said to myself I'm either going to make the speech or I'm not if the decision is to make it then there's no need in considering not making it or trying to mentally run away from it I've discovered that much nervousness and anxiety is caused by mentally trying to escape or run away from something that you've decided to go through with physically if the decision is made to go through with it not to run away physically why mentally keep considering or hoping for escape I used it to test social Gatherings and go along only to please my wife or for business reasons I went but mentally I resisted it and was usually pretty grumpy and uncommunicative then I decided that if the decision was to go along physically I might as well go along mentally and dismiss all thoughts of resistance last night I not only went to what I would formally have called a stupid social Gathering but I was surprised to find myself thoroughly enjoying it unquote one of the many conversations I had with Business Leaders after the publication of psycho-cybernetics focused on this story I was conducting a seminar for the giant Insurance Corporation Metropolitan Life and on a break one of the top Executives mentioned the story of the man who worried too much after his decisions to me and he said something I believe to be profoundly liberating Dr moth the truth is that there are few inherently right decisions or wrong decisions instead we make decisions then make them right that's what leadership is all about the chairman of the world's largest Ad Agency McCann Erickson Nina decisa in 2000 was named by Fortune Magazine as one of the 50 most powerful women in American Business you can always correct a poor decision but if you do nothing you can never get the time back she says strive for greater decisiveness and finality in small matters to build the evidence shown to your self-image that you are the kind of person who makes a firm decision then ceases to worry over it if in a restaurant with friends do not be the person who agonizes over choices even changes his mind after ordering pick something and close the menu if shopping pick and buy try this mental training exercise consider creating a useful little mental picture or mental movie to use immediately after reaching a decision whether an important business or personal decision choosing the golf club to use or picking a tie to wear with your tan sports jacket in the 2000 presidential elections in a different context vice president Al Gore became so famous for overusing the word lockbox the television comedy programs and imitators had weeks of fun with it lockbox is a good visualization for this as soon as you make a decision see yourself taking all the information concerns and pros and cons you sifted through to make it in a big pile into a storage room putting it all into a large box or container of some kind and locking it shut then see yourself taking a sheet of paper on which the decision is written sealing it in an envelope marking done with today's date and time then putting the envelope in the done file cabinet drawer and locking it away as well finally see yourself brushing your hands off like a man does after doing some kind of satisfying manual labor turning out the light in the storage room and walking out of the dark room into sunlight like the ship sailing from dark into light in the painting given to me by Salvador Dali after viewing this movie a few times for the sake of speed you can cut it up into Stills or slides and view them quickly click click click click prescription number two the secret of focusing only on the Here and Now there is a need to consciously consider goals evaluate progress and construct plans but such thinking needs to occur at appropriate times and places set just for such purposes the rest of the time consciously practice the habit of taking no anxious thought for tomorrow by giving all your attention to the present moment your creative mechanism cannot function or work tomorrow or even a minute from now only right now it can only function in the present today the present moment make plans for tomorrow but don't try to live in tomorrow or in the past creative living means responding and reacting to environment spontaneously your creative mechanism can respond appropriately and successfully to present environment only if you have your full attention upon present environment and give it information concerning what is happening now plan all you want to for the future prepare for it but don't worry about how you will react tomorrow or even five minutes from now your creative mechanism will react appropriately in the now if you pay attention to what is happening now it will do the same tomorrow it cannot react successfully to what may happen only to what is happening I once dined with the president of a large corporation in a very pricey Gourmet restaurant he wolfed his dinner down quickly and still had a plate full of food when I asked him about it he said I never taste food I'm too busy thinking about other more important things well he might as well get his nutrients from a pill someday I imagine it may come to that but there are two troubling things about Mr Dynamo's approach first he is denying himself the great pleasure of a fine dining experience of sipping the wine tasting each morsel relishing how perfectly prepared is the cut of meat how crisp and fresh the tomato one can assume he misses out on many other sensual enjoyments of life as well second his preoccupation is a conceit not a genuine display of superior commitment executive discipline entrepreneurial Zeal or time efficiency people cannot function at their best if moving at the fastest possible speed all the time without relief or recovery it is a safe wager that he rarely is in the moment fully focused and involved with only one thing or one person and while that may impress others with his busyness it will not lead to maximum utilization of his wisdom and capability the following morning based on my diagnosis I called my broker and sold the shares of stock I held in the company captained by this fellow you will have a far more enjoyable life and be a far more effective individual if you learn to mentally slow yourself down enough to savor your experiences try this mental training exercise after you have left a place such as a restaurant or shop stop and see how much of it you can recall and describe in copious exacting detail in order to sharpen your powers of observation for this challenge you will automatically slow yourself down and be more there Wherever You Are if you've read the accounts of the fictional yet fact-based detective Sherlock Holmes you know that he demonstrated remarkable Observatory powers recalling and analyzing the minutest details in one of these stories the author Arthur Conan Doyle has the Dr Watson character say to Holmes it seems obvious you're a faculty of observation and your peculiar facility for deduction are due to your own systematic training Doyle knew that the person he modeled homes after his pathology professor at Edinburgh University was well known for his extraordinary powers of observation and had taken great pains to train his mind to capture all the minute detail of a scene and experience or a person prescription number three try to do only one thing at a time another cause of confusion as well as the resulting feelings of nervousness hurry and anxiety is the Absurd habit of trying to do many things at one time the student studies and watches TV simultaneously the business person instead of concentrating on and only trying to do the one letter that he is presently dictating is thinking in the back of his mind of all the things he should accomplish today or perhaps this week and unconsciously trying mentally to accomplish them all at once The Habit is particularly Insidious because it is seldom recognized for what it is when we feel jittery worried or anxious in thinking of the great amount of work that lies before us the jittery feelings are not caused by the work but by our mental attitude which is I ought to be able to do this all at once we become nervous because we are trying to do the impossible and thereby making futility and frustration inevitable the truth is that we can only do one thing at a time realizing this fully convincing ourselves of this simple and obvious truth enables us to mentally stop trying to do the things that lie next and to concentrate all our awareness all our responsiveness on this one thing we are doing now when we work with this attitude we are relaxed we are free from the feelings of hurry and anxiety and we are able to concentrate and think at our best if you watch much football on television you've seen receivers drop balls that pass right through their hands and hear the commentators explain that he was running before he caught the ball or he must have heard Footsteps in other words instead of being totally focused on catching and securing the ball he was worrying about other players converging on him where he would go once he had the ball even prematurely moving his body away from the ball there's a relatively new word for this in the occupational World multitasking and for most people most of the time it's an empty conceit be careful whom you emulate the herd or the leader most of us feel hurried and harried said Dr Gilkey because we form a false mental picture of our duties obligations and responsibilities there seemed to be a dozen different things pressing in on us at any given moment a dozen different things to do a dozen different problems to solve a dozen different strains to endure no matter how hurried or harried our existence may be said Dr Gilkey this mental picture is entirely false even on the busiest day the crowded Hours come to us one moment at a time no matter how many problems tasks or strains we Face they always come to us in single file which is the only way they can come to get a true mental picture he suggested visualizing an hourglass with the many grains of sand dropping one by one this mental picture will bring emotional Poise just as the false mental picture will bring emotional unrest another similar mental device that I have found very helpful to my patients is telling them this your success mechanism can help you do any job perform any task solve any problem think of yourself as feeding jobs and problems to your success mechanism as a scientist feeds a problem to an electronic brain the hopper to your success mechanism can handle only one job at a time just as an electronic brain cannot give the right answer if three different problems are mixed up and fed in at the same time neither can your own success mechanism ease off on the pressure stop trying to cram into the Machinery more than one job at a time purchase an hourglass and place it where you work most of the time where it will catch your eye often place a small placard on it or next to it on which you have written one grain at a time prescription number four sleep on it if you've been wrestling with a problem all day without making any apparent progress try dismissing it from your mind and putting off making a decision until you've had a chance to sleep on it remember that your creative mechanism works best when there is not too much interference from your conscious eye in sleep the creative mechanism has an ideal opportunity to work independently of conscious interference if you have previously started the wheels turning remember the fairy story about the Shoemaker and the elves the Shoemaker found that if he cut out the leather and laid out the patterns before retiring little elves came and actually put the shoes together for him while he was sleeping many creative workers have used a very similar technique Mrs Thomas a Edison has said that each evening her husband would go over in his mind those things which he hoped to accomplish the next day sometimes he would make a list of the jobs he wanted to do and problems he hoped to solve Edison's well-known cat naps were far more than Mere respites from fatigue Joseph Rossman in the psychology of invention says when stumped by something he would stretch out in his Menlo workshop and half dozing get an idea from his dream mind to help him around the difficulty Henry Ward Beecher once preached every day for 18 months his method he kept a number of ideas hatching and each night before retiring would select an incubating idea and Stir It Up by thinking intensely about it the next morning it would have fitted itself together for a sermon prescription number five relax while you work try this mental training exercise in chapter 4 you learned how to induce physical and mental relaxation while resting continue with the daily practice in relaxation and you will become more and more proficient in the meantime you can induce something of that relaxed feeling and the relaxed attitude while going about your daily activities if you will form the habit of mentally remembering the nice relaxed feeling that you induced stop occasionally during the day it need only take a moment and remember in detail the sensations of relaxation remember how your arms felt your legs back neck face sometimes forming a mental picture of yourself lying in bed or sitting relaxed and limp in an easy chair helps to recall the relaxed Sensations mentally repeating to yourself several times I feel more and more relaxed also helps practice this remembering Faithfully several times each day you'll be surprised at how much it reduces fatigue and how much better you are able to handle situations by relaxing and maintaining a relaxed attitude you remove those excessive states of concern tension and anxiety which interfere with the efficient operation of your creative mechanism in time your relaxed attitude will become a habit and you will no longer need to consciously practice it Stressless success success without stress is in one sense as foolish an idea as weight loss without deprivation however the popular Axiom no pain no gain is just as foolish an idea you were not intended to suffer and struggle mightily as if pushing a giant boulder up the side of a steep Mountain for every accomplishment or satisfaction in life believing not to be true fact or moral imperative is a severely limiting belief an opinion that guarantees you much misery throughout this chapter and elsewhere in this program I have used the terms creative mechanism automatic creative mechanism and Servo mechanism interchangeably and I want to take a moment to clarify things this mechanism has the ability to do much of the work you struggle to do through furrowed brow conscious thought worry calculation and teeth gritted willpower and it can do so with zero stress for you you must learn to direct it and trust it to delegate to it and then let go General George S Patton said never tell people how to do things tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity The Identical leadership principle applies to your relationship with your creative mechanism tell it what to do let it pleasantly surprise you with its ingenuity think of this in terms of two executive Styles macro management and micromanagement the executives I have seen age on the job are the micromanagers even though they have armies of competent people at their beck and call they cannot delegate even a trivial task like Purchasing Office Supplies without micromanaging every detail of the Endeavor and second guessing the person charged with the task Executives who can carry great responsibility without quickly becoming gray-haired and stooped over physically mentally and emotionally learned to delegate and let go striving to most accurately Express their intentions and objectives then relying on a well-selected associate to carry out their Vision or directive the micromanager often inhibits the growth and prosperity of the organization the macro manager often liberates it similarly you are well advised not to micromanage your Servo mechanism such fussing over every detail is not necessary and often even counterproductive your job is to most accurately communicate your target that communication determines whether your Servo mechanism operates as an automatic success or failure mechanism by all means let it do its work there's no good reason for both of you hiking the very same Trail my wife Anne had the to me odd habit of cleaning the house before the cleaning person arrived on Wednesdays I'm told Anne shares this habit with a great many women the reason I say it is odd is that we have two people doing the same work I wouldn't hire a driver to show for me through the congested streets of Manhattan than have him sit in the passenger seat while I drive myself why would you clean your house then hire a cleaning person to clean what you've just cleaned I urge you don't hire your Servo mechanism to act on an imperative then run around getting in its way trying to do its work before during and after it does chapter seven you can acquire the habit of happiness El doctoro wrote most people are quiet in the world and live in it tentatively as if it were not their own I just want to be happy is a common answer when people are asked about their goals in life mostly this is just an excuse for not having given goals serious thought they seek to escape into the vague and indefinable rather than confront the specific and measurable however there is a practical approach to happiness in this chapter I will discuss the subject of Happiness not from a philosophical but from a medical standpoint Dr John a Schindler's definition of happiness is a state of mind in which our thinking is Pleasant a good share of the time from a medical standpoint and also from an ethical standpoint I do not believe that simple definition can be improved on it is what we are talking about in this chapter happiness is good medicine happiness is native to the human mind and its physical machine we think better perform better feel better and are healthier when we are happy even our physical sense organs work better Russian psychologist tested people when they were thinking Pleasant and unpleasant thoughts he found that when thinking pleasant thoughts they could see taste smell and hear better and they could detect finer differences in touch Dr William Bates proved that eyesight improves immediately when the individual is thinking pleasant thoughts or visualizing Pleasant scenes psychosomatic medicine has proved that our stomach's liver heart and all of our internal organs function better when we are happy medical traditionalists previously resistant to admitting direct connection between improving state of mind and curing illness were swayed by the publisher of the Saturday evening post Norman Cousins now famous battle with cancer in which he made use of humor therapy sessions including viewing videotapes of The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton in his hospital room Mr cousin's remarkable and instructive experiences are detailed in his book anatomy of an illness Dr Bernie Siegel has done outstanding work in the area of Happiness therapy and I suggest reading his books or hearing him lecture if the opportunity arises Dr Schindler has said that unhappiness is the sole cause of all psychosomatic ills and that happiness is the only cure the very word disease means a state of unhappiness dis ease common misconceptions about happiness happiness is not something that is earned or deserved happiness is not a moral issue any more than the circulation of the blood is a moral issue both are necessary to health and well-being happiness is simply a state of mind in which our thinking is Pleasant a good share of the time if you wait until you deserve to think pleasant thoughts you are likely to think unpleasant thoughts concerning your own unworthiness happiness is not the reward of virtue said Spinoza but virtue itself nor do we Delight in happiness because we restrain our lusts but on the contrary because we Delight in it therefore we are able to restrain them unquote the pursuit of happiness is not selfish many sincere people are deterred from seeking happiness because they feel that it would be selfish or wrong unselfishness does make for happiness for it not only gets our minds directed outward away from ourselves and our introspection our faults sins troubles unpleasant thoughts or pride in our goodness but it also enables us to express ourselves creatively and fulfill ourselves in helping others one of the most pleasant thoughts to any human being is the thought that he is needed that he is important enough and competent enough to help and to add to the happiness of some other human being however if we make a moral issue out of happiness and conceive of it as something to be earned as a sort of reward for being unselfish we are very apt to feel guilty about wanting happiness happiness comes from being and acting unselfishly as a natural accompaniment to the being and acting not as a payoff or prize if we are rewarded for being unselfish the next logical step is to assume that the more self-abnegating and miserable we make ourselves the more happy we will be the premise leads to the Absurd conclusion that the way to be happy is to be unhappy there is a line the best way I know to help the poor is not to be one of them whether or not that is the best way it is difficult to see how you help those in poverty by reducing your own success or standard of living unless you erroneously believe in a universe of compensating balances rather than unlimited abundance similarly you cannot possibly help the unhappy by being one of them a woman once told me my co-workers are both so miserable and frustrated in their jobs so visibly unhappy at work I feel bad about enjoying being there and doing my work and fight my tendency to go about doing things cheerily so as not to annoy them or make them feel worse happiness is not meted out in compensating balances by being happy she does not consume such an unfair and selfish quantity of finite available happiness that her co-workers are deprived of their share by consciously suppressing and reducing her happiness she does not make available a new supply of happiness that is automatically transferred to them happiness or Prosperity is not a commodity like the last candy bar on a deserted island populated by three Castaways or the last hour of oxygen in a sealed vault in which several people have been locked up happiness lies in the present not in the future we are never living but only hoping to live and looking forward always to being happy it is inevitable that we never are so said philosopher Pascal I have found that one of the most common causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan they do not live nor do they enjoy life now but wait for some future event or occurrence they will be happy when they get married when they get a better job when they get the house paid for when they get to Children through college when they have completed some task or won some victory invariably they are disappointed happiness is a mental habit a mental attitude and if it is not learned and practiced in the present it is never experienced it cannot be made contingent on solving some external problem when one problem is solved another appears to take its place life is a series of problems if you are to be happy at all you must be happy period not happy because of happiness is a mental habit which can be cultivated and developed most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be said Abraham Lincoln happiness is purely internal says psychologist Dr Matthew n Chapel it is produced not by objects but by ideas thoughts and attitudes which can be developed and constructed by the individual's own activities irrespective of the environment unquote no one other than a saint can be 100 happy all the time and as George Bernard Shaw quipped we would probably be miserable if we were but we can by taking thought and making a simple decision be happy and think pleasant thoughts a large share of the time regarding that multitude of little events and circumstances of daily living that now makes us unhappy to a large extent we react to Petty annoyances frustrations and the like with grumpiness dissatisfaction resentment and irritability purely out of habit we have practiced reacting that way so long it has become habitual much of this habitual unhappiness reaction originated because of some event that we interpreted as a blow to our self-esteem a driver honks at us unnecessarily someone interrupts and doesn't pay attention while we're talking someone doesn't come through for us as we think she should even impersonal events can be interpreted and reacted to as affronts to our self-esteem the bus we wanted to catch had to be late it had to go in rain when we planned to play golf traffic had to get into a snarl just when we needed to catch the plane we react with anger resentment self-pity or in other words unhappiness a chief cause of unhappiness is taking things personally that are not personal at all stop letting things push you around the best cure I have found for this sort of thing is to use unhappiness's own weapon self-esteem have you ever been to a TV show and seen the Master of Ceremonies manipulate the audience I asked a patient he brings out a sign that says Applause and everyone applauds he brings out another that says laughter and everyone laughs they act like sheep as if they were slaves and meekly react as they are told to react you are acting the same way you are letting outward events and other people dictate to you how you shall feel and how you shall react you are acting as an obedient slave and reacting when circumstances signal to you be angry get upset now is the time to feel unhappy learning the happiness habit you become a master instead of a slave or as Robert Louis Stevenson said the habit of being happy enables one to be freed or largely freed from the domination of outward conditions your opinion can add to unhappy events even in regard to tragic conditions and the most adverse environment we can usually manage to be happier if not completely happy by not adding to The Misfortune of our own feelings of self-pity resentment and our own adverse opinions how can I be happy the woman of an alcoholic husband asked me I don't know I said but you can be happier by resolving not to add resentment and self-pity to your misfortune how can I possibly be happy asked a businessman I've just lost two hundred thousand dollars in the stock market I'm ruined and disgraced you can be happier I said by not adding your own opinion to the facts it is a fact that you lost two hundred thousand dollars it is your opinion that you are ruined and disgraced I then suggest that he memorize a saying of Epictetus which has always been a favorite of mine men are Disturbed said the sage not by the things that happen but by their opinion of the things that happen happiness versus unhappiness equals facts versus opinions when I announced that I wanted to be a doctor I was told that this could not be because my folks had no money it was a fact my mother had no money it was only an opinion that I could never be a doctor later I was told I could never take postgraduate courses in Germany and that it was impossible for a young plastic surgeon to hang out his own shingle and go into business for himself in New York I did all these things and one of the things that helped me was that I kept reminding myself that all these Impossibles were opinions not facts I not only managed to reach my goals but I was happy in the process even when I had to pawn my Overcoat to buy medical books and do without lunch in order to purchase cadavers I was in love with a beautiful girl she married someone else these were facts but I kept reminding myself that it was merely my opinion that this was a catastrophe and that life was not worth living I not only got over it but it turned out it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me in the years that have passed since first writing the original psycho-cybernetics book I have often been asked by interviewers or audience members if I could boil psycho-cybernetics down to one idea or one statement or one skill that is the Make It or Break It factor in successful versus unsuccessful living when first asked this I caught myself taking it personally and becoming a bit annoyed how dare they trivialize all my work by suggesting it might be summarized on the head of a pin of course that was me falsely interpreting people's understandable desire to simplify the complex not any disrespect to me personally or to my work and fortunately I practiced what I preach used rational thought and prevented this from being a blood drawing needle stuck into my self-image which not coincidentally brings me to the answer to the one big thing question the essence of psycho-cybernetics is the accurate calm and ultimately automatic separation of fact from fiction fact from opinion actual circumstance from magnified obstacle so that our actions and reactions are solidly based on truth not our own or others opinions the attitude that makes for happiness it has been pointed out earlier that since humans are goal-striving beings they function naturally and normally when oriented toward a positive goal and striving toward a desirable goal happiness is a symptom of normal natural functioning and when humans are functioning as goal Strivers they tend to feel fairly happy regardless of circumstances my young business executive friend was very unhappy because he had lost two hundred thousand dollars Thomas a Edison lost a laboratory worth millions in a fire with no insurance what in the world will you do someone asked we will start rebuilding tomorrow morning said Edison he maintained an aggressive attitude he was still goal-oriented despite his Misfortune and because he did maintain an aggressive goal-striving attitude it is a good bet that he was never very unhappy about his loss looking back on my own life I can see that some of the happiest years were those when I was a struggling medical student living from hand to mouth in my early days of practice many times I was hungry I was cold and ill-clad I worked hard a minimum of about 12 hours a day many times I did not know from month to month where the money was coming from to pay my rent but I did have a goal I had a consuming desire to reach it and a determined persistence that kept me working toward it I related all this to the young business executive and suggested that the real cause of his unhappy feeling was not that he had lost two hundred thousand dollars but that he had lost his goal he had lost his aggressive attitude and was yielding passively rather than reacting aggressively I must have been crazy he told me later to let you convince me that losing the money was not what was making me unhappy but I'm awfully glad that you did he stopped moaning about his Misfortune faced about got himself another goal and started working toward it within five years he not only had more money than ever before in his life but for the first time he was in a business that he enjoyed here's a prescription to help you along form the habit of reacting aggressively and positively toward threats and problems form the habit of keeping goal oriented all the time regardless of what happens do this by practicing a positive aggressive attitude both in actual everyday situations and in your imagination see yourself in your imagination taking positive intelligent action towards solving a problem or reaching a goal see yourself reacting to threats not by running away or evading them but by meeting them dealing with them grappling with them in an aggressive and intelligent manner most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves either in imagination or practice said bull were litten the English novelist take responsibility for your own happiness the idea that happiness or keeping one's thoughts Pleasant most of the time can be deliberately and systematically cultivated by practicing in a more or less cold-blooded manner strikes many of my patients as rather incredible if not ludicrous when I first suggested yet experience has shown not only that this can be done but this is about the only way that the habit of Happiness can be cultivated in the first place happiness isn't something that happens to you it is something you yourself do and determine if you wait for happiness to catch up with you just happen or be brought to you by others you are likely to have a long wait no one can decide what your thoughts shall be but yourself if you wait until circumstances justify your thinking pleasant thoughts you're also likely to wait forever every day is a mixture of Good and Evil no day or circumstance is completely 100 percent good the elements and facts in the world and in our personal lives at all times can justify either a pessimistic or grumpy Outlook or an optimistic and happy Outlook depending on our choice it is largely a matter of selection attention and decision nor is it a matter of being intellectually honest or dishonest good is as real as evil it is merely a matter of what we choose to give primary attention to and what thoughts we hold in the mind in the Charming David Mamet film State and Main released in early 2001 a young woman with a happy Outlook is engaged in conversation with a writer from the big city somewhat bemused by her small town life you make your own fun he asks it is only fun if you make it she patiently explains if someone else does it for you it's entertainment similarly we can make our own happiness because we can choose our own thoughts and even choose our own self-image and we are well advised to do so rather than depending on someone else to do it for us a Salesman who needed surgery on his thoughts rather than his nose in my book for my medical colleagues new faces new Futures published back in 1936. I included a case history about a Salesman named Arthur Williams who was involved in an automobile accident while traveling in his New England sales territory a country doctor took care of him and patched up his severely broken nose when the bandages were removed his nose had reset in a very distorted manner it was humped above depressed in the middle and twisted to one side when Mr Williams resumed work he soon became conscious of buyers seeming to focus their Gaze on his disfigurement to his and their embarrassment they seemed eager to rush through meetings with him his sales volume declined rapidly after several months of this Mr Williams determined he needed to correct this problem and I operated on his nose successfully completing plastic surgery that restored his pre-accident appearance it should come as no surprise that his self-confidence returned and a natural upturn in his sales followed as day to night Arthur Williams had a legitimate physical disfigurement not exaggerated by his own negative imagination and he accurately assessed others reactions to it and in my opinion acted accordingly in seeking reconstructive and cosmetic surgery however for every Arthur Williams there are a hundred men and women who suffer similarly not because of others actual reactions to them but because of their own negative imaginings Robert Benjamin gave himself Arthur Williams problem not in an auto accident but inside his own self-image a young salesman Mr Benjamin had made up his mind to quit his job when he consulted me about an operation on his nose his nose was slightly larger than normal but certainly not repulsive as he insisted he felt that prospects were secretly laughing at his nose or repulsed because of it it was a fact that he had a large nose it was a fact that three customers had called in to complain of his rude and hostile Behavior it was a fact that his boss had placed him on probation and that he hadn't made a sale in two weeks instead of an operation on his nose I suggested he performed surgery on his own thinking for 21 days he was to cut out all these negative thoughts he was to completely ignore all the negative and unpleasant facts in his situation and deliberately Focus his attention upon pleasant thoughts we agreed on some specific visualizations and affirmations quite honestly I know that he agreed to the experiment with little belief it would alter anything he was pacifying me in order to schedule the surgery he wanted it is interesting that a person does not necessarily have to believe in the efficacy of psycho-cybernetics in order to test its Concepts and find them useful at the end of 21 days Mr Benjamin not only felt better but he found that prospects and customers had become much more friendly his sails were steadily increasing and his boss had publicly congratulated him in a sales meeting he decided to postpone his surgery pattern interrupt in her book success is an inside job motivational speaker Lee miltier describes this interesting technique quote when your actions or performance does not meet your expectations don't belittle yourself with negative self-talk you must replace those images of yourself that do not create value in your life and which you do not want to continue as an example how many times have you caught yourself saying I'm always late now think about what you're programming yourself to be late in the future instead of reinforcing The Unwanted habits say to yourself cancel that's not like me next time I'll then you want to follow up immediately with statements to imprint a new program in this case that's not like me to be late I always leave 10 minutes early and I'm always on time unquote Lee points out this is not an instant fix however we do need to catch and cancel this reoccurring habitual affirmation of unwanted or unproductive Behavior to interrupt unhelpful patterns of thought just as I cajoled and led Mr Benjamin into doing if you cancel the particular reoccurring piece of programming often and repetitively enough the automatic failure mechanism will stop going to all the trouble of sending it up to the surface your self-image will get the message no point in giving out this information anymore if all she's going to do every time is yell cancel at us let's try something else you see we are always engaged in an undercurrent of running dialogue with our self-image through the use of the pattern interrupt technique and emphatic positive affirmation repeated each time you become your own authoritative Source repetitively programming the self-image remember authoritative Source repetition and intensity are the keys to this programming if happiness is ultimately the product of our collection of habits of thought then the skill of altering a particular habit is extremely useful Lee miltier has appeared as a guest expert on hundreds of radio talk shows to talk about habit busting and has her own psycho-cybernetics based audio cassette program on this subject which you may want to Avail yourself of an exercise for canceling negative thoughts martial arts movie star Bruce Lee had an exercise for reading himself of negative thoughts he visualized himself writing them down on a piece of paper crumpling up the paper lighting it on fire and burning it to ashes actor and entrepreneur Chuck Norris a close friend of the late Bruce Lee takes Lee's exercise even further in his book The Secret power within you Norris wrote I actually write down on the scrap of paper whatever negative thoughts I have and then burn them when I dispose of the ashes the thoughts too are removed from my mind unquote I would point out that these people Lee miltier a successful businesswoman and Chuck Norris a martial arts practitioner and very successful actor producer and businessman are not heads in the clouds type people not childish or foolish at all they are pragmatists of the highest order who have found simple practical things to do to take control of their thoughts in a purposeful manner to be happy we must make a sacrifice a sacrifice yes you may need to sacrifice skepticism cynicism old habits and beliefs which even though they do not serve you well are comfortable in Daniel defoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe when Crusoe is Shipwrecked on the deserted island he makes his camp near the place where he washed ashore but as he began exploring the entire Island he soon recognized that for all practical purposes he had camped on the wrong side of the island the opposite side offered a better supply of food it was easier to create shelter there and so forth but even though Crusoe saw this to be true he was still reluctant to move we cannot let our reluctance to move imprison our self-image and serve a mechanism when our rational thought tells us something is not working for us we have to move forward to try something else a popular Axiom defines Insanity as the insistence on doing the same thing over and over while hoping for different results my friend you are not a tree deeply rooted in any one psychological or behavioral Place unable to move to a sunnier spot like Crusoe you may be reluctant to uproot yourself but you can a scientist tests the theory of happiness and uproots himself from unhappiness Dr Elwood Wooster in his book Body Mind and Spirit relates the testimony of a world famous scientist quote up to my 50th year I was an unhappy ineffective man none of the works on which my reputation rests were published I lived in a constant sense of Gloom and failure perhaps my most painful symptom was a blinding headache which recurred usually two days of the week during which I could do nothing I had read some of the literature of new thought which at the time appeared to be Buncombe and some statement of William James on the directing of attention to what is good and useful and ignoring the rest one saying of his stuck in my mind we might have to give up our philosophy of evil but what is that in comparison with gaining a life of goodness or words to that effect hitherto these doctrines had seemed to me only mystical theories but realizing that my soul was sick and growing worse and that my life was intolerable I determined to put them to the proof I decided to limit the period of conscious effort to one month as I thought this time long enough to prove its value or its worthlessness to me during this month I resolved to impose certain restrictions on my thoughts if I thought of the past I would try to let my mind dwell only on its happy pleasing incidents the bright days of my childhood the inspiration of my teachers and the slow revelation of my life work in thinking of the present I would deliberately turn my attention to its desirable elements my home the opportunities my solitude gave me to work and so on and I resolved to make the utmost use of these opportunities and to ignore the fact that they seem to lead to nothing in thinking of the future I determined to regard every worthy and possible ambition as within my grasp ridiculous as this seemed at the time in view of what has come to me since I see that the only defect of my plan was that it aimed too low and did not include enough unquote he then tells how his headaches ceased within one week and how he felt happier and better than ever before in his life but he adds the outward changes of my life resulting from my change of thought have surprised me more than the inward changes yet they spring from the latter there were certain eminent men for example whose recognition I deeply craved the foremost of those wrote me out of a clear sky and invited me to become his assistant my Works have all been published and the foundation has been created to publish all that I may write in the future the men with whom I have worked have been helpful and Cooperative toward me chiefly on account of my changed disposition formally they would not have endured me as I look back over all these changes it seems to me that in some blind way I stumbled on a path of life and set forces to working for me which before were against me unquote I'm certain Dr worcester's book is long out of print his story is only still significant because of the heavy skepticism he held for the ideas he experimented with which ultimately set him free while still in practice I have many times given someone a psycho-cybernetics prescription a psychologic experiment to try for just 30 days with the promise that if they still wanted the cosmetic surgery performed after doing the experiment I would do so in these cases these people often followed my instructions as best they could grudgingly and skeptically initially merely with the intent of pacifying me so that they could get what they wanted some physical deformity magnified in their imagination to Epic Proportions removed or altered even with skepticism in the way these techniques performed noticeable results and many times the discoveries they made about themselves and their thinking were as clear to them as to Worcester or to the aforementioned Benjamin and after 30 days they no longer wanted surgery how an inventor used happy thoughts Professor Elmer Gates of the Smithsonian institution was one of the most successful inventors this country has ever known and a recognized genius he made a daily practice of calling up Pleasant ideas and memories and believed that this helped him in his work if a person wants to improve himself he said let him summon those finer feelings of benevolence and usefulness which are called up only now and then let him make this a regular exercise like swinging dumbbells let him gradually increase the time devoted to these psychological gymnastics and at the end of a month he will find the change in himself surprising the alteration will be apparent in his thoughts and actions morally speaking the man will be a great Improvement of his former self unquote Gates's use of the term psychological gymnastics led to identifying the various exercises and techniques presented in the original book this book my other books and my 12-week home study course as mental training exercises while the analogy of self-image to muscle is not precisely correct the deliberate daily practice of certain techniques such as the construction and playing of positive mental movies in the theater of your mind relaxation and so forth does strengthen your self-image and does ultimately lead to truly automatic psycho-cybernetic responses to situations the present-day rule for adequate physical exercise is 30-minute sessions at least three days a week I can assure you give that same minimum investment to psycho-cybernetics gymnastics and you will quite literally change your life how to install the happiness habit our self-image and our habits tend to go together change one and you automatically change the other the word habit originally meant a garment or clothing we still speak of riding habits and abilments this gives us an insight into the true nature of habit our habits are literally garments worn by our personalities they are not accidental or happenstance we have them because they fit us they are consistent with our self-image and our entire personality pattern when we consciously and deliberately develop new and better habits our self-image tends to outgrow the old habits and grow into the new pattern I can see many patients cringe when I mention changing habitual action patterns or acting out new Behavior patterns until they become automatic they confuse habit with addiction and addiction is something you feel compelled to something that causes severe withdrawal symptoms treatment of addiction is beyond the scope of this program if you do suffer from a physical chemical or even emotional addiction the most important things that I can say to you relative to your self-image is that the decision and action to seek help is not an admission of weakness but a special courageous kind of strength habits on the other hand are merely reactions and responses that we have learned to perform automatically without having to think or decide they are performed by our Servo mechanism fully 95 percent of our Behavior feeling and response is Habitual The Pianist does not decide which keys to strike the dancer does not decide which foot to move where the reaction is automatic and unthinking in much the same way our attitudes emotions and beliefs tend to become habitual in the past we learned that certain attitudes and ways of feeling and thinking were appropriate to certain situations now we tend to think feel and act the same way whenever we encounter what we interpret as the same sort of situation arguments between long-time spouses or business partners become habitual you say this to me I say this to you and back and forth reenacting The Identical script responding in exactly the same way to the same stimulus what we need to understand is that these habits unlike addictions can be modified changed or reversed simply by taking the trouble to make a conscious decision and then by practicing or acting out the new response or behavior chapter 8. ingredients of the success type personality and how to acquire them James Allen wrote you are today where your thoughts have brought you you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you diagnosis destined for success just as a doctor learns to diagnose disease from certain symptoms failure and success can also be diagnosed the reason is that people do not simply find success or come to failure they carry the seeds around in their personality and character they plant them with their habits of thought and action I have found one of the most effective means of helping people achieve an adequate or successful personality is to First give them a graphic picture of what the successful personality looks like remember the creative guidance mechanism within you is a goal striving mechanism and the first requisite for using it is to have a clear-cut goal or Target a great many people want to improve themselves and long for a better personality but they have no clear-cut idea of the direction in which Improvement lies nor what constitutes a good personality a good personality is one that enables you to deal effectively and appropriately with environment and reality and to gain satisfaction from reaching the goals that are important to you time and again I have seen confused and unhappy people straighten themselves out when they were given a goal to shoot for and a straight course to follow there was the advertising man in his early 40s for example who felt strangely insecure and dissatisfied with himself just after receiving an important promotion new roles require new self-images it doesn't make sense he said I've worked for this and dreamed about it it's just what I've always wanted I know I can do the work and yet for some reason my self-confidence is shaken I suddenly wake up as if from a dream and ask myself what in the world is a small potato like me doing in a job like this he had become super sensitive to his appearance and thought perhaps that his weak chin might be the cause of his discomfort I don't look like a business executive he said he felt plastic surgery might be the answer to his problem there was the wife and mother whose children were running her crazy and whose husband irritated her so much that she engaged in a shouting tirade at him at least once a week for little cause what is the matter with me she asked my children are really nice kids I should be proud of my husband is a really nice guy and I'm always ashamed of myself afterwards she felt that a facelift might give her more confidence and cause her family to appreciate her more the trouble with these people and many more like them is not their physical appearance but their self-image they find themselves in a new role and are not sure what kind of person they are supposed to be in order to live up to that role or they have never developed a clear-cut self-image of themselves in any role the picture of success in this chapter I'm going to give you the same prescription that I would give you should you come to my office I have found that an easy to remember picture of the successful personality is contained in the letters of the word success itself the success type personality is composed of sense of direction you understanding C courage C charity or compassion e esteem s self-confidence and S self-acceptance the first letter of success is sense of direction the advertising executive straightened himself out and regained his confidence within a short time once he saw clearly that for several years he had been motivated by strong personal goals that he wanted to attain including securing his present position these goals which were important to him kept him on the track however once he got the promotion he ceased to think in terms of what he wanted but in terms of what others expected of him or whether he was living up to other people's goals and standards he was like a mountain climber who as long as he looked upward to the peak he wished to scale felt and acted courageously and boldly but when he got to the top he began to look down and became afraid he was now on the defensive defending his present position rather than acting like a goals driver and going on the offensive to attain his goal he regained control when he set himself new goals and began to think in terms of what do I want out of this job what do I want to achieve where do I want to go in a television program about psycho-cybernetics we put the host on a bicycle and instructed him to put both feet up on the pedals and stay stationary in one place try it yourself it can't be done functionally a person is somewhat like a bicycle a bicycle maintains its Poise and equilibrium only as long as it is going forward towards something similarly we are engineered as goal-seeking mechanisms we are built to conquer environment solve problems achieve goals and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve people who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no worthwhile personal goals here's a prescription to help you along earlier in this program we covered a number of ways to put your imagination to work to come up with a new or more clearly defined Target or targets for you to focus on and assign your automatic success mechanism this is a good time to do so get yourself a goal worth working for better still get yourself a project decide what you want out of a situation always have something ahead of you to look forward to to work for and hope for look forward not backward develop a Nostalgia for the future instead of for the past The Nostalgia for the future can keep you youthful even your body doesn't function well when you stop being a goals driver and have nothing to look forward to this is the reason that very often a person dies shortly after retirement when you're not goal striving not looking forward you're not really living in addition to your purely personal goals have at least one impersonal goal or cause which you can identify yourself with get interested in some project to help your fellow man not out of a sense of Duty but because you want to the second letter of success is you understanding understanding depends on good communication communication is vital to any guidance system or computer you cannot react appropriately if the information you act on is faulty or misunderstood many doctors believe that confusion is the basic element in neurosis to deal effectively with a problem you must have some understanding of its true nature most of our failures in human relations are due to misunderstandings we expect other people to react and respond and come to the same conclusions as we do from a given set of facts or circumstances we should remember what we said in an earlier chapter people react to their own mental images not to things as they are most of the time others reactions or positions are not taken to make us suffer to be hard-headed or malicious but because they understand and interpret the situation differently from us they are merely responding appropriately to what to them seems to be the truth about the situation to give others credit for being sincere if mistaken rather than willful and malicious can do much to smooth out human relations and bring about better understanding between people ask yourself how does this appear to him how does she interpret this situation how does he feel about it try to understand why he might act the way he does fact versus opinion many times we create confusion when we add our own opinion to facts and come up with the wrong conclusion fact a husband cracks his knuckles opinion the wife concludes he does that because he thinks it will annoy me fact the husband sucks his teeth after eating opinion the wife concludes if he had any regard for me he would improve his manners fact two friends are Whispering when you walk up Suddenly they stop talking and look somewhat embarrassed opinion they must have been gossiping about me the wife if able to understand that her husband's annoying mannerisms were not deliberate and willful acts on his part for the purpose of annoying her if able to stop reacting as if she had been personally insulted is able to pause analyze the situation and select an appropriate even productive response be willing to see the truth often we color incoming sensory data by our own fears anxieties or desires but to deal effectively with environment we must be willing to acknowledge the truth about it only when we understand what it is can we respond appropriately we must be able to see the truth and accept it good or bad Bertrand Russell said one reason Hitler Lost World War II was that he did not fully understand the situation bearers of bad news were punished soon no one dared to tell him the truth not knowing the truth he could not act appropriately we can be glad this occurred the shoot the messenger mentality has doomed any number of military leaders Business Leaders coaches parents it's been widely reported that Saddam Hussein practices this with much the same result as Hitler's literally shooting bearers of bad news is horrific enough but the crime of shooting ourselves rather than rationally dealing with accurate information is arguably worse we do not like to admit to ourselves our errors mistakes or shortcomings nor do we like to admit we have been in the wrong we do not like to acknowledge that a situation is other than we would like it to be so we kid ourselves and because we will not see the truth we cannot act appropriately someone has said that it is a good exercise to daily admit one painful fact about ourselves to ourselves the success type personality not only does not cheat and lie to other people he learns to be honest with himself what we call sincerity is itself based on self-understanding and self-honesty for you cannot be sincere when you lie to yourself by rationalizing or telling yourself rational lies you can do this if you accept yet another fundamental premise of psycho-cybernetics to safeguard and strengthen your self-image you are not your mistakes you're tortured backswing and wicked slice does not make you a disgrace to the game of golf let alone a bad inept or unsuccessful person it is only a mechanical and mental mistake that can be corrected a top corporate CEO once told me I've become somewhat famous thanks to several very notable astute decisions but I've made a number of incredibly bad ones too I'm neither my best or my worst decision I am a successful capable executive who makes this fair share of blunders and that's all there is to it when you thoroughly accept that you are not your mistakes you are freed to acknowledge them learn from them set them aside and move on from them without being mired in them here's a prescription to help you along look for and seek out true information concerning yourself your problems other people or the situation whether it is good news or bad news adopt the motto it doesn't matter who's right but what's right an automatic guidance system corrects its course from negative feedback data it acknowledges errors in order to correct them and stay on course so must you admit your mistakes and errors but don't cry over them correct them and go forward in dealing with other people try to see the situation from their point of view as well as your own the third letter of success is C courage having a goal and understanding the situation are not enough you must have the courage to act for only by actions can goals desires and beliefs be translated into realities Admiral William F halsey's personal motto was a quotation from Nelson no Captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy the best defense is a strong offense is a military principal Sid Halsey but its application is wider than War all problems personal National or combat becomes smaller if you don't Dodge them but confront them unquote how can you live more courageously that's a question ably answered by psycho-cybernetics when you systematically strengthen your self-image and understand that you are not your mistakes you find it infinitely easier to take risks without undue worry over what others will think or temporarily appearing foolish if you stumble how can you be more assertive and forceful in advocating your ideas in the workplace how can you more clearly and assertively ask for the order at the conclusion of a sales presentation how can you take to the dance floor even if you've too long believed you have two left feet how can you embark on an entirely new career or evocation late in life when axiomatically it's tough for an old dog to learn new tricks how do you bounce back from severe adversity these are all examples of living courageously and they all require a bulletproof self-image that can stand up under pressure why not bet on yourself nothing in this world is ever absolutely certain or guaranteed often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one's better abilities nor ideas but the courage that one has to bet on ideas to take a calculated risk and to act we often think of courage in terms of heroic Deeds on the battlefield in a shipwreck or during a crisis but everyday living requires courage too standing still failing to act causes people who are faced with a problem to become nervous to feel stymied or trapped and it can bring on a host of physical symptoms I tell such people study the situation thoroughly go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences that can and may follow from each course pick out the course that gives the most promise and go ahead if we wait until we are absolutely certain and sure before we act we will never do anything anytime you act you can be wrong any decision you make can turn out to be the wrong one but we must not let this deter us from going after the goal we want you must daily have the courage to risk making mistakes risk failure risk being humiliated a step in the wrong direction is better than staying on the spot all your life once you're moving forward you can correct your course as you go your automatic guidance system cannot guide you when you're stalled standing still has said that decisiveness is the number one characteristic he looked for in key people to surround himself with and depend on General Norman Schwarzkopf has said that leadership requires making decisions most leaders agree that success comes from decisiveness and course correction not long delays and procrastination to attempt making only Flawless choices few successes are achieved via a straight line from point A to point B from idea to fruition most successes are achieved in a zigzag manner here's a prescription to help you along be willing to make a few mistakes to suffer a little pain to get what you want don't sell yourself short most people said General R.E Chambers once chief of the Army's Psychiatry and neurology consultant division don't know how Brave they really are in fact many potential Heroes both men and women live out their lives in self-doubt if they only knew they had these deep resources it would help give them the self-reliance to meet most problems even a big crisis unquote you've got the resources but you never know you've got them until you act and give them a chance to work for you another helpful suggestion is to practice acting boldly and with courage in regard to Little Things do not wait until you can be a big hero in some dire crisis daily living also requires Courage by practicing courage in little things we develop the power and talent to act courageously in more important matters the fourth letter of success is C charity for a time I gave a lecture titled how to have self-respect in a disrespectful world just as the world of accelerating stress that I observed in the late 1950s and 1960s was a kindergarten compared to today's frenetic Pace the growing lack of Civility and respect I noticed in the 1960s and 1970s was only a modest preview of today's world daily living is a virtual assault on self-respect as the companies we deal with treat us as numbers in the computer individual trades people store clerks waiters and the like are too often rushed harried rude unhappy in their jobs and taking it out on the customer often we cannot even get through to a human being by telephone everywhere as the pace has quickened civility has been sacrificed all this makes my original comments all the more important in my lecture I said that the disrespectful world is made Better or Worse minute by minute for each individual participant in it in a mirror reflection of two things the person's own self-image and respect for others successful personalities have interest in and regard for other people they have a respect for others problems and needs they respect the Dignity of human personality and deal with other people as if they were human beings rather than as Pawns in their own game they recognize that every person is a child of God and is a unique individuality that deserves some dignity and respect it is a psychologic fact that our feelings about ourselves tend to correspond to our feelings about other people when a person begins to feel more charitably about others he invariably begins to feel more charitably toward himself persons who feel that people are not very important cannot have very much deep down respect and regard for themselves one of the best known methods of getting over a feeling of guilt is to stop condemning other people in your own mind stop judging them stop blaming them and stop hating them for their mistakes he will develop a better and more adequate self-image when you begin to feel that other people are more Worthy another reason the charity toward other people is symptomatic of the successful personality is that it means the person is dealing with reality people are important people cannot for long be treated like animals or machines or as pawns to secure personal ends treating everyone with respect is Charity because it is not always instantly individually reciprocated you cannot view it as transactional instead you must see the big picture and act in this manner as a means of strengthening your own self-image and as your contribution to society in general here's a prescription to help you along the prescription for charity is threefold one try to develop a genuine appreciation for people by realizing the truth about them they are children of God unique personalities creative beings two take the trouble to stop and think of the other person's feelings viewpoints desires and needs think more of what the other fellow wants and how he must feel a friend of mine kids his wife by telling her whenever she asks him do you love me yes whenever I stop and think about it there's a lot of Truth in this we cannot feel anything about other people unless we stop and think about them three act as if other people are important and treat them accordingly the fifth letter of success is e esteem many years ago I wrote a contribution to the words to live by feature of This Week Magazine on the words of Carlisle alas the fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself at that time I said of all the traps and pitfalls in life self-disesteem is the deadliest and the hardest to overcome for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands summed up in the phrase it's no use I can't do it the penalty of succumbing to it is heavy both for the individual in terms of material rewards lost and for society in gains and progress unachieved as a doctor I might also point out that defeatism has still another aspect a curious one which is seldom recognized it is more than possible that the words quoted above are Carlisle's own confession of the secret that lay behind his own craggy assertiveness his thunderous temper and waspish voice and his appalling domestic tyranny Carlisle of course was an extreme case but isn't it on those days when we are most subject to the fearful unbelief when we most doubt ourselves and feel inadequate to our task isn't it precisely then that we are most difficult to get along with we simply must get it through our heads that holding a low opinion of ourselves is not a virtue but a vice jealousy for example which is the scourge of many a marriage is nearly always caused by self-doubt persons with adequate self-esteem don't feel hostile towards others they aren't out to prove anything they can see facts more clearly and aren't as demanding in their claims on other people self-doubt is Insidious and gnaws away at the self-image as cancer eats away at the body's organs beware the thief of Happiness the critic Within in her outstanding book liberating everyday genius Dr Mary Elaine Jacobson writes the false self is a powerful adversary one whose sharp tongued admonitions can be heard in every situation of self-doubt a foe that keeps us from our true selves and sometimes distances us from others she also wrote magically when there is no Enemy Within there are far fewer without unquote if there was ever a great sales pitch written for investing time and energy working with psycho-cybernetics and yourself that statement is it in coming chapters I'll again discuss controlling the critic within who is in fact the thief of Happiness self-acceptance self-esteem and peace of mind far more influential than any critics we encounter around us just as the astute corporate president learns she must listen to others opinions in order to move forward she also learns she must exercise caution and discretion about whose opinions she listens to and on what Foundation they are based we must listen to our inner voices but we must exercise caution when the critic within begins to harp and belittle us we should not hesitate to yell stop and send it back to its dark corner properly chastised for doubting us I was once asked in a radio interview if at age 65 when I set out to write have published and popularized the original edition of this book I hadn't thought what makes you think people will care about the thoughts of an elderly plastic surgeon in the Twilight of his career on the workings of the human mind I replied that it had honestly not occurred to me not out of ego but because this was not an impulsive upstart for me but rather the next Progressive step in an entire process I had accomplished the next steps in my imagination many times before preceding in actuality but I said that if my inner critic had dared raised such a preposterously Negative question I would have sat down across from him and read in the Riot Act the poor interviewer undoubtedly went home wondering if he was in the right line of work stuck late at night interviewing a daughtering fool who had imaginary characters and argued with them it might have helped if he had read the book but as any author who gives interviews knows all too well that's frequently not in the cards in any case I'm not at all A bash to have such conversations with myself and you shouldn't be either I believe it is a useful imagination exercise to personalize these enemy thoughts as a Critic who sits across from you and puts you on the spot whom you can Vanquish with the presentation of your reasons why you will succeed here's a prescription to help you along stop carrying around a mental picture of yourself as a person less capable than others by making unfair apples to oranges comparisons celebrate your victories small or large recognize and build on your strengths and continually remind yourself you are not your mistakes the word esteem literally means to appreciate the worth of why do men stand in awe of the Stars the moon the immensity of the sea the beauty of a flower or a Sunset and at the same time downgrade themselves did not the same Creator make us is not the human being the most marvelous creation of all this appreciation of your own worth is not egotism unless you assume that you made yourself and should take some of the credit do not downgrade the product merely because you haven't used it correctly don't childishly blame the product for your own errors like the Schoolboy who said this typewriter can't spell but the biggest secret of self-esteem is this begin to appreciate other people more show respect for any human being merely because he or she is a child of God and therefore a thing of value stop and think when you're dealing with people you're dealing with unique individual creations of the creator of all practice treating other people as if they had value and surprisingly your own self-esteem will go up real self-esteem is not derived from the great things you've done the things you own the mark you've made but from an appreciation of yourself for what you are a child of God when you come to this realization however you must necessarily conclude that all other people are to be appreciated for the same reason the sixth letter of success is s self-confidence confidence is built on an experience of success when we first begin any undertaking we are likely to have little confidence because we have not learned from experience that we can succeed this is true of learning to ride a bicycle speak in public or perform surgery it is literally true that success breeds success even a small success can be used as a stepping stone to a greater one managers of boxers are very careful to match them so they can have a graduated series of successful experiences we can use the same technique starting gradually and experiencing success at first on a small scale another important technique is to form the habit of remembering past successes and forgetting failures this is the way both an electronic computer and the human brain are supposed to operate practice improves skill and success in basketball golf horseshoe pitching or salesmanship but not because repetition has any value in itself if it did we would learn our errors instead of our hits a person learning to pitch horseshoes for example will miss the stake many more times than he will hit it if mere repetition were the answer to improved skill his practice should make him more expert at missing since that is what he has practiced most however although his Mrs May outnumber hits ten to one through practice his misses gradually diminish and his Hits come more and more frequently this is because the computer in his brain remembers and reinforces his successful attempts and forgets the misses this is the way that both an electronic computer and our own success mechanisms learn to succeed yet what do most of us do we destroy our self-confidence by remembering past failures and forgetting all about past successes we not only remember failures we impress them on our minds with emotion we condemn ourselves we Flay ourselves with shame and remorse both are highly egotistical self-centered emotions and self-confidence disappears it doesn't matter how many times you've failed in the past what matters is the successful attempt which should be remembered reinforced and dwelt on the great inventor and industrialist Charles Kettering said that any man who wants to be a scientist must be willing to fail 99 times before he succeeds once and suffer no esteem damage because of it this could be said of just about any field of endeavor that does not mean you must actually operate at that ratio by the way but you must be willing to if need be and as he suggested suffer no self-image damage by doing so when we observe others successes we often never see or take note of the many zigzags they took to arrive when the famous Hollywood actress takes the Oscar in hand and delivers her acceptance speech we forget all about the string of clinker movies she appeared in that were ridiculed by critics and quickly rejected by the public when the best-selling author's book is the talk of the airwaves and selling like hotcakes we never contemplate the shoebox full of rejection slips stored in his home or the mountains of torn up paper from unsatisfactory drafts rewrites drafts and more rewrites that preceded this book now on the Shelf almost every bright and Shining success has in its shadow a long list of disappointments frustrations and humiliations why should you expect otherwise the success personality takes such things in stride here's a prescription to help you along use errors and mistakes as a way to learning then dismiss them from your mind deliberately remember and picture to yourself past successes everyone has succeeded sometime at something especially when beginning a new task call up the feelings you experienced in some past success however small it might have been and the last letter of success is s self-acceptance in the book made into the popular movie The Talented Mr Ripley the main character is a tortured and inferiority complex Laden young man so unhappy with himself so unwilling to accept himself and so envious of others that he murders another man of Greater financial means and attempts to take over his life even to step into his relationships with the dead man's girlfriend and family fortunately few people act on their lack of self-acceptance in such a violent and anti-social manner more typical such a person murders himself slowly rather than suddenly sometimes with alcohol or drug abuse sometimes with less obvious forms of gradual self-destruction many to quote the row live out their lives in quiet desperation no real success or Genuine happiness is possible until a person gains some degree of self-acceptance the most miserable and tortured people in the world are those who are continually straining and striving to convince themselves and others that they are something other than what they basically are and there is no relief and satisfaction like what comes when you finally give up the Shams and pretenses and are willing to be yourself success which comes from self-expression often eludes you when you strive and strain to be somebody and often comes almost of its own accord when you become willing to relax and be yourself changing your self-image does not mean changing yourself but changing your own mental picture your own estimation conception and realization of that self the amazing results that follow from developing an adequate and realistic self-image come about not as a result of self-transformation but from self-realization and self-revelation yourself right now is what it has always been and all that it can ever be you did not create it you cannot change it you can however realize it and make the most of what already is by gaining a true mental picture of your actual self there is no use straining to be somebody you are what you are now you are somebody not because you've made a million dollars or drive the biggest car in your block or win it bridge but because God created you in his own image most of us are better wiser stronger more competent right now than we realize creating a better self-image does not create new abilities talents powers it releases and utilizes them we can change our personality but not our basic self personality is a tool an outlet a focal point of the self that we use in dealing with the world it is the sum total of our habits attitudes and learned skills which we use as a method of expressing ourselves you are not your mistakes self-acceptance means accepting and coming to terms with ourselves now just as we are with all our faults weaknesses shortcomings errors as well as our assets and strengths self-acceptance is easier however if we realize that these negatives belong to us they are not us many people shy away from healthy self-acceptance because they insist on identifying themselves with their mistakes you may have made a mistake but this does not mean that you are a mistake you may not be expressing yourself properly and fully but this does not mean you yourself are no good we must recognize our mistakes and shortcomings before we can correct them the first step toward acquiring knowledge is the recognition of areas where you are ignorant the first step toward becoming stronger is the recognition that you are weak and all religions teach that the first step towards salvation is the self-confession that you are a sinner in the journey toward the goal of Ideal self-expression we must use negative feedback data to correct course as in any other goal striving situation this requires admitting to ourselves and accepting the fact that our personality our expressed self or what some psychologists call our actual self is always imperfect and short of the mark no one ever succeeds during a lifetime in fully expressing or bringing into actuality all the potentialities of the real self in our actual expressed self we never exhaust all the possibilities and powers of the real self we can always learn more perform better behave better the actual self is necessarily imperfect throughout life it is always moving toward an ideal goal but never arriving the actual self is not a static but a dynamic thing it is never completed and final but always in a state of growth it is important that we learn to accept this actual self with all its imperfections because it is the only vehicle we have neurotics reject the actual self and hate it because it is imperfect in its place they try to create a fictitious ideal self that is already perfect has already arrived trying to maintain the Sham and fiction is not only a terrific mental strain but it continually leads to disappointment and frustration when people try to operate in a real world with a fictitious self here's a prescription to help you along accept yourself as you are and start from there learn to emotionally tolerate imperfection in yourself it is necessary to intellectually recognize our shortcomings but disastrous to hate ourselves because of them differentiate between yourself and your behavior you are not ruined or worthless because you made a mistake or got off course any more than a computer is worthless because it makes an error or a violin because it sounds a sour note don't hate yourself because you're not perfect you have lots of company in imperfection no one else is perfect and those who try to pretend they are become imprisoned in misery self-acceptance versus self-rejection many people admit that they can't stand rejection from others otherwise capable sales Professionals for example will be stymied in their careers by the inability to emotionally handle the inherent truth about most selling situations you get more no's than yeses more rejection than acceptance authors playwrights actors athletes coaches have all crumbled under the weight of criticism and rejection from the public or the media but this kind of rejection is almost insignificant in Impact compared to the awesome destructive power of self-rejection people reject and demean themselves in many ways women frequently reject themselves because they do not conform to the current fashion or standard for physical proportions in the 1920s many women felt ashamed of themselves because they had breasts the boyish figure was in Vogue and large breasts were taboo then the fashion trends reversed directions and now many young women develop anxieties because they do not have 40-inch busts in the 1920s women used to come to me and in effect say make me somebody by reducing the size of my breath in the 1960s The Plea was make me somebody by increasing the size of my breasts this seeking to be somebody is universal but we make a mistake when we seek it in Conformity or in the approval of other people this mistake can have very serious consequences the thin ideal for example has led women to anorexia and even to death by anorexia as in the celebrated case of The Talented singer Karen Carpenter this is just one example people reject and demean themselves by comparing themselves to any number of artificial standards they go deeply irreversibly into debt attempting to hurriedly keep up with a colleague relative or neighbor many people say in effect to themselves because I'm skinny fat short Too Tall Etc I am nothing or because I'm not as thin or rich as she I am a zero I think it was the Duchess of York who once said you can never be too thin or too rich but those who suffer anorexia a physical Disease manifested by the self-image would differ instead of self-rejection you must strive for self-acceptance this means acknowledging that you are unique one-of-a-kind compositive strengths weaknesses knowledge and ignorance experience and naivety accomplishment and unrealized potential and so is every other individual on the planet carefully peel back the layers of the life of any person you might envy and view yourself as inferior to and you will find a set of flaws and frustrations different from your own but guaranteed to rival your own since 1967 a Management Consultant named Dr Paul Stoltz has been studying how people respond to adversity through his in-depth work with over 100 companies he has evaluated what he calls the adversity quotient of more than one hundred thousand people adversity quotient is a measurement of how people perceive challenges and how well they deal with them Dr Stoltz says that having a high AQ is increasingly important as the world gets more difficult to operate in he routinely surveys his clients regarding the number of Adverse Events they confront each day whether a delayed or canceled Airline flight or a key client defecting to a competitor he says that 10 years back the average number was seven five years ago 13 nearly doubled in 1999 23 Dr Stoltz defines people with high aqs three ways one they do not blame others for the adversities or setbacks they confront 2. they do not blame themselves either they do not see setbacks that occur as reflecting poorly on themselves three they believe the problems they face are limited in size and duration and can be dealt with if you compare these characteristics with what we've just discussed in terms of the success personality as a trigger for the automatic success mechanism you will see the compatibility of my ideas and Dr stoltz's findings can you raise your AQ absolutely Dr stoltz's entire business at the corporate level is in providing training programs that help entire organizations of people raise their aqs his approach includes unburdening people of low AQ assumptions such as helplessness self-doubt insurmountability of problems and blame or guilt this is much the same as modifying or strengthening the self-image unburdening or liberating is strengthening you do not necessarily need to add to strengthen you can strengthen by subtraction this not coincidentally is in total harmony with everything I've observed regarding people diagnosed with very serious diseases some people easily accept that their problem is of such overwhelming magnitude they are helpless they feel shame and guilt and they blame themselves for being weak and they blame others God or destiny for their condition other people confronted with the very same debilitating disease conform to the three High AQ characteristics and are very aggressive in taking on their condition in every way from active research self-education and involvement in their medical care to finding ways to continue meaningful and fulfilling activity I would observe for example that Elizabeth Taylor and Christopher Reeve are high aqs Elizabeth Taylor has had several brushes with death a number of medical operations including hip replacement surgeries undergone addiction Rehabilitation at the Betty Ford Clinic twice before making it stick yet she has fought resiliently to keep her beauty Grace and sense of humor she has remained active in the entertainment industry making a TV movie as recently as 2000 in business with a successful perfume line and in charitable work founding the first major fundraising effort for AIDS research Christopher Reeve paralyzed by spinal cord injury in a horse riding accident has continued with a successful and meaningful life as loving husband and father author professional speaker and director of movies while just getting out of bed and dressed requires massive effort hours of time and assistance from caregivers the fishing trip from hell I was having lunch with several friends who had just returned from a fishing trip together when I asked about the trip they all chimed in describing a trip marred by one catastrophe after another bad weather their cooler full of Provisions floating off in a river one man's bout of stomach sickness and on and on and how would you rate the trip I asked best trip yet one man said we had a ball on this trip they acted in a high AQ mode and made a success of a series of Adverse Events if they could approach everyday life as they did their fishing trip they'd all be happier and more successful 365 days a year rather than five so would we all of course everyday matters may be more important than a comedy of errors weekend in the woods certainly tragedies of life such as serious injury or illness loss of Love Etc are far more important still much of success has to do with expectation and response if we are burdened with unreasonable expectations of ourselves from unfair comparison to others or insistence on Perfection or with unreasonable expectations of life itself to somehow be smooth sailing or wholly unsatisfactory black and white responses to everything these self-made burdens will crush us under their own weight a fable of unburdening I will end this chapter with a fable or Parable I have heard told several different ways think about how it relates to the liberation of your success personality the story is told of an obviously weary traveler walking down a dusty road with a large Boulder hoisted on one shoulder a knapsack full of bricks on his back a huge pumpkin precariously balanced on his head and a nest of sturdy weeds and Vines wound around his legs so that he could only take short hobbling steps as you might imagine this human pack horse was hobbling along uncomfortably stooped over his progress slow and tedious his physical struggle great a person sitting by the roadside called his hello and asked say traveler why do you burden yourself with that big heavy rock on your shoulder incredibly The Traveler said hmm you know I never noticed just how heavy it was before and until you mentioned it I hadn't given much thought to my reasons for taking it with me after a few moments pondering The Traveler set the boulder down left it by the side of the road and walked on a bit straighter a bit quicker a little further along he encountered another bystander who queried him about the knapsack full of bricks hmm I'm glad you made mention of it said the traveler I really hadn't paid any attention to what was in the knapsack he took out all the bricks left them at the roadside and walked on a little further along a curious child playing by the road called out to him hey mister why do you have all those weeds wrapped around your legs The Traveler took out his pocket knife and sliced away the weeds One By One The bystanders made the traveler aware of his needless burdens so one by one he accepted the new awareness rejected the old burdens and abandoned them by the side of the road finally he was a truly free man and walked straight and tall like such a man were his problems the boulder the bricks the weeds no not at all the one problem was his lack of awareness of them try this mental training exercise make a short list of the bricks and rocks you were carrying around get actual bricks and with a marking pen write one emotional burden on each brick put all the bricks in a knapsack or duffel bag and put it in the back seat of your automobile when you leave your home each morning take the bag out and heft it a few times and say to yourself today I'm leaving my bricks in the car I will go about my day without carrying these heavy bricks around with me when you arrive home in the evening get your briefcase or belongings out of your car but leave the bag of bricks there and say to yourself I will relax and enjoy my evening by leaving my bricks behind chapter 9 how to avoid accidentally activating your automatic failure mechanism Alexander Duma wrote A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself humans have boiling points in my day many businesses and factories were heated with steam boilers which were actually one step away from being bombs properly regulated they provided necessary heat economically but they also had destructive potential such boilers had pressure gauges to show when the pressure was reaching the danger Point by recognizing the potential danger corrective action could be taken and safety assured today similarly we have nuclear power plants carefully monitored and regulated by computers and humans to prevent the kind of boiling point accident that occurred in Chernobyl I'm told that one of the worst nuclear power plant disasters that almost happened but was averted in the nick of time the Three Mile Island event was begun by a worker spilling a cup of coffee always power incorporates danger the servo mechanism you possess is powerful far beyond your past experience would lead you to believe the more you learn about it and experiment with it the more amazed you'll be at its capabilities however this power used constructively and productively as our automatic success mechanism or ASM has a destructive potential expressed as the automatic failure mechanism or AFM we must regulate this power in ourselves always Vigilant and alert for the red marker on its gauge slipping over into AFM territory negative emotions are alarms frustration rage overwhelming anxiety unshakable depression jealousy and resentment sloth and the demanding of something for nothing intolerance and disrespect and of course self-rejection are all signs that the servo mechanisms gauge is in the red zone the human body has its own red light signals and danger signs which doctors refer to as symptoms or syndromes patients are prone to regard symptoms as malevolent a fever a pain or the like is bad actually these negative signals function for patients and for their benefit if they recognize them for what they are and take corrective action symptoms or syndromes are the pressure gauges and red lights that help maintain the body and health the pain of appendicitis may seem bad to the patient but actually it operates for the patient's survival if he felt no pain he would take no action to have the appendix removed the AFM accidentally awakened and activated also has its symptoms we need to be able to recognize these symptoms in ourselves so that we can do something about them when we learn to recognize certain personality traits as signposts to failure these symptoms then act automatically as negative feedback and guide us down the road to creative accomplishment however we not only need to become aware of them everyone feels them we need to recognize them as undesirables as things we do not want and most important of all we must convince ourselves deeply and sincerely that these things do not bring happiness no one is immune to these negative feelings and attitudes even the most successful personalities experience them at times the important thing is to recognize them for what they are and take positive action to correct course the picture of failure again I have found that patients can remember these negative feedback signals or what I call the failure mechanism when they associate them with the letters that make up the word failure they are F frustration hopelessness futility a aggressiveness misdirected I insecurity loneliness lack of Oneness you uncertainty are resentment and E emptiness no one sits down and deliberately with malice a forethought decides to develop these negative traits just to be perverse the traits do not just happen nor are they an indication of the imperfection of human nature each of these negatives was originally adopted as a way to solve a difficulty or a problem we adopt them because we mistakenly see them as a way out of a difficulty they have meaning and purpose although based on a mistaken premise they constitute a way of life for us remember one of the strongest urges in human nature is to react appropriately we can cure these failure symptoms not by willpower but by understanding by being able to see that they do not work and that they are inappropriate the truth can set us free from them and when we see the truth then the same instinctive forces that caused us to adopt them in the first place will work in our behalf in eradicating them for example consider the Martyr complex or victim complex you undoubtedly know someone who is constantly presenting himself or herself as a victim of an unhappy childhood dysfunctional family inadequate education unjust employers scheming co-workers cheating lovers all manner of illnesses and financial misfortunes this person insists that all of life is a conspiracy against her further this person whines and Sighs and moans as a martyr all too often no no you go ahead and go to the play tonight and have a good time don't worry about me not feeling up to it don't give me a second thought I'm used to being left behind looking at this from the outside like looking at a fish in a fishbowl we are either incredulous or angry at this person's Behavior so unreasonably determined to make herself and everybody around her miserable but make no mistake this person has not developed these Habits by deliberate strategy to cause herself and others maximum misery not at all instead this is the way she has latched on to to solve certain frustrations for example to get the attention and compassion she craves or to get the recognition she feels unable to Merit otherwise it is quite difficult to re-engineer all this working from the outside in assisting some other person in your life but you can take charge of your own self-image and re-engineer your self-image thus altering your own behavior so let's consider the warning signs of the automatic failure mechanism exerting control the first letter of failure is f frustration frustration is an emotional feeling that develops whenever some important goal cannot be realized or when some strong desire is thwarted all of us must necessarily suffer some frustration by the very fact of Being Human and therefore imperfect incomplete unfinished as we grow older we should learn that all desires cannot be satisfied immediately we also learn that our doing can never be as good as our intentions we also learn to accept the fact that Perfection is neither necessary nor required and that approximations are good enough for all practical purposes we learn to tolerate a certain amount of frustration without becoming upset about it it is only when a frustrating experience brings excessive emotional feelings of deep dissatisfaction and futility that it becomes a symptom of failure chronic frustration usually means that the goals we have set for ourselves are unrealistic or that the image we have of ourselves is inadequate or both practical goals versus perfectionistic goals to his friends Jim s was a successful man he had risen from stock clerk to vice president of his company his golf score was in the low 80s he had a beautiful wife and two children who loved him nevertheless he felt chronically frustrated because none of these measured up to his unrealistic goals he himself was not perfect in every particular but he should be he should be chairman of the board by now he should be shooting in the low 70s he should be such a perfect husband and father that his wife would never find cause to disagree with him and his children never misbehave hitting the bullseye was not good enough he had to hit the infinitesimal speck in the center of the bullseye you should use the same technique in all your Affairs that pro golfer Jackie Burke recommends in putting I told him that is not to feel that you have to pinpoint the ball right to The Cup itself on a long putt but to aim at an area the size of a wash tub this takes off the strain relaxes you enables you to perform better if it is good enough for the professionals it should be good enough for you his self-fulfilling prophecy made failure certain Harry n was somewhat different he had won none of the external symbols of success yet he'd had many opportunities all of which he'd muffed three times he had been on the verge of Landing the job he wanted and each time something happened something was always defeating him just when success seemed within his grasp twice he had been disappointed in love affairs his self-image was that of an unworthy incompetent inferior person who had no right to succeed or to enjoy the better things in life and unwittingly he tried to be true to that role he felt he was not the sort of person to be successful and always managed to do something to make his self-fulfilling prophecy come true frustration as a way of solving problems does not work feelings of frustration discontent dissatisfaction are ways of solving problems that we all learned as infants a hungry infant expresses discontent by crime a warm tender hand then appears magically out of nowhere and brings milk if he's uncomfortable he again expresses his dissatisfaction with the status quo and the same warm hands appear magically again and solve his problem by making him comfortable many children continue to get their way and have their problems solved by over-indulgent parents merely by expressing their feelings of frustration all they have to do is feel frustrated and dissatisfied and the problem is solved this way of life works for the infant and for some small children it does not work in adult life yet many of us continue to try it by feeling discontented and expressing our grievances against life apparently in the hope that life itself will take pity Rush In And solve our problem for us if only we feel badly enough Jim s was unconsciously using this childish technique in the hope that some magic would bring him the Perfection he craved Harry n had practiced feeling frustrated and defeated so much that feelings of defeat became habitual with him he projected them into the future and expected to fail his habitual defeatist feelings helped create a picture of himself as a defeated person thoughts and feelings go together feelings are the soil that thoughts and ideas grow in this is the reason that you have been advised throughout this program to imagine how you would feel if you succeeded and then feel that way now infant behavior is inappropriate for adult life and you must Rise Above It by setting goals and working toward them when you Zig or zag off course in any way you dare not lie there in the weeds crying like a baby demanding and waiting for some warm hands to come along gently brush you off and put you back on your path headed in the right direction you must exhibit strength of self-image and determine to pick yourself up re-plot your course and restart your travel toward your chosen goals you must exhibit self-acceptance so that you can acknowledge having made mistakes having zigged when you should have zagged rather than self-rejection which requires the Masquerade of placing blame you must not permit a fog Bank passing through to obliterate The Beacon Light of your goals the second letter of failure is a aggressiveness excessive and misdirected aggressiveness follows frustration as night follows day one of the most horrifying diseases of the day is Alzheimer's in which a person may retain sound physical health but lose memory and identity in ever increasing episodic debilitation it is common for victims of this disease to occasionally without warning turn violent toward their caregivers or loved ones I am convinced such aggressiveness is the direct product of the unimaginable frustration these people must feel at having their very identity disappear from their memory when people unafflicted with Alzheimer's turn violent or vicious toward others it is often the direct product of having their true self beaten on tortured and imprisoned in the form of an unhealthy self-image a longtime friend of my wife Anne's a successful career Woman married a somewhat younger much less accomplished man she seemed quite content with being the breadwinner earning virtually all of the household income and supporting him generously at first so did he but others tacit disapproval his friends making jokes at his expense her family's criticism all built up as a weight of frustration he attempted several business ventures he was ill-equipped for invested without due diligence and began a pattern leading only to Greater frustration at the same Pace she was being put upon by friends and family so that she became dissatisfied then critical when all of his frustration hit a boiling point in this overheated environment an argument turned violent and he hit her a number of times ultimately leading to a 9-1-1 call in police cars arriving lights on Sirens blazing the incident did not just go away as these sort of things rarely do it was the beginning of the end of the marriage there is absolutely no acceptable excuse for a man striking a woman or vice versa but it is easily explained as the predictable result as unchecked frustration begets aggression still with such unpleasant examples noted aggressiveness itself is not an abnormal behavior pattern as some psychiatrists once believed aggressiveness and emotional steam are very necessary in reaching a goal we must go out after what we want in an aggressive rather than in a defensive or tentative manner we must grapple with problems aggressively the mere fact of having an important goal is enough to create emotional steam in our boiler and bring aggressive tendencies into play however trouble ensues when we are blocked or frustrated in achieving our goal the emotional steam is then dammed up seeking an outlet misdirected or unused it becomes a destructive force the worker who wants to punch his boss in the nose but doesn't dare goes home and snaps at his wife and kids or kicks the cat or he may turn his aggressiveness on himself in much the same way that a certain scorpion in South America will sting itself and die of its own poison when angered don't lash out blindly concentrate your fire the automatic failure mechanism does not direct aggressiveness toward the accomplishment of a worthwhile goal instead it is used in such self-destructive channels as ulcers high blood pressure worry excessive drinking or compulsive overwork or it may be turned on other persons in the form of irritability rudeness gossip nagging fault finding or even violence the answer to aggression is not to eradicate it but to understand it and to provide proper and appropriate channels for its expression when we recognize aggressiveness rearing its head we want to turn it around on the frustration that birth did to use all this energy in taking productive action to resolve the frustration itself knowledge gives you power merely understanding the mechanism involved helps a person handle the frustration aggression cycle misdirected aggression is an attempt to hit one target the original goal by lashing out at any Target it doesn't work recall a children's cartoon of Elmer Fudd trying to hunt the Wily rabbit after shooting at him and missing several times Fudd blasts wildly away in a dozen different directions I suspect human duck and geese Hunters sometimes succumb to the same temptation you don't solve one problem by creating another if you feel like snapping at someone stop and ask yourself is this merely my own frustration at work what has frustrated me am I just shooting in a dozen different directions when you see that your response is inappropriate you've gone a long way toward controlling it it also takes much of the sting away when someone is rude to you if you realize that it is probably not a willful act but an automatic mechanism at work the other fellow is letting off steam that he could not use in achieving some goal many automobile accidents are caused by the frustration aggression mechanism today it's been given the name road rage there's also Airline passenger rage these names simply label the outcome of unchecked frustration building to aggression the next time someone is rude to you in traffic try this instead of becoming aggressive and thus a menace to yourself say to yourself the poor fellow has nothing against me personally maybe his wife burned the toast this morning he can't pay the rent or his boss chewed him out safety valves for emotional Steam when you are blocked in achieving an important goal you are somewhat like a steam locomotive with a full head of steam with nowhere to go you need a safety valve for your excess of emotional Steam all types of physical exercise are excellent for draining off aggression long brisk walks push-ups dumbbell exercises are good especially good are those games where you hit or smash something golf tennis bowling punching the bag another good device is to vent your spleen in writing write a letter to the person who has frustrated or angered you pull out all the stops leave nothing to the imagination then burn the letter the best channel of all for aggression is to use it up as it was intended to be used in working towards some goal work remains one of the best therapies and one of the best tranquilizers for a troubled spirit the third letter of failure is I insecurity the feeling of insecurity is based on a concept or belief of inner inadequacy if you feel that you do not measure up to what is required you feel insecure a great deal of insecurity is due not to the fact that our inner resources are actually inadequate but to the fact that we use a false measuring stick We compare our actual abilities to an imagined ideal perfect or absolute self thinking of yourself in terms of absolutes induces insecurity the insecure person feels that he should be good period he should be successful period he should be happy competent poised period these are all worthy goals but they should be thought of at least in their absolute sense as goals to be achieved as something to reach for rather than as shoulds a friend of mine who heads up a large management consulting firm talked with me once about a popular Business book entitled the Peter Principle espousing the theory that business bureaucracies always air in eventually promoting people to their level of incompetence with disastrous results I have seen this occur many times myself the good effective doctor happy in his work once promoted by the hospital to head of a department turns out to be a miserable manager the hospital loses a great doctor and gains an incompetent administrator my friend differed with this as an absolute there is no doubt the so-called Peter Principle explains or at least provides a convenient shorthand label for such situations he said but then it fails to explain the exact same situation with a much different outcome what about the person who gets promoted far beyond his level of experience knowledge preparation or confidence and is even expected to fail by those around him who Rises to the occasion and succeeds unquote as we discussed this further I realized this was much like the earliest observations and questions that led me to psycho-cybernetics two unhappy people with nearly identical physical flaws magnified in importance by their own imaginations get virtually the same cosmetic surgery one behaves as you and I would anticipate but the other retains all the same negative feelings about herself as if the scar still existed why in both these scenarios the surgeries and the promotions the difference in outcome is hidden in the individual's self images it cannot be seen on their faces or on their resumes the person who is already insecure who is harboring a weak self-image and who is by willpower forcing himself to the very edges of performance it will permit if promoted responds to the promotion as the straw that broke the camel's back not as a golden opportunity the magic power of recalibration there are many approaches to ridding yourself of insecurities so that you may rise to whatever occasion presents itself one is to think rationally about the situation the other people involved and about yourself another is self-image reassurance and strengthening including role-playing what now needs to be done competently in the theater of your mind and sending your automatic success mechanism on new search missions to provide ideas and answers required another is the immediate resetting of your sites on appropriate new targets here's why recalibration is so important a famous New York sports writer once gave me this example consider two very successful college football coaches who get head coaching jobs in the NFL in essence promoted to a whole new level of competition we Sports writers immediately begin questioning their ability to succeed at this level in effect pasting that Peter Principle thing on their foreheads ultimately one of these coaches goes back to college coaching a whipped puppy tail between his legs but the other takes his team to the Super Bowl certainly there are variables in Talent toughness of divisional opponents schedule and so on but the biggest variable is the actual reaction of the two coaches to their new posts both have hoped for just such a move up to the NFL but one views it as having finally arrived and he sets about behaving as a newly crowned King hiding his own insecurities and self-doubt with autocratic even bombastic Behavior he quickly develops adversarial relationships with us in the media players other coaches his players read the papers since he's skating on thin ice and do not respond soon he is horribly frustrated his insecurities turn to fear of failure his frustration turns to aggression and he's unable to use whatever skills he did bring with him the other newly promoted coach takes a very different approach to him his step up to this coaching job is yet one more move forward on a Lifeline of intended accomplishment he is immediately focused on a whole new set of goals from organizing a world-class staff to improving team morale to uncovering hidden talent within the team to getting to the Super Bowl in two seasons all of his energy is assumptively and productively focused his goals are like lighthouses that keep him from running aground people respond to him differently he gets different results unquote my sports writer friend had analyzed these situations psycho-cybernetically since human beings are goal-striving mechanisms the self realizes itself fully only when individuals are moving forward towards something remember our comparison with the bicycle in a previous chapter people maintain their balance Poise and sense of security only as they move forward or seek when you think of yourself as having attained the goal you become Static and you lose the security and equilibrium you had when you were moving towards something if you are convinced that you are good in the absolute sense you not only have no incentive to do better but you feel insecure because you must defend the Sham and pretense the man who thinks that he has arrived has about used up his usefulness to us the president of a large business said to me recently when someone called Jesus good he admonished him why callest thou me good there is but one good and that is the father Saint Paul is generally regarded as a good man yet his own attitude was I count myself not to have achieved but I press on toward the goal keep your feet on Solid Ground trying to stand on the top of a pinnacle is insecure mentally get down off your high horse and you will feel more secure this has very practical applications it explains the underdog psychology in sports when a championship team begins to think of itself as the Champions they no longer have something to fight for but a status to defend the Champions are defending something trying to prove something The Underdogs are fighting to do something and often bring about an upset I used to know a boxer who fought well until he won the championship in his next fight he lost the championship and looked bad doing so after losing the title he fought well again and regained the championship a wise manager said to him you can fight as well as a champion as when you're the contender if you'll remember one thing when you step into that ring you aren't defending the championship you're fighting for it you haven't got it you've laid it on the line when you crawl through the ropes the mental attitude that engenders insecurity is a way it is a way of substituting sham and pretense for reality it is a way of proving to yourself and others your superiority but it is self-defeating if you are perfect and Superior now then there's no need to fight grapple and try in fact if you're caught trying real hard it may be considered evidence that you are not Superior so you don't try you lose your fight you're willed to win in business secure leaders attempt surrounding themselves with a team of individuals wiser more capable and often older and more experienced than they are insecure leaders surround themselves with yes men and sycophants why because the secure leader is engaged in striving to move forward and more concerned with doing what is required than with anything else the insecure leader is more concerned with appearances and fears showing any signs of weakness or incompetence if you catch yourself behaving as if your automatic failure mechanism has immersed you in a swamp of insecurities and pulled you out covered in its slime and stench you must acknowledge that something smells and it is my own behavior then do the things necessary to shower and emerge cleansed a good soap for your shower is recalibration goal setting the fourth letter of failure is l oneliness all of us are lonely at times again it is a natural penalty we pay for being human and individual but it is the extreme and chronic feeling of loneliness of being cut off and alienated from other people that is the work of the automatic failure mechanism this type of loneliness is caused by an alienation from life it is a loneliness from your real self those who are alienated from their real self have cut themselves off from the basic and fundamental contact with life lonely persons often set up a vicious cycle because of the feeling of alienation from self human contacts are not very satisfying and they become social recklesses in doing so they cut themselves off from one of the pathways to finding themselves which is to lose themselves in social activities with other people doing things and enjoying things with other people helps us to forget ourselves in stimulating conversation in dancing and playing together or in working together for a common goal we become interested in something other than maintaining our own Shams and pretenses as we get to know the other fellow we feel less need for pretense we thaw and become more natural the more we do this the more we feel we can afford to dispense with the Sham and pretense and feel more comfortable just being ourselves loneliness is a way that doesn't work loneliness is a way of self-protection lines of communication with other people and especially any emotional ties are cut down it is a way to protect our idealized self against exposure hurt humiliation the lonely personality is afraid of other people lonely persons often complain that they have no friends and that there are no people to mix with in most cases they unwittingly arrange things in this manner because of their passive attitude that it is up to other people to come to them to make the first move to see that they are entertained it never occurs to them that they should contribute something to any social situation regardless of your feelings force yourself to mix and mingle with other people after the first cold plunge you will find yourself warming up and enjoying it if you persist develop a social skill that will add to the happiness of other people dancing Bridge playing the piano tennis conversation it is an old psychological Axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear as lonely persons continue to force themselves into social relations with other human beings not in a passive way but as active contributors they gradually find that most people are friendly and that they are accepted their shyness and timidity begin to disappear they feel more comfortable in the presence of other people and with themselves the experience of their acceptance enables them to accept themselves the top executive who allows herself to become isolated in her Ivory Tower will soon inevitably find herself with the personal belongings from her office in the trunk of her car her final check in hand outside looking in the high and mighty topple through isolation the man who insulates himself from the riskiness of relationships in work alone will one day awaken to the shocking fact that he has no reason to work isolation and loneliness are forces that destroy Kings and presidents as well as mere mortals it was said of President Nixon's White House as the Watergate scandal unfolded that a bunker mentality consumed him he sought security through ever increasing isolation compare his behavior to say that of Lee Iacocca at the helm of Chrysler his ship full of holes in imminent danger of financial capsizing instead of retreating into isolation living with only his mounting crisis in a dark room alone he marched into the public eye as never before cajoling negotiating selling and organizing Wall Street Washington and the buying public and leading a dramatic corporate turnaround when you are tempted by aloneness you must substitute aliveness think of the wonderful painting given to me as a gift by Salvador Dali in which he depicted psycho-cybernetics as a steadfast ship choosing to sail toward the light rather than remain in a dark but arguably safer Harbor while you cannot stub your toe standing still in the dark you cannot escape a burning building get the refreshing drink in the refrigerator or otherwise achieve anything by standing safe and still in the dark either we must rise above loneliness by engagement move out of isolation toward involvement even risk criticism and confrontation to seek opportunity and Improvement the fifth letter of failure is you uncertainty philosopher Albert Hubbard said the greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one being wrong holds Untold Horrors to the person who tries to conceive of himself as perfect he is never wrong and always perfect in all things if he were ever wrong his picture of a perfect all-powerful self would crumble therefore decision making becomes a life or death matter one way is to avoid as many decisions as possible and prolong them as much as possible another way is to have a handy scapegoat to blame this type of person makes decisions but she makes them hastily prematurely and is well known for going off half cocked making decisions offers her no problem at all she's perfect it is impossible for her to be wrong in any case therefore why consider facts or Consequences she is able to maintain this fiction when her decisions backfire simply by convincing herself it was someone else's fault it is easy to see why both types fail one is continually in hot water from impulsive and ill-considered actions the other is stymied because he will not act at all in other words the uncertainty way of being right doesn't work nobody is right all the time realize that it is not required that a person be 100 right at all times it is in the nature of things that we progress by acting making mistakes and correcting course a guided torpedo arrives at its Target literally by making a series of mistakes and continually correcting its course you cannot correct your course if you are standing still you cannot change or correct nothing you must consider the known facts in a situation imagine possible consequences of various courses of action choose one that seems to offer the best solution and Bet On It you can correct your course as you go consider some of today's most successful actors Kevin Costner do you recall the film Waterworld Tom Hanks a film called Joe and the volcano we could go down the list every Oscar winner every Hollywood Powerhouse has at least one such epic mistake on their resume more significantly consider all the Endeavors in which even the most successful participants are wrong more than they are right coaching a football game and calling plays or playing quarterback and executing them in most games the Victor has stacked up many more unsuccessful plays than successful ones managing an Investment Portfolio typically more stocks in the basket may go down than go up but those that do go up produce sufficient gains for overall profit only little men are never wrong another help in overcoming uncertainty is to realize the role that self-esteem and the protection of self-esteem play in indecisiveness many people are indecisive because they fear loss of self-esteem if they are proved wrong use self-esteem for yourself instead of against Yourself by convincing yourself of this truth big men and big personalities make mistakes and admit them it is the little man who is afraid to admit he has been wrong this of course applies equally to women Success Through the process of elimination I've enjoyed reading Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of the great detective Sherlock Holmes as exploits Holmes's trusty helpmate Dr Watson a man of many fine qualities but woefully little imagination is frequently befuddled and amazed as Holmes disappears into his own imagination and emerges with the solution to the most mystifying of crimes in his imagination Holmes engages in the pedantic dogged process of elimination ultimately arriving at the one best conclusion he cannot eliminate then that becomes his Target engaging all of the powers of his automatic success mechanism in uncovering the clues facts and evidence that prove it true that is he arrives at the Target a lesser detective would instead remain mired in the massive difficulty of the task and the confusing even conflicting testimonies thus engaging his automatic failure mechanism instead of his automatic success mechanism it is also worth noting that Holmes is willing to be wrong and when his first attempts at and proclamations of deduction prove far off course he does not collapse in embarrassment or humiliation or give control over to frustration and aggression nor does he Retreat into isolation he virtually shrugs off his mistakes and quickly refocuses zigging and zagging his way toward his ultimate objective Thomas Edison's wife once observed that Mr Edison worked endlessly on a problem using the method of elimination if a person asked him whether he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing he would say no I'm not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward if outcomes were pre-ordained and certain no one would play a game nor would thousands of Spectators tune into television to watch it contested we must learn to embrace the short-term uncertainties of the game while staying connected to the targets we choose and trusting that we will achieve our overriding objectives albeit by zigging and zagging rather than a straight line reassure yourself that you are not your mistakes so that you can freely acknowledge them extract whatever useful feedback can be found in them correct course and continue moving forward the sixth letter of failure is r resentment when the automatic failure mechanism looks for a scapegoat or excuse for failure it often serves up Society the system life the brakes luck the boss the spouse even the customer people in the firm grip of their automatic failure mechanisms resent the success and happiness of others because they are proof that life is shortchanging them and they are being treated unfairly resentment is an attempt to make our own failure palatable by explaining it in terms of unfair treatment Injustice but as a Sav for failure resentment is a cure that is worse than the disease it is a deadly poison to the spirit makes happiness impossible and uses up tremendous energy that could go into accomplishment quite often when people came to me in my practice requesting surgical correction of insignificant imperfections on their faces magnified by their imaginations conversations with them led to a realization they disliked what they saw when they looked in the mirror not due to the reality of the reflection but the resentment harbored for just about everyone in their life and their life circumstances resentment is a way that fails resentment is also a way of making us feel important many people get a perverse satisfaction from feeling wronged the victim of Injustice the one who has been unfairly treated is morally Superior to those who cause the injustice resentment is also a way or an attempt to wipe out or eradicate a real or fancied wrong or Injustice that has already happened the resentful person is trying to prove a case before the court of life so to speak if he can feel resentful enough and thereby prove the Injustice some magic process will reward him by making the event or circumstance that caused the resentment not so in this sense resentment is a mental resistance to a non-acceptance of something that has already happened the word itself comes from two Latin words re meaning back and sentire meaning to feel resentment is an emotional rehashing or re-fighting of some event in the past you cannot win because you are attempting to do the impossible change the past resentment creates an inferior self-image resentment even when based on real injustices and Wrongs is not the way to win it soon becomes an emotional habit habitually feeling that you are a victim of Injustice you begin to picture yourself in the role of a victimized person you carry around an inner feeling that is looking for an external Peg to hang itself on it is then easy to see evidence of Injustice or fancy you have been wronged in the most innocent remark or neutral circumstance habitual resentment invariably leads to self-pity which is the worst possible emotional habit anyone can develop when these habits have become firmly ensconced a person does not feel right or natural when they are absent they then literally begin to search for and look for injustices someone has said that such people feel good only when they are miserable emotional habits of resentment and self-pity also go with an ineffective inferior self-image you begin to picture yourself as a pitiful person a victim who was meant to be unhappy the real cause of resentment remember that your resentment is not caused by other persons events or circumstances it is caused by your own emotional response your own reaction you alone have power over this and you can control it if you firmly convince yourself that resentment and self-pity are not ways to happiness and success but ways to defeat and unhappiness as long as you Harbor resentment it is literally impossible for you to picture yourself as a self-reliant independent self-determining person who is the captain of his soul the master of his fate the resentful person turns over his Reigns to other people they are allowed to dictate how he shall feel how he shall act he is wholly dependent on other people just as a beggar is he makes unreasonable demands and claims on other people if everyone else should be dedicated to making you happy you will be resentful when it doesn't work out that way if you feel that other people owe you Eternal gratitude undying appreciation or continual recognition of your superlative worth you will feel resentment when these debts are not paid if life owes you a living you become resentful when it isn't forthcoming resentment is therefore inconsistent with creative goal striving in Creative goal striving you are the Creator not the passive recipient you set your goals no one owes you anything you go out after your own goals you become responsible for your own success and happiness resentment doesn't fit into this picture and because it doesn't it is a failure mechanism in a sense there is no justice but we may manufacture just results for ourselves it is fact that by the very Act of birth one person is unjustly set out to begin a hard life in a ghetto filled with Street crime while another born in a Crosstown hospital that same moment will begin life in a safe suburb one will go to a school in disrepair the other to a school with every modern advantage similarly it is a fact that in many sales offices leads are disproportionately or unjustly distributed by the sales managers to her pets and those in her doghouse it is a fact that promotion in corporate settings frequently occurs due to factors other than pure Merit we could go on and on there's no denying Injustice if you intend to insist on Justice in order to live a successful and happy life you will not do so in this lifetime on this planet the other day just after emerging from my New York townhouse wearing a brand new beautifully tailored suit out of the rapper for the very first time enroute to an important luncheon engagement a passing taxi cab roared through a muddy puddle and splashed dirty water all over my pants it occurred to me a more just Arrangement would be if taxicabs only splashed puddle water onto people wearing old work clothes already soiled only if on their way home so the changing out of them would pose no inconvenience maybe I should Lobby the mayor to pass such a law of course I was helpless to undo this unjust incident or to do anything to eradicate this Injustice in general from being part and parcel of living in the city I could certainly be more careful in the future but that was neither here nor there the immediate Choice before me was to spend the rest of my day frustrated angry bitter and resentful or to recalibrate and take whatever constructive actions possible to get back on track toward an enjoyable and productive meeting I admit it is easier to react this way to such a minor Injustice as taxi cabs puddles and soiled trousers than to racial Injustice in society or bureaucratic Injustice in your career but the outcome will be the same the fundamental choices are the same and you can enjoy the powers of your automatic success mechanism only if you choose to rise above Injustice small or large over the years psycho-cybernetics has found its way into quite a number of prison inmate counseling programs classes halfway house classes and the like I suppose thousands of copies of my books have been donated to prisons and to individual prisoners even today the psycho-cybernetics foundation does not deny sincere requests from inmates for the book as a result I've had many conversations with wardens counselors pastors and others working in this environment and naturally the subject of recidivism comes up often a great cost to individuals families and Society is the majority of prisoners who once released after serving time fail to stay straight and wind up back in prison again and again I've become convinced that recidivism is nothing more than resentment realized if a person emerges from prison into society with his resentments intact resentment against his upbringing and background his prosecutors and jailers his current lack of resources the difficulty he faces in gaining others acceptance and Trust Etc he is nearly certain to commit new crimes and return himself to prison only the rare individual who manages to cleanse herself of these resentments and recalibrate is able to stay straight similarly any individual who permits resentment to control her thoughts locks herself and her potential into a prison of her own making she is her own hanging judge discompassionate jury and jailer and the last letter of failure is e emptiness perhaps as you listen to this chapter you thought of someone who had been successful in spite of frustration misdirected aggressiveness resentment Etc but do not be too sure many people acquire the outward symbols of success but when they go to open the long sought four Treasure Chest they find it empty it is as if the money they have strained so hard to attain turns to counterfeit in their hands along the way they lost the capacity to enjoy and when you have lost the capacity to enjoy no amount of wealth or anything else can bring success or happiness these people win the nut of success but when they crack it open it is empty those who have the capacity to enjoy still alive within them find enjoyment in many ordinary and simple things in life they also enjoy whatever success in a material way they have achieved those in whom the capacity to enjoy is dead can find enjoyment in nothing be it a one dollar ice cream cone or a million dollar mansion no goal is worth working for life is a terrible boar nothing is worthwhile you can see these people by the hundreds night after night knocking themselves out in nightclubs trying to convince themselves they are enjoying it they travel from place to place become entangled in a world of parties hoping to find enjoyment always finding an empty shell the truth is the joy is an accompaniment of creative function of creative goal striving it is possible to win a fake success but when you do you are penalized with an empty Joy life becomes worthwhile when you have worthwhile goals this is the psycho-cybernetic secret to keeping your automatic failure mechanism safely asleep not troubled by any assignment from you and not troubling you with the result of its labors life is worthwhile only when you have firmly fixed in your sights worthwhile goals emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively you either have no goal that is important enough to you or you are not using your talents and efforts in striving toward an important goal the person who has no purpose of her own pessimistically concludes life has no purpose the person who has no goal worth working for concludes life is not worthwhile the person with no important job to do complains there is nothing to do the individual who is actively engaged in striving toward an important goal or goals does not come up with pessimistic philosophies concerning the meaninglessness or the futility of life in general or his life in specific even the most elderly can and do operate as goal-striving optimistic people a wonderful trend has been the migration of retirees to small college towns where they pursue goals of learning education Mastery of interesting subjects acquire some skill they never found time to previously pursue Mentor others earlier in this program I described the four steps of the learning process aliveness is based on constantly setting new goals and then moving up that four-step ladder of learning in order to effectively pursue them emptiness is not a way that wins emptiness once experienced can become a way of avoiding effort work and responsibility it becomes an excuse or a justification for non-creative living if all is Vanity if there is no new thing under the sun if there is no joy to be found anyway why bother why try if life is just a treadmill if we work eight hours a day so that we can afford a house to sleep in so that we can sleep eight hours to become rested for another day's work why get excited about it all these intellectual reasons vanish however and we experience joy and satisfaction once we get off the treadmill stop going around and around in circles and select a goal worth striving for and go after it emptiness and an inadequate self-image go together emptiness may also be the symptom of an inadequate self-image it is impossible to psychologically accept something that you feel does not belong to you or that is not consistent with yourself those who hold an unworthy and undeserving self-image May hold their negative tendencies in check long enough to achieve a genuine success then be unable to accept it psychologically and enjoy it they may even feel guilty about it as if they had stolen it their negative self-image may even spur them on to achievement by the well-known principle of overcompensation but I do not subscribe to the theory that one should be proud of an inferiority complex or thankful for it just because it sometimes leads to the external symbols of success when success finally comes such persons feel little sense of satisfaction or accomplishment they are unable to take credit in their own minds for their accomplishments to the world they are a success they themselves still feel inferior undeserving almost as if they were thieves and had stolen the status symbols that they thought were so important if my friends and Associates really knew what a phony I am they think this reaction is so common that psychiatrists refer to it as the success rejection syndrome the man who feels guilty insecure and anxious when he realizes he has succeeded only striving for goals that are important to you not as status symbols but because they are consistent with your own deep inner wants is helpful striving for real success for your success through creative accomplishment brings a deep inner satisfaction striving for a phony success to please others brings a phony satisfaction try this mental training exercise awareness acknowledgment and prompt reaction to a slumbering automatic failure mechanism Awakening and attempting to distract you with f-a-i-l-u-r-e is important glance at negatives but focus on positives automobiles come equipped with negative indicators placed directly in front of the driver to tell you when the battery is not charging when the engine is becoming too hot when the oil pressure is becoming too low Etc to ignore these negatives might ruin your car however there is no need to become unduly upset if a negative signal flashes you merely stop at a service station or a garage and take positive action to correct the problem a negative signal does not mean the car is no good all cars overheat at times however the driver of the automobile does not look at the control panel exclusively and continuously to do so might be disastrous she must Focus her gaze through the windshield look where she is going and keep her primary attention on her goal where she wants to go she merely glances at the negative indicators from time to time when she does she does not fix on them or dwell on them she quickly focuses her side ahead again and concentrates on the positive goal of where she wants to go how to use negative thinking we should adopt a similar attitude about our own negative symptoms I am a firm believer in negative thinking when used correctly we need to be aware of negatives so that we can steer clear of them a golfer needs to know where the bunkers and sand traps are but he doesn't think continuously about the bunker where he doesn't want to go his mind glances at the bunker but dwells on the Green used correctly this type of negative thinking can work for us to lead us to success if one we are sensitive to the negative to the extent that it can alert us to Danger two we recognize the negative for what it is something undesirable something we don't want something that does not bring genuine happiness three we take immediate corrective action and substitute an opposite positive factor from the success mechanism such practice will in time create a sort of automatic reflex that becomes a part of our inner guidance system negative feedback will act as a sort of automatic control to help us steer clear of failure and guide us to success take a few minutes toward the conclusion of each day or midday and at day's end if you can find a quiet place close your eyes enter your imagination so as to revisit the day's events and your behavior congratulate yourself on all your automatic success mechanism reflective actions but take note of automatic failure mechanism warning lights quietly flashing on the dashboard tell yourself that automatic failure mechanism behavior is not you and is not to be tolerated if Corrections can be made for any that occurred by all means make them be the bigger person by calling or going to see anyone who may deserve your apology your gratitude or your congratulations analyze your thoughts and actions of the day in terms of contributing toward achieving your goals even measure your ratio of automatic success mechanism versus automatic failure mechanism driven activity then resolve to improve that ratio do not fear self-analysis stick with self-coaching avoid self-loathing conclude your private critique of the day by identifying positives you can build on and the recommitment to your goals and ideals chapter 10. how to remove emotional scars and give yourself an emotional facelift Erica Zhang wrote anger is really disappointed hope the facelift business is booming cosmetic surgery profession revenues have increased by double-digit percentages each year for the past handful of years you now see Mass television advertising offering any combination of procedures desired nose ears throat whole face lift breast enlargement buttocks Improvement tummy tuck for a set monthly payment akin to buying a car on payments still many people seeking emotional salvation and satisfaction from the surgical scalpel will wake up with a new face or better sculpted body but with old disappointment and frustration I and others have learned a great deal about psycho-cybernetics in the more than 50 years that have passed since I first began drawing the connection between patients coming to my office seeking to correct scars in their Outer Image and the existence of scars hidden away on their inner image or self-image however the fundamental analogy is every bit as valid as when first uncovered and recognized as a medical doctor and surgeon I have performed countless operations of reconstructive as well as cosmetic facial surgery and been privileged to lecture on such clinical techniques all over the world yet I have never become jaded about the miraculous systems built into the human body for example when you receive a physical injury such as a cut on the face your body automatically forms Scar Tissue which is both tougher and thicker than the original flesh the purpose of the scar tissue is to form a protective cover or shell Nature's Way of ensuring against another injury in the same place if an ill-fitting shoe rubs against a sensitive part of your foot the first result is pain and sensitiveness but again nature protects against further pain and injury by forming a callus a protective shell we are inclined to do very much the same thing whenever we receive an emotional injury when someone hurts us or rubs us the wrong way we form emotional or spiritual scars for self-protection we are very apt to become hardened of heart callous toward the world and to withdraw within a protective emotional shell of one kind or another what we can learn when Nature needs an assist informing Scar Tissue it is Nature's intention to be helpful in our modern society however Scar Tissue especially on the face can work against us instead of for us take George T for example a promising Young attorney he was affable personable and Well on his way to a successful career when he had an automobile accident which left him with a horrible Scar from Midway on his left cheek to the left corner of his mouth another cut just over his right eye pulled his upper eyelid up tightly when it healed which gave him a grotesque glaring appearance every time he looked in the bathroom mirror he saw a repulsive image the scar on his cheek gave him a Perpetual leer or what he called an evil look after leaving the hospital he lost his first case in court and was sure that his evil and grotesque appearance had influenced the jury he felt that old friends were repelled and repulsed by his appearance was it only his imagination that even his own wife flinched slightly when he kissed her George T began to turn down cases he started drinking during the day he became irritable hostile and something of a recluse the scar tissue on his face formed a tough protection against future automobile accidents but in the society in which George lived physical injuries to his face were not the primary hazard he was more vulnerable than ever to social Cuts injuries and hurts his scars were a liability instead of an asset had George Been A Primitive man and suffered facial scars from an encounter with a bear or a saber-toothed tiger his scars would have probably made him more acceptable to his fellows even in fairly recent times old soldiers have proudly displayed their scars of battle I suspect the same is true of young Tufts in inner city gangs in George's case nature had good intentions but nature needed an assist I gave George back his old face by plastic surgery which removed the scar tissue and restored his features following the surgery the personality change in him was remarkable he became his good-natured self-confident self again he stopped drinking he gave up his Lone Wolf attitude moved back into society and became a member of the human race again he literally found a new life this new life however was brought about only indirectly by plastic surgery on physical tissue the real Curative agent Was the removal of emotional scars the security against social cuts the healing of emotional hurts and injuries and the restoration of his self-image as an acceptable member of society which in his case surgery made possible most people build up a considerable amount of Scar Tissue on their self-images with no correlation whatsoever to actual physical disfigurement that can be solved by a skilled surgeon with a scalpel how emotional scars alienate you from life many people have inner emotional scars who have never suffered physical injuries and the result on personality is the same these people have been hurt or injured by someone in the past to guard against future injury from that Source they form a spiritual callous an emotional scar to protect their ego this Scar Tissue however protects them not only against the individual who originally hurt them but also all other human beings an emotional wall is built through which neither friend nor foe can pass Zig Ziglar tells an amusing story about a cat who innocently traipses across a stove top and lands on a burner still hot from recent use with a loud Yelp the cat leaps off the stove and soaks away to nurse its tender pause zigg says not only won't that cat ever climb up on that stove again he'll never even go into the kitchen emotional Scar Tissue built up on the self-image affects people like scorched Paws affect that cat given several repeats of an unpleasant embarrassing or frustrating scarring experience the affected individual not only avoids the precise situation he avoids the general area in which it might occur for example I once counseled a very capable executive rising up the ranks in a big Corporation who had been repeatedly chastened by his mentor and boss for sitting as quiet as a church mouse through meeting after meeting only a spectator not a participant this fellow had very good ideas and input to offer often did so privately and often missed any credit for his contributions in fact most of his colleagues viewed him as dead wood and wondered about the boss's motives for having this fellow on the payroll you can probably do your own diagnosis at this point and guess right this fellow had throughout his Junior and Senior High School years stuttered nervously if called on in class suffered ridicule from other students and as a result withdrawn from active participation in his classes doing his level best to be invisible at all times call that the first layer of self-image scar tissue fast forward to his first marriage both his ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law were domineering personalities quite possibly abusive both constantly criticizing this fellow's ideas whether choice of clothes political opinion even an opinion about a book or TV program early in this marriage he adopted a keep it to himself attitude this became a second layer of scar tissue fast forward to a very recent year when active in his Community Association he found himself at odds over an issue with a very influential egotistical uncompromising bullying and far more persuasive neighbor his adversary attacked any idea this fellow proposed thoroughly and aggressively and turned enough others against this fellow that he was summarily voted off the council at the end of his first Year's term layer number three it didn't matter now that he was not dealing with school children an abusive mother-in-law or neighbors that he was in a very different environment that he had the full support of a powerful mentor and boss that his suggestions would be listened to with respect and that it was far more important for him to assert himself than at any of these other times it didn't matter that this situation was very different from the others like the entire kitchen is to one stovetop burner this situation was still in the general area of the others close enough to be threatening to his self-image consequently instead of representing the self-image of the smart competent promising executive he was in these circumstances he represented the self-image of a scaredy cat putty not plaster could this man scrape away all this scar tissue and liberate his self-image absolutely using all the tools of psycho-cybernetics we have discussed awareness rational thought deliberate decision that is establishing the target purposeful use of the imagination including the theater of the Mind mental rehearsal techniques in his fine book profiles of success and power Dr Gene lundrum writes self-image is not set in plaster it is set in putty unquote I'm known as a plastic surgeon but as an amateur sculptor for many years I enjoy taking scalpel to Clay and have often sculpted unsculpted and re-sculpted a face in clay until it was exactly as I imagined the clay or putty-like material stays soft and valuable enough to do so many many times in His Infinite Wisdom God manufactured the self-image of similar material so it remains malleable throughout our entire lives no one is ever too old too jaded too frightened or too traumatized to wet the clay and begin remaking it as they imagine and desire do not over protect yourself as in the case of a facial scar excessive protection against the original source of injury can make us more vulnerable and do us even more damage in other areas the emotional wall that we build is protection against one person or one situation Cuts us off from all other human beings from many opportunities even from our real selves as we have pointed out previously the person who feels lonely or out of touch with other human beings also feels out of touch with his real self and with life these listed techniques of psycho-cybernetics all combined place in your hands a most powerful magical emotional scalpel and they Infuse your hands with the dynamic talent and ability of a world-class emotional surgeon so that you may remove whatever emotional scars now inhibit your self-image but to do so you must take a risk you must risk bumps in the road disappointment rejection and mistakes with the certainty that they will occur but will not deter you from your overriding goals don't underestimate the power of emotional scars built up emotional scars one Atop The Other make the self-image a threatened and vulnerable entity that triggers survival mode behavior from the servo mechanism flee or fight fear or pugnacious aggressiveness whenever confronted with a situation its senses might harm it in the same way as the past incidents that left scars in a book titled anxiety disorders and phobias the authors including a cognitive therapist state that the same apparatus that prevents a person from venturing into physical danger also deters him from exposing himself to psychological Danger unquote in other words the servo mechanism may not be able to accurately assess the relativity of dangers for example you are not in any physical danger due to social embarrassment at a dinner party by not being able to hold up your end of the conversation perhaps because you make less money than the other guests and feel inferior because of it and are therefore fearful of being asked about your job or Investments yet the situation may trigger the same kind of anxiety and inhibition as being confronted by a Mugger in a dark alley in the case of the mugger meekly taking out your wallet and throwing it toward or past the mugger and running as fast as you can in the opposing Direction may be appropriate in the social situation throwing away all opportunity for a pleasant evening and fleeing into silence or monosyllabic responses is wholly inappropriate and may lead to the exact result you were worried about being perceived badly by hosts and other guests alike the social situation is most likely to trigger this survival reaction if it closely resembles some situations that have left Scar Tissue on the self-image I would like to make one point addressed earlier in the program you do not necessarily have to painstakingly revisit every incident or influence all the way to Early Childhood in order to perform the emotional surgery needed to liberate a scarred self-image from this compulsive triggering of survivalist behavior in situations where it is inappropriate and counterproductive you can begin with fresh programming using recall of successes mental movies mental rehearsal and other psycho-cybernetics techniques acceptance of the new by the self-image will automatically remove the old scars remember the term solution oriented therapy or better yet do it yourself solution-oriented therapy and think in those terms rather than the cliche of 30 years of weekly visits to the couch emotional scars help make juvenile delinquents psychiatrist Bernard Holland has pointed out that although juvenile delinquents appear to be very independent and have the reputation of being braggarts particularly about how they hate everyone in authority they protest too much underneath this hard exterior shell says Dr Holland is a soft vulnerable inner person who wants to be dependent upon others unquote however they cannot get close to anyone because they will not trust anyone sometime in the past they were hurt by a person important to them and they dare not leave themselves open to be heard again they always have their defenses up to prevent further rejection and pain they attack first thus they drive away the very people who would love them if given half a chance and could help them a popular staple of daytime television talk shows these days is the theme Show featuring teens out of control teens swearing abusing their parents skipping school drinking using drugs engaging in promiscuous sex even shoplifting and stealing cars the show host and the parents turn these out of control teens over to military type juvenile boot camp leaders who dragged them off stage and take them away to boot camp weeks later they return many dramatically changed this is all controversial yet there is considerable evidence of it getting positive and Lasting results more often than not when it works why does it work even at a young age these youngsters have piled on layer on layer on layer on layer of scar tissue so that their self-image has totally handed over the reins to negative automatic failure mechanism emotions notably including aggression to the nth degree you've no doubt heard the saying desperate circumstances require Desperate Measures these boot camp interventions are desperate Last Resort measures in a sense incredibly sharp emotional scalpels to slice away all the protective hardened Scar Tissue on these self-images requires these heavy-handed confrontive techniques bottom line most delinquency is symptomatic of severe emotional scarring a profoundly unhealthy self-image an automatic failure mechanism Unleashed and unchecked carefully consider all your own habitual or repetitive behaviors and life experiences do you suffer through one disappointing intimate relationship after another you find one group of co-workers after another disagreeable are all your clients Cheapskates or difficult and so on whether avoidance or aggression self-image scarring is involved can we prevent future emotional scarring there is a cowboy saying that is a favorite of this book's editor the first step to getting out of a hole is to stop digging we might say that the first step to liberating a scarred self-image is to stop piling on more Scar Tissue can we do so certainly new knowledge about why you respond to certain stimuli as you do heightened emphasis on rational thinking and maturity can be your allies just as there are smart things you can do that are within your sphere of control to strengthen your physical immune system such as eating certain foods and avoiding others taking antioxidant vitamin supplements regularly exercising there are things you can do to strengthen your emotional immune system as well three prescriptions for immunizing yourself against emotional hurts prescription one be too big to feel threatened many people become hurt terribly by tiny pinpricks or what we call social slights everyone knows someone in the family office or circle of friends who is so thin-skinned and sensitive that others must be continually on guard lest defense be taken at some innocent word or act it is a well-known psychological fact that the people who become offended the easiest have the lowest self-esteem we are hurt by things we conceive of as threats to our ego or self-esteem fancied emotional thrusts that go unnoticed by the person with wholesome self-esteem slice these people up terribly even real digs and cuts which inflict a terrible injury to the ego of the person with low self-esteem do not make a dent in the ego of those who think well of themselves the person who feels undeserving who doubts his own capabilities and who has a poor opinion of himself becomes jealous at the drop of a hat the person who secretly doubts her own worth and who feels insecure within herself who sees threats to her ego where there are none exaggerates and overestimates the potential damage from real threats we all need a certain amount of emotional toughness and ego security to protect us from real and fancied ego threats it wouldn't be wise for our physical body to be covered over completely with a hard callous or a shell like a turtle's we would be denied the pleasure of all sensual feeling but our body does have a layer of outer skin the epidermis for the purpose of protecting us from invasion of bacteria small bumps and bruises and small pin Pricks the epidermis is thick enough and tough enough to offer protection against small wounds but not so thick or hard that it interferes with all feeling many people have no epidermis on their ego they have only the thin sensitive inner skin they need to become thicker skinned emotionally tougher so that they will simply ignore Petty cuts and minor ego threats also they need to build up their self-esteem get a better and more adequate self-image of themselves so that they will not feel threatened by every chance remark or innocent Act a big strong person does not feel threatened by a small danger a weak little person does in the same way a healthy strong self-image does not feel itself threatened by every innocent or offhand remark it seems that some people literally go through life waiting to be offended they are rarely disappointed when you habitually personalize every slight every overheard conversation even things you read or hear in media you reveal a very thin-skinned self-image with the weakest of immunities be bigger than such things have bigger fish to fry as the saying goes the person in Hot Pursuit Of meaningful rewarding goals and a calendar of important things to do has little time to obsess over trivial slights and defenses most dumb insensitive remarks are dumb insensitive remarks they have no hidden meaning and searching for it certainly being offended by it is an utter waste of time the popular writer of Pope Western's Louis Lamour was once asked in an interview to reveal the hidden meaning behind the fact that none of the villains in any of his hundreds of books ever died from the first bullet the interviewer thought he was on to something the novelist answered because in those days we got paid by the word I am not getting paid by the word so I'll move on try this mental training exercise visit the supermarket find and buy two potatoes the smallest most stunted one and the biggest one set them side by side on your desk or somewhere frequently visible to you during the day you might even take a Polaroid photograph of the two of them side by side and posted on your automobile visor or dashboard inside your briefcase someplace you will see it let it trigger the thought that your self-image is bigger than a tiny stunted potato and ask yourself if you are acting as a big potato or a shrunken Spud today a self-reliant responsible attitude makes you less vulnerable as Dr Holland has pointed out the juvenile delinquent with the hard outer shell has a soft vulnerable inner person who wants to be dependent on others and wants to be loved by others sales professionals tell me that those who put up the most sales resistance at the outset are frequently easy sells once you get past their defenses that people who feel called on to put up no salesman allowed signs do so because they know they are soft touches and need protection the person with the hard Gruff exterior usually develops it because instinctively he realizes that he is so soft inside that he needs protection the person who has little or no self-reliance who feels emotionally dependent on others makes herself most vulnerable to emotional hurts every human being wants and needs love and affection but the creative self-reliant person also feels a need to give love her emphasis is as much or more on the giving as on the getting she doesn't expect love to be handed to her on a silver platter nor does she have a compulsive need that everybody must love her and approve of her the passive dependent person turns her entire Destiny over to other people circumstances luck life owes her a living and other people owe her consideration appreciation love happiness she makes unreasonable demands and claims on other people and feels cheated wronged hurt when they aren't fulfilled because life just isn't built that way she is seeking The Impossible and leaving herself wide open to emotional hurts and injuries once while speaking to a large Convention of salespeople I met another professional speaker I had heard quite a bit about he was very successful and in considerable demand in the sales world but he told me that he rarely got fan mail and almost never got rounds of hearty Applause when he concluded his presentations and he seemed oddly proud of the fact when I asked him about this he explained it's because I make him mad he went on to quote the Harry Truman give him hell quote Truman reportedly said I don't give him hell I tell him the truth and they think it's hell or something like that anyway this fella was one of the busiest highest paid least beloved speakers in the business and proud of it his corporate clients who paid his fees loved having him lay into the troops often his pot stirring of indignation converted into heightened sales performance immediately as many of the salespeople determined to show that SOB something this is somewhat the equivalent of the football coach posting a newspaper clipping in the locker room quoting players from the next opposing team dissing them I'll freely admit it's not a role as a speaker I would seek out or enjoy but it is interesting how self-reliant and immune his self-image is to the lack of love in the room it is up to you to develop a more self-reliant attitude assume responsibility for your own life and emotional needs we have a saying give yourself your own gold stars as emotionally immature children we look to parents and teachers for gold stars draw or color a picture immediately race to take it to Mom who ooze and Oz over it and proudly displays it on the refrigerator door with magnets as an adult you must graduate from such urgent neediness you must be able to admire your own good work and recognize your own achievements this Loops back to the discussion about your AQ in chapter 8 the refusal to blame ourselves or others or to accept a problem as beyond our influence gives us resiliency in the face of adversity relax away emotional hurts I once had a patient ask me if the forming of scar tissue is a natural and automatic thing why doesn't scar tissue form when a plastic surgeon makes an incision the answer is that if you cut your face and it heals naturally Scar Tissue will form because a certain amount of tension in the wound and just underneath the wound pulls the surface of the skin back creates a gap which is filled in by Scar Tissue a plastic surgeon who operates not only pulls the skin together closely by suturing but also cuts out a small amount of Flesh underneath the skin so that there is no tension present the incision heals smoothly evenly and with no distorting surface scar it is interesting to note that the same thing happens in the case of an emotional wound if there is no tension present there is no disfiguring emotional scar lift have you ever noticed how easy it is to get your feelings hurt or take offense when you are suffering tensions brought about by frustration fear anger or depression we go to work feeling out of sorts or down in the dumps or with self-confidence shaken because of some adverse experience a friend comes by and makes a joking remark nine times out of ten we would laugh think it funny think nothing about it and make a good-natured crack in return but not today we are suffering tensions of self-doubt insecurity anxiety we take the remark in the wrong way become offended and hurt and an emotional scar begins to form this simple everyday experience illustrates very well the principle that we are injured and hurt emotionally not So Much by other people or what they say or don't say but by our own attitude and our own response relaxation cushions emotional blows when we feel hurt or offended the feeling is entirely a matter of our own response in fact the feeling is our response it is our own responses that we have to be concerned about not other peoples we can tighten up become angry anxious or resentful and feel hurt or we can make no response remain relaxed and feel no hurt scientific experiments have shown that it is absolutely impossible to feel fear anger anxiety or negative emotions of any kind while the muscles of the body are kept perfectly relaxed we have to do something to feel fear anger anxiety no man is hurt but by himself said diogenese nothing can work me damage except myself said Saint Bernard the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and I'm never a real sufferer but by my own fault you alone are responsible for your responses and reactions you do not have to respond at all you can remain relaxed and free from injury here's a prescription to help you along take time each and every day to apply these three principles one take time to relax and de-stress two make notes even written notes of your accomplishments and progress toward your goals a written success diary is a very simple tool for building a stronger self-image three create a visualization a mental picture or two to call up and assist you when confronted by unjust criticism caddy remarks or other attacks on your self-image one patient of mine told me he would call up a cartoon-like image of his head on Superman's body standing in the classic Superman pose chess stuck out bullets bouncing off Cape flying in the Wind how to remove old emotional scars we can prevent and immunize ourselves against emotional Scars by practicing the three foregoing rules but what about the old emotional scars formed in the past the old hurts grudges grievances against life resentments once an emotional scar has formed there is but one thing to do and that is to remove it by surgery the same as a physical scar give yourself a spiritual facelift in removing old emotional scars you alone can do the operation you must become your own plastic surgeon and give yourself a spiritual facelift the results will be new life and new Vitality a newfound peace of mind and happiness to speak of an emotional facelift and the use of mental surgery is more than a simile old emotional scars cannot be doctored or medicated they must be cut out given up entirely eradicated many people apply various kinds of Salve or bomb to Old emotional wounds but this simply does not work they may self-righteously forego overt and physical Revenge yet take it out or get even in many subtle ways a typical example is the wife who discovers her husband's infidelity upon the advice of her Minister and or psychiatrist she agrees she should forgive him accordingly she does not shoot him she does not leave him in all overt Behavior she is a dutiful wife she keeps the house neatly she prepares meals well and so on but she makes his life hell on Earth in many subtle Ways by the coldness of her heart and by flaunting her moral superiority when he complains her answer is well dear I did forgive you but I cannot forget her very forgiveness becomes a thorn in his side because she is conscious of the fact that it is proof of her moral superiority she would have been more kind to him and been happier herself had she refused this type of forgiveness and left him forgiveness is a scalpel that removes emotional scars I can forgive but I cannot forget is only another way of saying I will not forgive said Henry Ward Beecher forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note torn into and burned up so that it never can be shown against one unquote forgiveness when it is real and genuine and complete and forgotten is the scalpel which can remove the pus from old emotional wounds heal them and eliminate scar tissue forgiveness which is partial or half-hearted Works no better than a partially completed surgical operation on the face pretended forgiveness which is entered into as a duty is no more effective than a simulated facial surgery your forgiveness should be forgotten as well as the wrong which was forgiven forgiveness which is remembered and dwelt upon re-infects the wound you are attempting to cauterize if you're too proud of your forgiveness or remember it too much you are very apt to feel that the other person owes you something for forgiving him you forgive him one debt but in doing so he incurs another much like the operators of small loan companies who cancel one note and make out a new one every two weeks forgiveness is not a weapon there are many common fallacies regarding forgiveness and one of the reasons that its therapeutic value has not been more recognized is the fact that real forgiveness has been so seldom tried for example many writers have told us that we should forgive to make us good we have seldom been advised to forgive that we might be happy another fallacy is that forgiveness places us in a superior position or as a method of winning out over our enemy this thought has appeared in many glib phrases such as don't merely try to get even forgive your enemy and you get ahead of him Tillotson the former Archbishop of Canterbury tells us a more glorious Victory cannot be gained over another man than this that when the injury began on his part the kindness should begin on ours unquote this is just another way of saying that forgiveness itself can be used as an effective weapon of Revenge which it can revengeful forgiveness however is not therapeutic forgiveness therapeutic forgiveness cuts out eradicates cancels makes the wrong as if it had never been therapeutic forgiveness is like surgery give up grudges as you would a gangrenous arm first the wrong and particularly our own feeling of condemnation of it must be seen as an undesirable thing rather than a desirable thing before anyone can agree to have an arm amputated he must cease to see the arm as a desirable thing to be retained but as an undesirable damaging and threatening thing to be given up in Facial Surgery there can be no partial tentative or halfway measures the scar tissue is cut out completely and entirely the wound is allowed to heal cleanly and Care is taken to see that the face will be restored in every particular just as it was before injury and just as if the injury had never been you can forgive if you're willing therapeutic forgiveness is not difficult the only difficulty is to secure your own willingness to give up and do without your sense of condemnation your willingness to cancel out the debt with no mental reservations we find it difficult to forgive only because we like our sense of condemnation we get a perverse and morbid enjoyment out of nursing our wounds as long as we can condemn others we can feel Superior to them no one can deny that there is also a perverse sense of satisfaction in feeling sorry for yourself your reasons for forgiveness are important in therapeutic forgiveness we cancel out the debt of the other person not because we have decided to be generous do a favor or we are a morally Superior person we cancel the debt Market null and void not because we have made the other person pay sufficiently for the wrong but because we have come to recognize that the debt itself is not valid true forgiveness comes only when we are able to see and emotionally accept that there is and was nothing for us to forgive we should not have condemned or hated the other person in the first place not long ago I went to a luncheon also attended by a number of clergy the subject of forgiveness came up in general and then the case of the adulterous woman whom Jesus forgave in particular I listened to a very learned discussion of why Jesus was able to forgive the woman how he forgave her how his forgiveness was a rebuke to the church men of his time who were ready to Stone her etc etc Jesus didn't forgive the adulterous woman I resisted the temptation to shock these gentlemen by pointing out that actually Jesus never forgave the woman at all nowhere in the narrative as it appears in the New Testament is the word forgive or forgiveness used or even hinted at nor can it be reasonably implied from the facts as given in the story we are told merely that after her accusers had left Jesus asked the woman hath no man condemned thee when she answered in the negative he said neither do I condemn thee go and sin no more you cannot forgive others unless you have first condemned them Jesus never condemned the woman in the first place so there was nothing for him to forgive he recognized her sin or her mistake but did not feel called on to hate her for it he was able to see before the fact what you and I must see after the fact in practicing therapeutic forgiveness that we ourselves air when we hate others because of their mistakes when we condemn them or when we classify them as certain types confusing the person with the behavior or when we mentally incur a debt that others must pay before being restored to our good graces and our emotional acceptance whether you ought to do this whether you should do it or whether you can reasonably be expected to do it is a matter outside the scope of this program and my own field I can only tell you as a doctor that if you will do it you will be far happier and healthier and you will attain more peace of mind however I would like to point out that this is what therapeutic forgiveness is and that it is the only type of forgiveness that really works and if forgiveness is anything less than this we might as well stop talking about it forgive yourself as well as others not only do we incur emotional wounds from others most of us inflict them on ourselves we beat ourselves over the head with self-condemnation remorse and regret we beat ourselves down with self-doubt we cut ourselves up with excessive guilt remorse and regret are attempts to emotionally live in the past excessive guilt is an attempt to make right in the past something we did wrong or thought of as wrong in the past emotions are used correctly and appropriately when they help us to respond or react appropriately to a reality in the present environment since we cannot live in the past we cannot appropriately react emotionally to the past the past can be simply written off closed forgotten insofar as our emotional reactions are concerned we do not need to take an emotional position one way or the other regarding detours that might have taken us off course in the past the important thing is our present Direction and our present goal we need to recognize our own efforts as mistakes otherwise we could not correct cores steering or guidance would be impossible but it is futile and fatal to hate or condemn ourselves for our mistakes a study on guilt conducted at Case Western Reserve University reported in the September 1997 issue of Readers Digest found that the average person spends two hours a day feeling guilty much of this is even present moment guilt the working mother who feels guilty while at work about not being home with her children then guilty if at home in the afternoon with her children for not pulling her weight at work the exhausted son or daughter of an aging infirm parent guilty for feeling a bit irritable the traveling executive who feels guilty about missing his daughter's recital at school you cannot see your future with optimistic eyes if you cannot view your present and past with kind eyes this is not to suggest simply letting yourself off the hook at every turn responsibility is important but what I call the critic within is so much more powerful than other critics we must take care not to let it run roughshod over our self-image once after lecturing to a large group of inmates at an Oklahoma prison I came away with a realization here I had been in the company of robbers murderers people who had made horrendous mistakes in some cases repeatedly yet most did not blame or punish themselves as much as many people on the outside do for much less serious missteps in a life 99 made up of honest ethical Behavior it is common for inmates to be jailhouse lawyers fighting for their rights inside prison while many good citizens deprive themselves of their basic inalienable rights to pursue happiness solely through their own excessive self-criticism and self-punishment as we drove away from the prison with its huge concrete walls rolls of barbed wire on the top of the walls and armed guards in Towers I thought to myself that many people build prisons far more intimidating than these than lock themselves up in them all because of some past sin I'm not a great believer in sin but if there is sin it is for people who waste their lives chastising themselves for mistakes they've made mistakes that are only human you make mistakes mistakes do not make you in thinking of our own mistakes or those of others it is helpful and realistic to think of them in terms of what we did or did not do rather than in terms of what the mistakes made us one of the biggest mistakes we can make is to confuse our Behavior with ourself to conclude that because we did a certain act it characterizes us as a certain sort of person it clarifies thinking if we can see that mistakes involve something we do they refer to actions and to be realistic we should use verbs denoting action rather than nouns denoting a state of being in describing them for example to say I failed verb form is but to recognize an error and can help lead to future success but to say I am a failure noun form does not describe what you did but what you think the mistake did to you this does not contribute to learning but tends to fixate the mistake and make it permanent this has been proved over and over in clinical psychological experiments we seem to recognize that all children in learning to walk will occasionally fall we say he fell or she stumbled we do not say he is a Faller or she is a stumbler however many parents fail to recognize that all children in learning to talk also make mistakes or non-influences hesitation blocking repetition of syllables and words it is a common experience for an anxious concerned parent to conclude he is a stutterer such an attitude or a judgment not of the child's actions but of the child gets across to the child who begins to think of himself as a stutterer his learning is fixated and the stutter tends to become permanent according to Dr Wendell Johnson the nation's foremost authority on stuttering at the time I wrote the original edition of this book this sort of thing is the cause of stuttering he found that the parents of non-stutters are more likely to use descriptive terms such as he did not speak whereas the parents of stutters were inclined to use judgmental terms such as he could not speak writing in the Saturday evening Post January 5th 1957 Dr Johnson said slowly we begin to comprehend the vital point that had been missed for so many centuries case after case had developed after to been diagnosed as stuttering by over-anxious persons unfamiliar with the facts of normal speech development the parents rather than the child the listeners rather than the speakers seem to be the ones most requiring understanding and instruction Dr Knight Dunlap who made a 20-year study of habits they're making unmaking in relation to learning discovered that the same principle applied to virtually all bad habits including bad emotional habits it was essential he said that patients learn to stop blaming themselves condemning themselves and feeling remorseful over their habits if they were to cure them he found particularly damaging the conclusion I am ruined or I am worthless because the patient had done or was doing certain Acts so remember you make mistakes mistakes don't make you anything what you do need not define who you are or what you will do you are not your mistakes Who Wants to Be an oyster one final word about preventing and removing emotional hurts to live creatively we must be willing to be a little vulnerable we must be willing to be hurt a little if necessary in Creative living a lot of people need a thicker and tougher emotional skin than they have but they need only a tough emotional hide or epidermis not a shell to trust to love to open ourselves to emotional communication with other people is to run the risk of being hurt if we are hurt once we can do one of two things we can build a thick protective shell or scar tissue to prevent being hurt again live like an oyster and not be heard or we can turn the other cheek remain vulnerable and go on living creatively an oyster is never hurt it has a thick shell that protects it from everything it is isolated an oyster is secure but not creative it cannot go after what it wants it must wait for it to come to it an oyster knows none of the hurts of emotional communication with the environment but neither can an oyster know the joys an emotional facelift makes you look and feel younger as this Edition is being written the so-called baby boomer generation is hitting the 50 year old Mark and is more obsessed with stopping the clock even turning back the clock than any generation before fortunes are spent on cosmetic surgery liposuction Fitness Gyms and devices personal trainers lotions and Potions growth hormone injections on and on I have a different prescription try giving yourself a spiritual facelift it is more than a play on words it opens you up to more life more Vitality the stuff that youth is made of you'll feel younger you'll actually look younger many times I have seen a man or woman apparently grow five or ten years younger in appearance after removing old emotional scars look around you who are the youthful looking people you know over the age of 40 the grumpy resentful the pessimistic the ones who are soured on the world or are they the cheerful optimistic good-natured people remember I am a medical doctor a plastic surgeon I am absolutely serious and sincere when I tell you that you can look years younger in face and posture and feel years younger in health and vitality thanks to emotional surgery and self-image strengthening with psycho-cybernetics carrying a grudge against someone or against life can bring on the old age stoop just as much as carrying a heavy round on your shoulders would people with emotional scars grudges and the like are living in the past which is characteristic of old people the youthful attitude and Youthful spirit that erases wrinkles from the soul and the face and that puts a sparkle in the eye looks to the Future and has a great expectation to look forward to so why not give yourself a facelift your do-it-yourself kit consists of the relaxation of negative tensions to prevent scars therapeutic forgiveness to remove old scars providing yourself with a tough but not a hard epidermis instead of a shell creative living a willingness to be a little vulnerable and a Nostalgia for the future instead of the past try these mental training exercises by far the most challenging and rewarding exercises of all suggested in this program are these involving forgiveness first choose one or two persons for whom you've long carried resentment over past slides and find a way in your heart to truly completely forgive them no strings attached and ultimately do so via your actions toward them also Identify some past error or situation you've been carrying a grudge against yourself for and forgive yourself and finally once and for all banish this from your thoughts this may very well require considerable work in your imagination Factory invest 30 minutes a day for 21 consecutive days on quiet reflection working on this with yourself in solitude chapter 11. how to unlock your real personality Albert Hubbard wrote to avoid criticism do nothing say nothing be nothing personality that magnetic and mysterious something that is easy to recognize but difficult to Define is not so much acquired from without as released from within what we call personality is the outward evidence of that unique and individual creative self made in the image of God that spark of divinity within us or what might be called the free and full expression of your real self this real self within every person is attractive it is magnetic it does have a powerful impact and influence on other people we have the feeling that we are in touch with something real and basic and it does something to us on the other hand a phony is universally disliked and detested why does everyone love babies certainly not for what babies can do or what they know or have but simply because of what they are infants have personality plus there is no superficiality no phoniness no hypocrisy in their own language which consists mostly of either crying or cooing they express their real feelings they say what they mean there is no guile babies are emotionally honest they exemplify to the nth degree the psychological dictum be yourself they have no qualms about expressing themselves they are not in the least inhibited babies are proof that all inhibition is learned taught to the self-image not born within the self-image everyone has a dynamic personality locked up within him every human being has the mysterious something we call personality when we say that people have a good personality what we really mean is that they have freed and released the creative potential within them and are able to express their real self poor personality and inhibited personality are one and the same individuals with a poor personality do not express the creative self within they have restrained it handcuffed it locked it up and thrown away the key the word inhibit literally means to stop prevent prohibit restrain the inhibited personality has imposed a restraint on the expression of the real self for one reason or another the person is afraid to express himself afraid to be himself and has locked up his real self within an inner prison the symptoms of inhibition are many and varied shyness timidity self-consciousness hostility feelings of excessive guilt insomnia nervousness irritability inability to get along with others frustration is characteristic of practically every area and activity of the inhibited personality the real and basic frustration is the failure to be himself and the failure to adequately Express himself but this basic frustration is likely to color and overflow into all that he does excessive negative feedback equals inhibition the science of cybernetics gives us a new insight into the inhibited personality and shows us the way toward disinhibition freedom and how to release our Spirits from self-imposed prisons negative feedback in a Servo mechanism is equivalent to criticism negative feedback says in effect you are wrong you're off course you need to take corrective action to get back on the beam the purpose of negative feedback however is to modify response and change the course of forward action not to stop it all together if negative feedback is working properly a missile or a torpedo reacts to criticism just enough to correct course and keeps going forward toward the target this course will be as we have previously explained a series of zigzags however if the mechanism is too sensitive to negative feedback the servo mechanism over corrects instead of progressing toward the target it will perform exaggerated lateral zigzags or stop all forward progress altogether our own built-in Servo mechanism works in the same way we must have negative feedback in order to operate purposely in order to steer our way or be guided to a goal negative feedback always says in effect stop what you're doing or the way you're doing it and do something else its purpose is to modify response or change the degree of forward action not to stop all action negative feedback does not say stop period it says what you are doing is wrong but it does not say it is wrong to do anything yet where negative feedback is excessive or where our own mechanism is too sensitive to negative feedback the result is not modification of response but total inhibition of response inhibition and excessive negative feedback are one and the same when we overreact to negative feedback or criticism we are likely to conclude that not only is our present course slightly off beam or wrong but that it is wrong for us even to want to go forward a hiker or a hunter often gets back to the automobile by picking out some prominent Landmark near the car such as an extra Tall Tree that can be seen for Miles when returning to the car the hiker looks for the tree or Target and starts walking toward it from time to time the tree may be lost from his view but the course can be checked by comparing the hiker's Direction with the location of the tree if the course is 15 degrees to the left of the tree what the hiker is doing is wrong he immediately corrects the course and again walks directly toward the tree he does not however conclude that it is wrong for him to walk yet many of us are guilty of just so foolish a conclusion when it comes to our attention that our manner of expression is off course missing the Mark or wrong we conclude that self-expression itself is wrong or that success for us reaching our target tree is wrong keep in mind that excessive negative feedback has the effect of interfering with or stopping completely the appropriate response stuttering as a demonstration of inhibition stuttering offers a good illustration of how excessive negative feedback brings on inhibition and interferes with appropriate response While most of us are not consciously aware of the fact when we talk we receive negative feedback data through our ears by listening to or monitoring our own voice this is the reason that totally deaf individuals seldom speak well they have no way of knowing whether their voice is coming out as a shriek a scream or an unintelligible mumble this is also the reason that persons born deaf do not learn to talk at all except with special tutoring if you sing perhaps you have been surprised to find that you could not sing on key or in harmony with others while suffering temporary deafness or partial deafness because of a cold thus negative feedback itself is no bar or handicap to speech on the contrary it enables us to speak and speak correctly voice teachers advise that we record our own voices on a tape recorder and listen to them as a method of improving tone enunciation Etc by doing this we become aware of errors in speech that we had not noticed before we are able to see clearly what we are doing wrong and we can make correction however if negative feedback is to be effective in helping us talk better it should one be more or less automatic or subconscious two it should occur spontaneously or while we're talking and three response to feedback should not be so sensitive as to result in inhibition if we are consciously over critical of our speech or if we are too careful in trying to avoid errors in advance rather than reacting spontaneously stuttering is likely to result if the stutterer's excessive feedback can be toned down or if it can be made spontaneous rather than anticipatory Improvement in speech will be immediate videotape has provided an extraordinarily valuable feedback tool for people seeking to improve their communication Effectiveness chiropractors and dentists role play their case presentations to patients on video with Consultants acting as the skeptical patients then study the video replay sales professionals do the same speakers seminar leaders politicians and their speech coaches make similar use of it golfers swings can be better analyzed and the golfers better coached by videotaping the swing football players study film this is extremely valuable only to the person with a sufficiently healthy self-image not to obsess over every mistake and flaw observed and able to focus on course correction through observation what many people and coaches do not fully understand about such feedback about capturing performance on tape for careful observation and Analysis is that it is equally important and often more useful to identify focus on and imprint the positives rather than the negatives care must be taken not to overly emphasize a flaw in performance to such a degree that it becomes mistakenly received by the servo mechanism as the target you might think of this in the context of the old Mind Trick tell people to close their eyes for 60 seconds and think of anything but a dancing Pink Elephant in red boxer shorts on roller skates invariably what metal picture dominates be careful you do not manufacture pink elephants for yourself or permit coaches to do it for you conscious self-criticism makes you do worse this has been proved by Dr E Colin Cherry of London England writing in the British scientific journal Nature Dr Cherry stated his belief that stuttering was caused by excessive monitoring to test his theory he equipped 25 severe stutterers with earphones through which a loud tone drowned out the sound of their own voices when asked to read aloud from a prepared text under these conditions which eliminated self-criticism the Improvement was remarkable another group of severe stutterers was trained in Shadow talk to follow as closely as possible and attempt to talk with a person reading from a text or a voice on radio or TV after brief practice the stutterers learned to Shadow talk easily and most of them were able to speak normally and correctly under these conditions which obviated Advanced criticism and literally forced them to speak spontaneously or to synchronize speaking and correcting additional practice in Shadow talk enabled the stutters to learn how to speak correctly at all times proving to the self-image that the previously believed truth I am a stutterer was incorrect when excessive negative feedback or self-criticism was eliminated inhibition disappeared and performance improved when there was no time for worry or too much carefulness in advance expression immediately improved this gives us a valuable clue as to how we may disinhibit or release a locked up personality and improve performance in other areas how the Dale Carnegie program Toastmasters International and network marketing or MLM companies provide just the right balance of course correction feedback countless Business Leaders have graduated from the Dale Carnegie program notably Lee Iacocca who in turn has encouraged thousands to enroll many top professional speakers as well as countless sales professionals Executives pastors and Community leaders have gone from Awkward nervous inhibited stumbling speakers to confident and persuasive speakers through participation in Toastmasters it is almost the norm in the world of network marketing for the inhibited person who believes and insists that she can't sell and can't speak in front of a group to flower and Bloom and metamorphose into a dynamic convincing salesperson and to become such a ham on stage it's hard to pry the microphone from her fingers why and how does this happen with such consistency and frequency in these environments the individual's experiences in these environments provide what you might call Gentle course correction feedback so that the individuals have a safe encouraging opportunity to test and challenge their limiting beliefs to let their suppressed personality come out into the light little by little to discover their true self ultimately showing proof of Greater abilities to their self-image thus moving that little dotted line of self-imposed limits and giving themselves more room for creative self-expression in these environments individuals are more cajoled than forced into self-expression then they are applauded and congratulated often for each small step forward each small victory course correction feedback is well balanced with recognition of positive aspects of performance there's never a band of jackals leaping at persons when they air screaming I told you so you can't do this to the contrary even those who go on stage and stumble forget their place flush beat red will get Applause and encouragement in this safe environment they can risk Improvement rather than choose isolation more often than not they quickly discover that their I can't beliefs are merely self-imposed limits not actual limits such a discovery can have extraordinary results a sales manager cons his own salesperson a manager of a direct sales force told me of his conning one of his own salespeople into improved performance and while I cannot condone the strategy its result is fascinating and provocative this particular salesperson was in a severe slump going on appointment after appointment after appointment and returning night after night empty-handed her self-image was rapidly shrinking to the size of a tiny Spud and the manager realized he needed to employ some powerful fast-acting medicine or fire her the next night he engineered two appointments back to back that were rigged he sent her to friends homes that afternoon he rehearsed his friends and gave them the money to make their purchases so the actual sales took place on which commissions would be paid when she arrived at the first home and began rather timidly going through her presentation she discovered unusually receptive and responsive prospects their positive feedback helped her warm to the task and by the end of her presentation she was humming along she closed the sale and left with a signed order and a three hundred dollar check in her attache case at the second appointment everything went as if scripted and her prospects were performing perfectly another 300 check over the next four nights from eight appointments she chalked up six sales by month's end she had batted over 70 percent for the entire month self-consciousness is really others consciousness the cause and effect relationship between excessive negative feedback and what we call self-consciousness can be readily seen in any sort of social relationship we constantly receive negative feedback data from other people a smile a frown a hundred different subtle clues of approval or disapproval interest or lack of Interest continually advise us of how we're doing whether we're getting across whether we're hitting or missing the mark so to speak in any sort of social situation there is a constant interaction going on between speaker and listener actor and observer and without this constant communication back and forth human relations and social activities would be virtually impossible and if not impossible it would certainly be dull boring non-inspiring and dead without Sparks good actors actresses and public speakers can sense this communication from the audience and it helps them perform better persons with good personalities who are popular and magnetic in social situations can sense this communication from other people and they automatically and spontaneously react and respond to it in a creative way the communication from other people is used as negative feedback and enables the person to perform better socially unless a person can respond to this communication from other people she is a cold fish type the reserved personality who does not warm up to other people without this communication you become a social dud the hard to get to know type who interests no one however this type of negative feedback to be effective should be creative that is it should be more or less subconscious automatic and spontaneous rather than consciously contrived or thought about what others think creates inhibition when you become too consciously concerned about what others think when you become too careful to consciously try to please other people when you become too sensitive to the real or fancy disapproval of other people then you have excessive negative feedback inhibition and poor performance whenever you constantly and consciously monitor your Every Act word or manner again you become inhibited and self-conscious you become too careful to make a good impression and in so doing choke off restrain inhibit your creative self and end up making a rather poor impression the best way to make a good impression on other people is never consciously try to make a good impression on them never act or fail to act purely for consciously contrived effect never Wonder consciously what the others are thinking of you how they are judging you how a Salesman cured self-consciousness James Mangan the famous salesman author and lecturer said that when he first left home he was painfully self-conscious especially when eating in the dining room of a ritzy or high-class Hotel as he walked through the dining room he felt that every eye was on him judging him critical of him he was painfully conscious of his every movement motion and act the way he walked the way he sat down his table manners and the way he ate his food and all these actions seemed stiff and awkward he wondered why was he so ill at ease he knew he had good table manners and knew enough social etiquette to get by why had he never felt self-conscious and Ill at ease when eating in the kitchen with Ma and paw he decided it was because when he was eating with Ma and PAW he did not think or bother to wonder how he was acting he was neither careful nor self-critical he was not concerned about producing an effect he had felt composed relaxed and had done all right James Mangan cured his self-consciousness by remembering how he had felt and how he had acted when he was going to the kitchen to eat with Ma and Pa then when he walked into a ritzy dining room he would imagine or pretend that he was going to eat with Ma and Pa and act that way Poise comes when you ignore excessive negative feedback mengan also found that he could overcome his stage fright and self-consciousness when calling on big shots or in any other social situation by saying to himself I'm going to eat with Ma and PAW Conjuring up in his imagination how he had felt and how he had acted and then acting that way in his book The Knack of selling yourself Mangan advises salespeople to use the I'm going home to eat supper with my ma and PAW I've been through this a thousand times nothing new can happen here technique this attitude of being immune to strangers or strange situations this total disregard for all the unknown or unexpected has a name it is called poise Poise is the deliberate shunting aside of all fears arising from new and uncontrollable circumstances you need to be more self-conscious the late Dr Albert Edward Wiggum famous educator psychologist and lecturer said that in his early years he was so painfully self-conscious he found it all but impossible to recite in school he avoided other people and could not talk to them without hanging his head he constantly fought his self-consciousness and tried hard to overcome it all to no avail then one day he got a new idea his trouble was not self-consciousness at all it was really excessive others consciousness he was too painfully sensitive to what others might think of everything he said or did every move he made this tied him up in knots he could not think clearly and he could think of nothing to say he did not feel this way when alone with himself when alone he was perfectly calm and relaxed at ease poised and he could think of lots of interesting ideas and things to say and he was also perfectly aware of and at home with himself then he stopped fighting and trying to conquer his self-consciousness and instead concentrated on developing more self-consciousness feeling acting Behavior thinking as he did when he was alone without any regard to how some other person might feel about or judge him this total disregard for the opinion and Judgment of other people did not result in his becoming callous arrogant or entirely insensitive to others there is no danger of entirely eradicating negative feedback no matter how hard you may try but this effort in the opposite direction did tone down his overly sensitive feedback mechanism he got along better with other people and went on to make his living counseling people and making public speeches to large groups without the slightest degree of anxiety the most liberating of all thoughts is disregard or disconcern for what other people think famous mail order impresario and entrepreneur Jay Peterman wrote in his autobiography Peterman Rides Again once you realize that most people are keeping up appearances and putting on a show their approval becomes less important unquote excessive concern over what other people think inhibits personality more than any other Factor truth be told we tend to believe other people think about us far more than they ever actually do in the popular TV sitcom Frasier about a psychologist the main character Dr Frazier is receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award and receives a floral arrangement and a congratulatory note from his old college professor the note reads congratulations you must be very proud at first Frazier is pleased to have received the congratulations from his old Mentor but then he begins to analyze it for its hidden meaning Why didn't it read I'm very proud of you instead of you must be very proud Etc soon he is off to the professor's office and confronts him with a long-winded series of questions and interpretations of what the professor meant by his terse note when Frazier finally runs out of steam and the professor can get a word in edgewise he she sheepishly tells Frazier actually I just told my secretary to send flowers and a card she wrote the note you do the same so do I one evening on a drive home after a party at a friend's home I was mulling over an offhand remark someone there had made to me trying to discern its hidden meaning and asking my wife Anne do you think he meant this or did he mean that why would he think that about me and finally said Maxie he wasn't thinking anything at all he was drunk how many times have you obsessed over what somebody's remark or even their glance meant devoting hours to it while you stu the other person forgot the matter within seconds and moved on to a myriad of other people places and things and athlete's comeback based on a liberated self-image her name is Jennifer Capriati once a 14 year old tennis Phenom growing up in the spotlight of massive media attention under the pressure of adult competition in the first phase of her career between 1990 and 1993 she reached three grand slam semi-finals and captured the 1992 Olympic gold medal at Barcelona but then her career and confidence took such a dramatic downturn she left the tour for two years and seriously considered giving up tennis altogether in 1994 she made news with a drug arrest and a shoplifting incident despite winning the Olympic gold medal in 1992 she traces her frustration and disillusionment to a year earlier when she lost the Grand Slam semi-final to Monica celes in a close match she initially controlled I never played well after that except for the Olympics she said after a two-year Hiatus Capriati returned competing at top levels this time proclaiming Peace of Mind instead of unbearable pressure a journalist reporting on her return wrote in USA Today there seemed to be two key reasons for capriati's Renaissance concluding it didn't matter what people believed about her and learning to stop believing bad things about herself unquote in 2001 she beat Martina Hingis in the final of the Australian Open winning her first ever Grand Slam Tournament you too can experience the same lifting of emotional weight from your shoulders that this young tennis star has by rationally concluding that others opinions about you real or magnified by imagination are far less important than your own opinions about yourself what makes you think you can do that on November 4th 1998 the Attorney General of Minnesota long-time professional politician skip Humphrey son of Hubert Humphrey and Norman Coleman mayor of Saint Paul were shocked as their opponent Jesse The Body Ventura had whipped them in the election and now took claim to the governor's mansion the long shot third-party candidate better known for his outrageous outfits and Antics as a pro wrestler than for more cerebral Pursuits campaigning with far fewer resources took 37 percent of the vote more than enough to win in a tightly contested three candidate election what on Earth made Jesse Ventura imagine he could actually beat the two parties credible and experienced candidates if you've ever been asked what makes you think you can do that you might have taken some satisfaction in Jesse Ventura's Underdog upset victory all too often this question is asked of us by people who should be in our Corner building us up often they ask it with sincere concern for our well-being sometimes with more concern for themselves but it doesn't matter the adverse effect is the same I can remember everyone I knew but my mother repeatedly asking me what made me think I could jump right into private practice and succeed wouldn't I be better advised to seek a position on the Bottom Rung in someone else's practice or in a hospital my mother bless her soul never raised such doubt and unwaveringly voiced her confidence that I could do anything I set my mind to do whether she had private silent doubts or concerns I do not know and I'm glad I did not know you will be asked this question what makes you think just about any and every time you attempt anything of significance fortunately you can succeed no matter what others doubts may be as long as you are not controlled by them your strong self-image that counsels you that you can do anything you set your mind to is a most important Ally many a person with a cheering section of one has confounded critics baffled Skeptics amazed even close friends and family members in achieving remarkable things it is only when your cheering sections bleachers are devoid of the One True Believer who matters most yourself that you are in truly Dire Straits your opinion matters most of all in his book six pillars of self-esteem expert Dr Nathaniel Brandon defines self-esteem as the reputation we acquire with ourselves Einstein had a reputation as a Daydreamer and a Dullard in school today he'd likely be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and given a drug he had a reputation with his adult colleagues as being dumb at mathematics it didn't interfere with his success what if the ex-convict attempting to go straight secure a decent job and build a constructive life his reputation precedes him everywhere he goes and will be a very real obstacle for some time but it will still ultimately be his own opinion of himself that will matter most that will determine whether or not he will persevere recidivism is unfortunately high but fortunately not one hundred percent people do emerge from Criminal pasts and incarceration to build worthy lives certainly you can liberate your self-image from any prison of your own making built of bricks from the past to live a more fulfilling life your reputation with others cannot jettison past mistakes often gives unfair weight to mistakes while ignoring many other accomplishments and attributes and is even colored by the biases of the people making judgments you cannot change that except through time and performance but you certainly do not have to accept that same reputation you know better you have all the facts and only you know the current level of commitment to certain ideals determine for yourself what your reputation will be with yourself tomorrow and live up to it today as the Axiom goes one day at a time conscience death make cowards of us all so said Shakespeare and so say modern day psychiatrists and enlightened ministers conscience itself is a learned negative feedback mechanism having to do with morals and ethics if the learned and stored data is correct concerning what is right and what is wrong and if the feedback mechanism is not overly sensitive but realistic the result just as with any other goal striving situation is that we are relieved from the burden of having to decide constantly as to what is right and wrong conscience steers us or guides us down the straight and narrow to the goal of correct appropriate and realistic Behavior insofar as ethics and morals are concerned conscience Works automatically and subconsciously as does any other feedback system however as Dr Harry Emerson fosdik says your conscience can fool you unquote your conscience itself can be wrong it depends on your own basic beliefs concerning right and wrong if your basic beliefs are true realistic and sensible conscience becomes a valuable Ally in dealing with the real world and in sailing on the ethical sea it acts as a compass that keeps you out of trouble as a Mariner's Compass keeps the ship off the reefs but if your basic beliefs are themselves wrong untrue unrealistic or irrational these declinate your compass and push it off True North just as magnetic bits of metal can disturb the compass of the Mariner and guide the ship into trouble rather than away from it conscience can mean many things to many people if you are brought up to believe as some people are that it is sinful to wear buttons on your clothes your conscience will bother you when you do if you are brought up to believe that cutting off another human's head shrinking it and hanging it on your wall is right proper and a sign of manhood then you will feel guilty unworthy and undeserving if you haven't managed to shrink ahead head shrinking Savages would no doubt call this a sin of omission conscience's job is to make you happy not miserable the purpose of conscience is to help make us happy and productive not the other way around but if we are to let our conscience be our guide our conscience must be based on truth it must point to True North otherwise blindly obeying conscience can only get us into trouble rather than out of it and make us unhappy and unproductive in the bargain self-expression is not a moral issue much Mischief results from our taking a moral position on matters that are not basically moral matters at all for example self-expression or the lack of it is not basically an ethical question aside from the fact that it is our duty to use the talents our creator gave us yet self-expression may become morally wrong as far as your conscience is concerned if you were squelched shut up shamed humiliated or perhaps punished as a child for speaking up expressing your ideas showing off such a child learns that it is wrong to express herself to hold herself out as having any worthwhile ideas or perhaps to speak at all if a child is punished for showing anger or shamed too much for showing fear or perhaps made fun of for showing love she learns that expressing her real feelings is wrong some children learn that it is sinful or wrong only to express the bad emotions anger and fear but when you inhibit bad emotions you also inhibit the expression of good emotions and the yardstick for judging emotions is not goodness or Badness as such but appropriateness and inappropriateness it is appropriate for the man who meets the bear on the trail to experience fear it is appropriate to experience anger if there is a legitimate need to destroy an obstacle by sheer force and destructiveness properly directed and controlled anger is an important element of Courage if every time a child comes up with an opinion she is squelched and put in her place she learns that it is right for her to be a nobody and wrong to want to be a somebody such a distorted and unrealistic conscience does indeed make cowards of us all we can become overly sensitive and too carefully concerned with whether we have a right to succeed in even a worthwhile Endeavor we become too carefully concerned about whether or not I deserve this many people inhibited by the wrong kind of conscience hold back or take a back seat in any kind of endeavor even church activities they secretly feel it would not be right for them to hold themselves out as a leader or presume to be somebody or they are overly concerned with whether other people might think they were showing off stage fright is a common phenomenon it becomes understandable when seen as excessive negative feedback coming from a declinated conscience stage fright is the fear that we will be punished for speaking up expressing our own opinion presuming to be somebody or showing off things that most of us learned were wrong and punishable as children stage fright illustrates how Universal is the suppression and inhibition of self-expression disinhibition a long step in the opposite direction if you are among the millions who suffer unhappiness and failure because of inhibition you need to deliberately practice disinhibition you need to practice being less careful less concerned less conscientious you need to practice speaking before you think instead of thinking before you speak acting without thinking instead of thinking or considering carefully before you act commonly when I advise a patient to practice disinhibition and the most inhibited object the most I am likely to hear something like this but surely you do not think that we need to exercise no care at all no concern no worry about results it seems to me that the world needs a certain amount of inhibition otherwise we would live like Savages and civilized society would collapse if we express ourselves without any restraint freely expressing our feelings we would go around punching people in the nose who disagreed with us yes I say you are correct the world does need a certain amount of inhibition but not you the keywords are a certain amount you have such an excessive amount of inhibition you are like a patient running a temperature of 108 degrees who says but surely body heat is necessary for health man is a warm-blooded animal and could not live without a certain amount of temperature we all need temperature yet you are telling me that I should concentrate completely and entirely on reducing my temperature and ignore completely the danger of not having any temperature the stutterer who is already so tied up with moral tensions excessive negative feedback self-critical analysis and inhibition that he cannot talk at all is prone to argue in the same way when told to totally ignore negative feedback and self-criticism he could cite you numerous Proverbs apothems and the like to prove that one should think before he speaks that an idol and careless tongue gets you into trouble and that one should be very careful of what he says and how he says it because good speech is important and a word spoken cannot be recalled all that he is saying in effect is that negative feedback is a useful and beneficial thing but not for him when he totally ignores negative feedback by either being deafened by a loud tone or by Shadow talk he speaks correctly the straight and narrow path between inhibition and disinhibition someone has said that the inhibited worry warty anxiously concerned personality stutters all over balance and Harmony are what is needed when the temperature has gone too high the doctor attempts to lower it when it is sunk too low he attempts to raise it when a person cannot sleep enough a prescription is given to make the patient sleep more when a person sleeps too much a stimulant is prescribed to keep him awake Etc it is not a question of which is best a hot or cold temperature or sleepfulness or wakefulness the Cure lies in taking a long step in the opposite direction here the principle of cybernetics enters into the picture again our goal is an adequate self-fulfilling creative personality the path to the goal is a course between too much inhibition and too little when there is too much we correct course By ignoring inhibition and practicing more disinhibition how to tell whether you need disinhibition here are the feedback signals which can tell you whether you are off course because of too much or too little inhibition if you continually get yourself into trouble because of overconfidence if you habitually rush in Where Angels Fear To Tread if you habitually find yourself in hot water because of impulsive ill-considered actions if projects backfire on you because you always act first and ask questions later if you can never admit you're wrong if you are a loud talker and a blabbermouth then you probably have too little inhibition you need to think more of the consequences before acting you need to stop acting like a bull in a china shop and plan your activities more carefully however the great majority of people do not fall in this category if you were shy around strangers if you dread new and strange situations if you feel inadequate worry a lot are anxious overly concerned if you are nervous and feel self-conscious if you have any nervous symptoms such as facial tics blinking your eyes unnecessarily Tremor or difficulty in going to sleep if you feel ill at ease in social situations if you hold yourself back and continually take a back seat then these are all symptoms showing that you have too much inhibition you are too careful in everything you plan too much you need to practice Saint Paul's advice to the Ephesians be careful in nothing try these mental training exercises one don't wonder in advance what you're going to say just open your mouth and say it improvise as you go along Jesus advises us to give no thought as to what we would say if delivered up to councils but that the spirit would advise us what to say at the time 2. don't plan take no thought for tomorrow don't think before you act act and correct your actions as you go along this advice may seem radical yet it is actually the way all Servo mechanisms must work a torpedo does not think out all its errors in advance and attempt to correct them in advance it must act first start moving toward the goal then correct any errors that may occur three stop criticizing yourself the inhibited person indulges in self-critical analysis continually after each action however simple she says to herself I wonder if I should have done that after she has gotten up courage enough to say something she immediately says to herself maybe I shouldn't have said that maybe the other person will take it the wrong way stop tearing yourself apart useful and beneficial feedback Works subconsciously spontaneously and automatically conscious self-criticism self-analysis and introspection is good and useful if undertaken perhaps once a year but the continual Moment by moment day by day sort of second guessing yourself or playing Monday Morning Quarterback to your past actions is defeating watch for this self-criticism pull yourself up short and stop it four make a habit of speaking louder than usual inhibited people are notoriously soft-spoken raise the volume of your voice you don't have to shout at people and use an angry tone just consciously practice speaking louder than usual loud talk in itself is a powerful disinhibitor experiments have shown that you can exert up to 15 percent more strength and lift more weight if you shout grunt or groan loudly as you make the lift the explanation of this is that loud shouting disinhibits and allows you to exert all your strength including what has been blocked off and tied up by inhibition 5. let people know when you like them the inhibited personality is as afraid of expressing good feelings as bad ones if he expresses love he is afraid it will be judged sentimentality if he expresses friendship he is afraid it will be considered phoning or Apple polishing if he compliments someone he is afraid the other will think him superficial or suspect an ulterior motive totally ignore all these negative feedback signals complement at least three people every day if you like what people are doing or wearing or saying let them know it be direct I like that Joe Mary that is a very pretty hat Jim that proves to me you're a smart person and if you're married just say to your spouse I love you at least twice a day chapter 12. do-it-yourself tranquilizers that bring peace of mind Charles W Mayo wrote worry affects the circulation the heart the glands the whole nervous system and profoundly affects health tranquilizer drugs which have become so popular bring peace of mind and calmness they reduce or eliminate nervous symptoms by an umbrella action just as an umbrella protects us from the rain the various tranquilizers erect a psychic screen between us and disturbing stimuli tranquilizers work because they greatly reduce or eliminate our own response to disturbing outside stimuli but tranquilizers do not change the environment the disturbing stimuli are still there we are still able to recognize them intellectually but we do not respond to them emotionally in chapter 7 unhappiness we said that our own feelings do not depend on externals but on our own attitudes reactions and responses tranquilizers offer convincing evidence of this fact in substance they reduce or tone down our over-response to negative feedback I might add that today's medical community seems far too quick and liberal in resorting to drugs for every imaginable psychological malady from children's attention deficit disorder to adult anxiety the newest business of MD diagnosis and Drug prescription via the Internet is most disturbing for the person who suffers from severe anxiety or compulsive Behavior Dr Lucinda Bassett at the Midwest anxiety Center has done some remarkable work perfectly in keeping with the principles of psycho-cybernetics I recommend her self-help materials and services including as a starting point her book from Panic to power the author suffered from acute anxiety disorders beginning in childhood and in 1981 was a full-blown agoraphobic using her own healing process as a framework supplemented with thousands of case histories she developed a program expressed in her book that helps even those with severe anxieties reclaim their true personalities for a great many people probably you too neither drugs nor Advanced anxiety treatment measures are needed the do-it-yourself psycho-cybernetic tranquilizers you already possess are more than sufficient once you learn to use them over response is a bad habit that can be cured let us suppose that as you listen to this program you are sitting quietly In Your Den suddenly the telephone rings from habit and experience this is a signal or stimulus that you have learned to obey without taking thought without making a conscious decision about the matter you respond to it you jump up from your comfortable seat and hurry to the telephone the outside stimulus has had the effect of moving you it has changed your mental set and your position or self-determined course of action you were all set to spend the hour sitting quietly and relaxed listening you are inwardly organized for this now all this is suddenly Changed by your response to the external stimulus in the environment the point I wish to make is this you do not have to answer the telephone you do not have to obey you can choose to totally ignore the telephone you can if you choose continue sitting quietly and relaxed maintaining your own original state of organization by refusing to respond to the signal get this mental picture clearly in your mind for it can be quite helpful in overcoming the power of external stimuli to disturb you see yourself sitting quietly letting the phone ring ignoring its signal unmoved by its command although you are aware of it you no longer mind or obey it also get clearly in your mind the fact that the outside signal in itself has no power over you no power to move you in the past you have obeyed it responded to it purely out of habit you can if you wish form a new habit of not responding also notice that your failure to respond does not consist in doing something or making an effort or resisting or fighting but in doing nothing in relaxation from doing you merely relax ignore the signal and let it summons go unheeded the telephone ringing is a symbolic analogy to any and every other outside stimulus you might habitually give control over to and now choose to very intentionally alter that habit so-called road rage is nothing more than giving up control of your own emotional state to an outside stimulus stress brought on by having too much to do that is trying to do too many things at once is giving up control to the fax machine the cell phone the email messages the person hovering in your office doorway how to condition yourself for equanimity in much the same way that you automatically obey or respond to the Ring of the telephone we all become conditioned to respond in a certain way to various stimuli in our environment the word conditioning in psychological circles grew out of Pavlov's well-known experiments where he conditioned a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell by ringing it just before presenting food to the dog this procedure was repeated many times first the sound of the Bell a few seconds later the appearance of food the dog learned to respond to the sound of the Bell by salivating in anticipation of the food originally the response made sense the Bell signified that food was forthcoming and the dog got ready by salivating however after the process was repeated a number of times the dog would continue to salivate whenever the Bell was run whether or not food was immediately forthcoming the dog had now become conditioned to salivate at the mere sound of the Bell its response made no sense and served no good purpose but it continued to respond in the same way out of habit there are great many bells or disturbing stimuli in our various environmental situations to which we have become conditioned to and to which we continue to respond out of habit whether or not the response makes any sense but my friend you are not a poor dumb animal who must go through life so unwittingly and easily manipulated and controlled you are a human being with creative Powers with the power of rational thinking with the ability to stand up on your hind legs and assert yourself you must decide to be worked like a dog or to be your own person to be controlled or to be in control this is a decision with far-reaching consequences it is the answer to the question how can I get respect in a disrespectful world many people learn to fear strangers for example because of Parental admonitions to have nothing to do with strange people do not accept candy from a stranger do not get into a car with a stranger and so on the response of avoiding strangers serves a good purpose in small children but many people continue to feel ill at ease and uncomfortable in the presence of all strangers even when they know that they come as friends instead of foes strangers become bells and the Learned response becomes fear avoidance or the desire to run away in counseling sales professionals who are frozen and avoiding the task of prospecting by every imaginable excuse and contrivance I frequently uncover this bit of programming grooved into their Servo mechanism in counseling men and women who are unable to make new friends or meet and initiate relationships with members of the opposite sex I often uncovered this same bit of programming still another person May respond to crowds closed spaces Open Spaces persons and authorities such as the Boss by feelings of fear and anxiety in each case the crowd the closed space the open space the boss or whatever acts as a bell that says danger is present run away feel afraid and out of habit we continue to respond in the accustomed way we obey the Bell it is time to disconnect these bells how to extinguish conditioned responses we can extinguish the conditioned response if we make a practice of relaxing instead of responding we can if we wish just as in the case of the telephone learn to ignore the bell and continue to sit quietly and let it ring a key thought that we can carry with us to use whenever we are confronted by any disturbing stimulus is to say to ourselves the telephone is ringing but I do not have to answer it I can just let it ring this thought will key into your mental picture of yourself sitting quietly relaxed unresponsive doing nothing letting the telephone ring unheated it will act as a trigger or a clue to call up the same attitude that you had when letting the telephone ring if you cannot ignore the response delay it in the process of extinguishing a conditioning a person may find it difficult especially at first to totally ignore a bell especially if it is rung unexpectedly in such instances you can accomplish the same final result extinction of the conditioning by delaying your response a woman whom we will call Mary S became anxious and Ill at ease in the presence of crowds she was able by practicing the foregoing technique to immunize or tranquilize herself against the disturbing stimuli on most occasions however occasionally the desire to run away to flee became almost overpowering remember Scarlett O'Hara and Gone With the Wind I asked her her philosophy was I won't worry about that now I'll worry about it tomorrow she was able to maintain her inner equilibrium and effectively cope with her environment in spite of War fire pestilence and unrequited love by delaying the response delaying the response breaks up and interferes with the automatic workings of conditioning counting to ten when you are tempted to become angry is based on the same principle and is very good advice if you count slowly and in fact actually delay the response rather than merely holding in your angry shouting or desk pounding the response in Anger consists of more than shouting or desk beating the tension in your muscles is a response you cannot feel the emotion of anger or fear if your muscles remain perfectly relaxed therefore if you can delay feeling angry for 10 seconds delay responding at all you can extinguish the automatic reflex Mary S extinguished her conditioned fear of crowds by delaying her response when she felt that she simply had to run away she would say to herself very well but not this very minute I will delay leaving the room for two minutes I can refuse to obey for only two minutes relaxation erects a psychic screen or tranquilizer It is Well to get clearly in your mind the fact that our Disturbed feelings our anger hostility fear anxiety insecurity are caused by our own responses not by externals response means tension lack of response means relaxation it has been proved in scientific laboratory experiments that you absolutely cannot feel angry fearful anxious insecure unsafe as long as your muscles remain perfectly relaxed all these things are in essence our own feelings tension in muscles is a preparation for action or a getting ready to respond relaxing muscles brings about mental relaxation or a peaceful relaxed attitude thus relaxation is Nature's Own tranquilizer which erects a psychic screen or umbrella between you and the disturbing stimulus physical relaxation is a powerful disinhibitor for the same reason in the last chapter we learned that inhibition results from excessive negative feedback or rather from our over response to negative feedback relaxation means no response therefore in your daily practice of relaxation you are learning disinhibition as well as providing yourself with Nature's Own do-it-yourself tranquilizer which you can take with you into your daily activities protect yourself from disturbing stimuli by maintaining the relaxed attitude we have a saying in psycho-cybernetics training Calm Mind calm body calm body Calm Mind it doesn't matter which end of the thread you start with physical or mental relaxation the result is the same the trick is to develop a pre-shot routine for whatever you do that calms and relaxes not heightens anxiety build yourself a quiet room in your mind in his meditations Marcus Aurelius wrote men seek Retreats for themselves houses in the country seashores and mountains and thou too art won't desire such things very much but this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men for it is in thy power whenever Thou shalt choose to retire into thyself for nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire then into his soul particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility and I affirm that Tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the Mind constantly then give to thyself this Retreat and renew thyself unquote the foregoing translation was by George long published by Peter popper press Mount Vernon New York during the last days of World War II someone commented the president Harry Truman that he appeared to Bear up under the stress and strain of the presidency better than any previous president that the job did not appear to have aged him or sapped his vitality and that this was rather remarkable especially in view of the many problems that confronted him as a wartime president his answer was I have a foxhole in my mind he went on to say that just as a soldier retreated into his Foxhole for protection rest and recuperation he periodically retired into his own mental Foxhole where he allowed nothing to bother him I cannot urge you strongly enough to invest time and utilize your imagination to build your own Foxhole in your mind your own decompression chamber some people attempt to obtain this benefit by physical relocation I know one corporate CEO here in New York who has the habit of suddenly disappearing from the office and going to the Bronx Zoo he leaves behind his cell phone he is not anywhere someone can come and disturb him he is lost in the crowds walking about the zoo intentionally distracted and inaccessible this strategy apparently works well for him as he has risen up the corporate ranks and become a multi-millionaire thanks to his stock options and success at growing companies profits however doesn't it seem a bit inconvenient to have to depart the office and take a cab across the city to walk around the zoo in order to decompress it is a much shorter convenient commute to a readily accessible decompression chamber constructed within your own imagination the harried mother besieged all day by two young children if one is quiet for a moment the other is not needs only a brief opportunity possibly their nap time to step into the decompression chamber she has built in Her Imagination for Recovery the stressed out salesperson can stop the car in a parking lot between appointments for a quick visit to his or her decompression chamber each of us needs a quiet room inside the mine a quiet Center within like the Deep of the ocean that is never disturbed no matter how rough the surface waves may become this quiet room within which is built in imagination works as a mental and emotional decompression chamber it depressurizes you from tensions worry pressures stresses and strains refreshes you and enables you to return to your work a day world better prepared to cope with it it is my belief that each personality already has a quiet Center within which is never Disturbed and is unmoved like the mathematical point in the very center of a wheel or axle that remains stationary what we need to do is to find this Quiet Center within us and Retreat into it periodically for rest recuperation and renewed vigor one of the most beneficial prescriptions that I have ever given patients is the advice to learn to return to this quiet tranquil Center and one of the best ways I have found for entering this Quiet Center is to build for yourself in imagination a little mental room furnish this room with whatever is most restful and refreshing to you perhaps beautiful landscapes if you like paintings a volume of your favorite verse if you like poetry the colors of the walls are your own favorite Pleasant colors but should be chosen from the restful Hues of blue light green yellow gold the room is plainly and simply furnished there are no distracting elements it is very neat and everything is in order Simplicity quietness Beauty are the Keynotes it contains your favorite easy chair from one small window you can look out and see a beautiful beach the waves roll in on the beach and retreat but you cannot hear them for your room is very very quiet take as much care in building this room in your imagination as you would in building an actual room be thoroughly familiar with every detail do not permit the thought that this is childish stop you in your tracks the power of this technique lies in its careful and thorough construction its Vivid detail its realness as a place of retreat rather than just a vague idea a little vacation every day whenever you have a few spare moments during the day between appointments perhaps riding the bus retire into your quiet room whenever you begin to feel tension mounting or feel hurried and harried retire into your quiet room for a few moments just a very few minutes taken from a very busy day in this manner will more than pay for themselves it is not time wasted but time invested say to yourself I'm going to rest a bit in my quiet room then in imagination see yourself climbing the stairs to your room say to yourself I am now climbing the stairs now I'm opening the door now I'm inside in imagination notice all the quiet restful details see yourself sitting down in your favorite chair utterly relaxed and at peace with the world your room is secure nothing can touch you here there's nothing to worry about you left your worries at the foot of the stairs there are no decisions to be made here no hurry no bother you need a certain amount of escapism yes this is escapism sleep is escapism too carrying an umbrella in the rain is escapism building yourself an actual house where you can Retreat from the weather and the elements is escapism and taking a vacation is escapism our nervous system needs a certain amount of escapism it needs some freedom and protection from the continual bombardment of external stimuli your soul and your nervous system need a room for rest recuperation and protection every bit as much as your physical body needs a physical house and for the same reasons your mental quiet room gives your nervous system a little vacation every day for the moment you mentally vacate your work a day world of Duties responsibilities decisions pressures and get away from it all by mentally retiring into your no pressure chamber pictures are more impressive to your automatic mechanism Than Words particularly so if the picture happens to have a strong symbolic meaning one mental picture that I have found very effective is the following on a visit to Yellowstone National Park I was waiting patiently for the geyser Old Faithful which goes off approximately every hour suddenly the guys are erupted in a great mass of hissing steam like a gigantic boiler whose safety plug had blown out a small boy standing near me asked his father what makes it do that well said his father I guess Old Mother Earth is like the rest of us she builds up a certain amount of pressure and every once in a while just has to blow off steam to stay healthy wouldn't it be wonderful I thought to myself if we humans could blow off steam harmlessly like that when emotional pressures build up inside us I didn't have a geyser or a steam valve in the top of my head but I did have an imagination so I began to use this mental picture when I would retire into my mental quiet room I would remember Old Faithful and form a mental picture of emotional Steam and pressure coming out of the top of my head and evaporating harmlessly try this metal picture on yourself when you're brought up or tense the ideas of blowing off steam and blowing your top have powerful associations built into your mental machinery incidentally many psychologists and performance coaches now talk about these same ideas and techniques in the context of recovery in the new psycho-cybernetics you will find this discussion continued under that topic clear your mechanism before undertaking a new problem if you are using an adding machine or an electronic computer you must clear the machine of previous problems before undertaking a new one otherwise parts of the old problem or the Old Situation carry over into the new one and give you a wrong answer this exercise of retiring for a few moments into your quiet room in your mind can accomplish the same sort of clearing of your success mechanism for that reason it is very helpful to practice it between tasks situations or environments that require different moods mental adjustments or mental sets a common example of carryover or failure to clear your mental Machinery is the following a business executive carries his work a day worries and his work a day mood home with him all day he has been harried hurried aggressive and set to go perhaps he has felt a bit of frustration which tends to make him irritable he stops working physically when he goes home but he carries with him a residue of his aggressiveness frustration hurry and worry he is still set to go and cannot relax he is irritable with his wife and family he keeps thinking about problems at the office although there is nothing he can do about them insomnia rudeness are often emotional carryovers many people carry their troubles to bed with them when they should be resting mentally and emotionally they are still trying to do something about a situation at a time when doing something is not in order all during the day we need many different types of emotional and mental organizations you need a different mood and mental Organization for talking with your boss and talking with a customer and if you have just talked with an Irate and irritable customer you need a change in mindset before talking with a second customer otherwise emotional carryover from the one situation will be inappropriate in dealing with the other emotional carryover causes accidents insurance companies and other agencies that do research on the cause of accidents have found that emotional carryover causes many automobile accidents if the driver has just had a spat with her spouse or boss if she has just experienced frustration or if she has just left a situation that called for aggressive behavior she is much more likely to have an accident she carries over inappropriate attitudes and emotions into her driving she's really not angry at the other drivers she is somewhat like someone who wakes up in the morning from a dream in which she experienced extreme anger she realizes that the Injustice heaped on her happened only in a dream but she's still angry period fear can carry over in the same manner carryover is the opposite of concentration the popular television detective Lieutenant Colombo played brilliantly by actor Peter Falk once said sometimes my thoughts it gets like a traffic jam up here successful performers in all Fields know that they cannot function well with a traffic jam going on in their head in fact Peak performers virtually worship at the altar of focus and concentration working tirelessly to achieve it for very good reason concentration is a major key to minute by minute success in any endeavor John Lyons one of the world's most celebrated trainers of horses and Riders as well as editor of the perfect horse newsletter States the hardest thing about training horses isn't knowing what to do or having enough strength or courage to do it it is learning to stay focused unquote the same statement may be made about golf or selling or parenting or you name it the hardest thing is not the mechanics it's staying focused Mr Lyons went on to say if I don't zero in on one thing at a time I can't help my horse if you don't zero in on one thing at a time you cannot help yourself help a team or succeed create your own quick distractions eraser and use it as often as needed the visualization I taught for many years which I called clearing the calculator depicted clearing or storage for later work one mathematical problem on the calculator's little screen before you could attempt work on another hitting the clear button takes problem 1 completely off your screen you must do so before addressing problem two many people develop other illustrations and visualizations more useful to them I've received many letters in which people describe visualizing using an eraser and wiping a chalkboard clean a sponge to wipe a window clean even stepping into the shower and rinsing clean you can call up this mental picture and use it as an eraser in a short a time as a few seconds such as those five seconds of imposed hesitation before answering the phone Olympic champion High diver Greg Louganis reportedly mentally rehearsed each dive 40 times immediately prior to the dive in reality what he was doing was one stopping to clear the calculator two pushing all distractions aside by in quick succession replaying a mini mental movie one two three four five six seven thirty eight thirty nine forty times so that there was nothing left on his screen but the successful mental picture three letting his Servo mechanism deliver the 41st as actual experience most people never adopt this simple but profoundly effective approach instead they enter into a challenging activity say an important meeting at the office with traffic jam complete with horns blaring people shouting going on in their thoughts they attempt to function without focus with a whole pot of thought and emotional stew boiling over worries about this or that a disagreeable conversation with spouse or friend distraction by things that need to be addressed an hour or two down the road they give their Servo mechanism 50 different things to do thus dissipating its power an athlete like Louganis must put a firm lid not only on that bubbling stew but also on another pot on the next burner over where perhaps thoughts recognizing stiffness or soreness in a limb tension in a muscle worry over form all threatens to boil up as well all of this must first be replaced with single Focus to permit relaxed performance you too need to put the lids firmly on the pots turn down the heat and successfully ignore them all together in favor of concentration on one Vivid successful mental picture at a time here's a prescription to help you along develop your own equivalent of the clear the calculator ritual to erase distractions instantly on command and practice its use with practice it will become more and more effective so that the desired clear-headedness occurs faster and faster ultimately in an instant then for each situation you can immediately follow the erasing with an appropriate mini mental movie or even a still or two from the movie providing the mental picture for the servo mechanism to concentrate all of its powers on at that moment click off tension click on performance I was once backstage at a television talk show chatting with the host of the program the show's director stuck his head in the green room door and said one minute excuse me Dr maltz the host said he closed his eyes firmly snapped his fingers loudly once Stood Still and Silent for a few seconds snapped his fingers again and stood silent again for a few seconds then he opened his eyes smiled and said let's go make Show Business magic and walked confidently across the hallway through the curtains and out onto the stage in front of the audience and the cameras after the taping was over I asked him about what I'd observed it's my get ready ritual he explained early in my career it took me 20 even 30 minutes of hard effort to try and clear my head of everything except the show I was about to do gradually I learned how to do it in steps in my mind then I was able to speed it up now I can do it in about 30 seconds what about the finger snapping I asked those are like clicking on and off a light switch the first snap triggers the clearing or blanking of my mind and now that happens just about instantly the second click triggers a quick series of slides pictures of me walking out to the rousing Applause the audience laughing during the show a pleasant interview with a guest and the crew producer and I congratulating ourselves on another great show at its end he smiled and added you see I really did read your book years ago calmness carries over too a helpful aside to all this is that friendliness Love Peace Quiet and calmness also carry over it is impossible as we have said to experience or feel either fear anger or anxiety while completely relaxed quiet and composed retiring into your quiet room thus becomes an ideal clearance mechanism for emotions and moods old emotions evaporate and disappear at the same time you experience calmness peacefulness and a feeling of well-being that will carry over into whatever activities immediately follow your quiet time wipes the Slate clean so to speak clears the machine and gives you a clean new page for the environment to follow I practice the quiet time both immediately before and after surgery requires a high degree of concentration calmness and control it would be disastrous to carry over into the surgical situation feelings of hurry aggressiveness or personal worries therefore I always deliberately cleared my mental Machinery by spending a few moments completely relaxed in my quiet room on the other hand the high degree of concentration purpose and obliviousness to surroundings which are so necessary to the surgical situation would be most inappropriate to a social situation whether the social situation be an interview in my office or a grand ball therefore upon leaving surgery I also make it a point to spend a couple of minutes in my quiet room to clear the decks so to speak for a new type of action Dr Ira Charlotte a San Francisco surgeon talks about running a mental movie from initial incision to final suturing Dr bodell a hand and Joint reconstructive surgeon we interviewed for a video program about psycho-cybernetics told us of creating Vivid detailed mental movies of operations the evening before performing them so that the perfect operation is installed in his mind and the performance is wrote it seems we are all using nearly identical approaches to create a carryover of calmness into the operatory build your own psychic umbrellas by practicing the techniques in this chapter you can build your own psychic umbrellas which will screen out disturbing stimuli bring you more peace of mind and enable you to perform better prepare your own mental tranquilizers which can be consumed without side effects or expense above all keep in mind and Hammer at home to yourself that the key to the matter of whether you are Disturbed or tranquil fearful or composed is not the external stimulus whatever it may be but your own response and reaction your own response is what makes you feel fearful anxious insecure if you do not respond at all but just let the telephone ring it is impossible for you to feel Disturbed regardless of what is happening around you you are striving to be an actor not a reactor throughout this program we have spoken of reacting and responding appropriately to environmental factors the human being however is not primarily a reactor but an actor we do not merely react and respond willy-nilly to whatever environmental factors may be present like a ship without a captain that goes whichever way the wind happens to blow as goal striving beings we First Act we set our own goal determine our own course then within the context of this goal striving structure we respond and react appropriately that is in a manner that furthers our progress and serves our own ends if responding and reacting to negative feedback does not take us farther down the road to our own goal or serve our ends then there is no need to respond at all and if response of any kind gets us off course or works against us then no response is the appropriate response your emotional stabilizer in almost any goal-striving situation our own inner stability is in itself an important goal to maintain we must be sensitive to negative feedback data that advises us when we are off course so that we can change direction and go forward but at the same time we must keep our own ship afloat and stable our ship must not be tossed and rocked and perhaps sunk by every passing wave or even a serious storm as Prescott lekki expressed it the same attitude must be maintained in spite of environmental changes are letting the telephone ring is a mental attitude that keeps our stability it keeps us from being tossed about knocked off course or shaken up by every wave or Ripple in the environment stop fighting Straw Men still another type of inappropriate response that causes worry and security and tension is the bad habit of trying to respond emotionally to something that doesn't exist except in our imaginations not satisfied with over responding to actual minor stimuli in the actual environment many of us create strong men in our imaginations and emotionally respond to our own mental pictures in addition to negatives that actually exist in the environment we impose our own negatives this or that may happen what if such and such happens when we worry we form mental pictures adverse mental pictures of what may exist in the environment of what may happen we then respond to these negative pictures as if they were present reality remember your nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real experience and one that is vividly imagined doing nothing is the proper response to an unreal problem again you can tranquilize yourself against this sort of disturbance not by something you do but by something you don't do your refusal to respond as far as your emotions are concerned the proper response to worry pictures is to totally ignore them live emotionally in the present moment analyze your environment become more aware of what actually exists in your environment and respond and react spontaneously to that to do this you must give all your attention to what is happening now you must keep your eye on the ball then your response will be appropriate and you will have no time to notice or respond to a fictitious environment your first aid kit carry these thoughts with you as a sort of first aid kit inner disturbance or the opposite of Tranquility is nearly always caused by over response a too sensitive alarm reaction you create a built-in tranquilizer or psychic screen between yourself and the disturbing stimulus when you practice not responding letting the telephone ring you cure old habits of over response you extinguish old conditioned reflexes when you practice delaying the habitual automatic and unthinking response relaxation is Nature's Own tranquilizer relaxation is non-response learn physical relaxation by daily practice then when you need to practice non-response in daily activities just do what you're doing when you relax use the quiet room in your mind both as a daily tranquilizer to tone down nervous response and as a way to clear your emotional mechanism of carryover emotions that would be inappropriate in a new situation Stop scaring yourself to death with your own mental pictures stop fighting Straw Men emotionally respond only to what is here and now and ignore the rest try this mental training exercise create in your imagination a vivid mental picture of yourself sitting quietly composed unmoved letting your telephone ring as outlined earlier in this chapter then in your daily activities carry over the same peaceful composed unmoved attitude by remembering this mental picture say to yourself I am letting the telephone ring whenever you are attempted to obey or respond to a fear Bell or anxiety Bell next use your imagination to practice non-response in various sorts of situations see yourself sitting quietly and unmoved while an associate Rants and Raves see yourself going through your daily tasks one by one calmly composed unhurried in spite of the pressures of a busy day see yourself maintaining the same constant stable course in spite of the various hurry bells and pressure bells in your environment see yourself in various situations that have in the past upset you only now you remain set tled poised by not responding chapter 13. how to turn a crisis into a creative opportunity Connie Mack said I have seen Boys on my baseball team go into slumps and never come out and I've seen others snap right out and come back better than ever I guess more players defeat themselves than are ever beaten by an opposing team clutch player money player oh to be able to handle all the pressure that comes your way and still perform I knew a young golfer who for many years held the all-time course record for his home course yet has never even placed in a really big tournament when playing by himself with friends or in small tournaments where the stakes are low his play is Flawless yet each time he gets into a big tournament his game deteriorates in the language of Gotham the pressure gets him he is not alone in this experience in fact in a popular movie Kevin Costner played the role of a golfer known to all the professionals as Tin Cup he was spectacularly skilled but under the pressure of big money tournament play came apart at the seams like a cheap suit in a rainstorm many golfers identified with Tin Cup ironically one of the very best golf instructors and coaches I know about who is well known and often called on by top professionals is unbeatable in friendly casual private play but has never been able to make the cut to play for real money many baseball pitchers have pinpoint control until they find themselves in a situation where the chips are down then they choke up lose control and appear to have no ability whatever Casey Stengel famous manager of the 1950s New York Yankees made the comment anybody can hit home runs in batting practice on the other hand many athletes perform better under pressure the situation itself seems to give them more strength more power more finesse understanding why pressure makes some people's performance better while destroying others performance is key to consistently and reliably being at your best as an aside let me quickly remind you that the golf pros or baseball pitchers coming apart at the seams does not make him a lousy golfer or a worthless pitcher does not make either of them a choker such labels quickly slapped on by the media by kibbit Singh fans even by colleagues are not only reinforcing and damaging they are fundamentally untrue because a person is never his mistakes every one of us is a mistake maker but also potentially a mistake breaker we most certainly possess the capacity to rise above our mistakes in this case these players have not yet discovered their true selves not yet learned how to successfully manage their self-images and Servo mechanisms so as to respond positively to pressure while what they do not know and have not mastered does control them at the moment it does not define them and whether it is of days months or years in duration it can be changed people who come into their own in a crisis one basketball player's foul shot average may be significantly better during practice than regular games and better in regular games than in playoffs while in other exhibits the reverse Behavior performance improves in a playoff All or Nothing situation almost every NFL team of note has one pass receiver who can be relied on to make a big play or extraordinarily difficult catch in the clutch when everything depends on that play yet he may muff a number of easy receptions earlier in the game quarterbacks learn to throw to their clutch receivers when they must and often also learn to use them minimally at other times one salesperson may find himself inarticulate in the presence of an important Prospect his skills desert him another salesperson under the same circumstances may sell over her head the challenge of the situation brings out abilities she does not ordinarily possess in our book zero resistant selling one of the most important chapters is how to sell when you are in over your head there are students who do extremely well in day-to-day class work but find their minds a blank when taking an examination there are other students who are ordinary in class work but do extremely well on important examinations the secret of the money player the difference between all these persons is not an inherent quality that one has and the other hasn't it is largely a matter of how they learned to react to crisis situations a crisis is a situation that can either make you or break you if you react properly to the crisis it can give you strength power wisdom you do not ordinarily possess if you react improperly a crisis can rob you of the skill control and ability that you ordinarily have to call on the so-called money player in sports in business or in social activities the person who comes through in the clutch who performs better under the stimulus of challenge is invariably the person who has learned either consciously or unconsciously to react well to crisis situations to perform well in a crisis one we need to learn certain skills under conditions where we will not be over motivated we need to practice without pressure two we need to learn to react to crisis with an aggressive rather than a defensive attitude to respond to the challenge in the situation rather than to the Menace to keep our positive goal in mind three we need to learn to evaluate so-called crisis situations in their true perspective to avoid making mountains out of mole Hills or reacting as if every small challenge were a matter of life or death in other words making yourself into a money player is very doable because it is totally dependent on a relatively short list of attitudes and skills that can be learned exercised and developed and that can be accelerated in development and maintained through other psycho-cybernetics techniques no one lacks what it takes to be a money player practice without pressure although we may learn fast we do not learn well under crisis conditions throw a man who can't swim into water over his head and the crisis itself may give him the power to swim to safety he learns fast and manages to swim somehow but he will never learn to become a championship swimmer the crude inept stroke that he used to rescue himself becomes fixed and it is difficult for him to learn better ways of swimming because of his ineptness he may perish in a real crisis where he is required to swim a long distance Dr Edward C Tolman psychologist and expert on animal behavior at the University of California said that both animals and Men form brain Maps or cognitive maps of the environment while they are learning if the motivation is not too intense if there is not too much of a crisis present in the learning situation these maps are Broad and general if the animal is over motivated the cognitive map is narrow and restricted it learns just one way of solving the problem in the future if this one way happens to be blocked the animal becomes frustrated and fails to discern alternative routes or detours it develops a single cut and dried preconceived response and tends to lose the ability to react spontaneously to a new situation it cannot improvise it can only follow a set plan consider the young man growing up in a tough ghetto environment spending his time on the street interacting with gang members at risk virtually all the time in an environment where any hint of fear weakness or vulnerability may lead to dire consequences if this is the environment in which he learns all his conflict resolution skills he will learn only one narrowly defined set of such skills probably incorporating fiercely aggressive behavior and physical violence I would suggest you might see this reflected in a man like Mike Tyson awesomely successful in the boxing ring but horribly unsuccessful in any other setting pressure retards learning Dr Tolman found that if rats were permitted to learn and practice under non-crisis conditions they later performed well in a crisis for example if rats were permitted to roam about at will and explore a maze when well-fed and with plenty to drink they did not appear to learn anything later however if the same rats were placed in the Maze while hungry they showed they had learned a great deal by quickly and efficiently going to the goal hunger faced these trained rats with a crisis to which they reacted well other rats forced to learn the maze under the crisis of hunger and thirst did not do so well they were over motivated and their brain Maps became narrow the one correct route to the goal became fixated if this route was blocked the rats became frustrated and had great difficulty learning a new one fire drills teach crisis conduct in non-crisis situations people react in the same way persons who have to learn how to get out of a burning building will normally require two or three times as long to learn the proper Escape Route as they would if no fire were present some of them do not learn at all over motivation interferes with reasoning processes the automatic reaction mechanism is jammed by too much conscious effort trying too hard something akin to purpose Tremor develops and the ability to think clearly is lost the ones who manage somehow to get out of the building have learned a narrow fixated response put them in a different building or change the circumstances slightly and they react as badly the second time around as the first but you can take these same people let them practice a dry run fire drill when there is no fire because there is no Menace there is no excessive negative feedback to interfere with clear thinking or correct doing they practice filing out of the building calmly efficiently and correctly after they have practiced this a number of times they can be counted on to act the same way when an actual fire breaks out their muscles nerves and brain have memorized a broad General flexible map the attitude of calmness and clear thinking will carry over from practice drill to actual fire moreover they will have learned something about how to get out of any building or cope with any changed circumstances they are not committed to a rigid response but will be able to improvise to react spontaneously to whatever conditions may be present the moral is obvious for either mice or men practice without pressure and you will learn more efficiently and be able to perform better in a crisis situation Shadow Boxing for stability famous boxer Gentleman Jim Corbett made the word Shadow Boxing popular when asked how he developed the perfect control and timing for his left jab which he used to cut John L Sullivan the Boston Strong Boy to Ribbons Corbett replied that he had practiced throwing his left at his own image in the mirror more than ten thousand times in preparation for the bout Gene Tunney did the same thing years before he actually fought Jack Dempsey in the ring he had fought an imaginary Dempsey more than a hundred times in the privacy of his own room he secured all the films of old Dempsey fights he watched them until he knew every one of Dempsey's moves then he Shadow boxed he would imagine that Dempsey was standing before him when the imaginary Dempsey would make a certain move he would practice his counter move Billy Graham preached sermons to Cypress stumps in a Florida swamp before developing his compelling platform personality with live audiences most good public speakers have done the same thing in one way or another the most common form of Shadow Boxing for public speakers is to deliver their speech to their own image in the mirror one man I know lines up six or eight Empty Chairs imagines people sitting in them and practices his speech on the invisible audience another lectured to chickens on his farm a female stand-up comedienne I know who asked not to be identified by name told me that early in her career she practiced delivering her routine with full style and emotion as if before a big audience but actually alone standing completely naked in front of three full-length mirrors arranged in an arc in front of her she reasoned that she never felt more vulnerable and inhibited than being seen naked which is why she preferred having sex only in a dark room so if she could stand nude in a lit room looking at her mirrored Reflections and still concentrate and deliver her routine there she'd be able to do it easily fully clothed and thus protected in front of an audience prior to this conversation I had heard of speakers visualizing their audiences stripped to their underwear so as to be less intimidating but I'd never heard of a speaker going oh natural she uniquely combines safe practice with simulated or synthetic pressure for the record she has gone on to become one of the most successful female comedians in the business my point is to find a form of Shadow Boxing that works for you easy practice brings better scores when the Great Ben Hogan was playing tournament golf regularly he kept a golf club in his bedroom and daily practiced in private swinging the club correctly and without pressure at an imaginary golf ball when Hogan was on the links he would go through the correct motions in his imagination before making a shot then depend on muscle memory to execute the shot correctly virtually all golf instruction today incorporates such relaxed practice and Imagination practice Shadow Boxing turns on self-expression the word express literally means to push out exert show forth the word inhibit means to choke off restrict self-expression is a pushing out a showing forth of the powers talents and abilities of the self it means turning on your own light and letting it shine self-expression is a yes response inhibition is a no response it chokes off self-expression turns off or dims your light in Shadow Boxing you practice self-expression with no actual inhibiting factors present you learn the correct moves you form a mental map that is retained in memory a broad General flexible map Shadow Boxing helps you hit the ball I visited a friend of mine one Sunday in a suburb of New York his ten-year-old son had visions of becoming a big league baseball star his Fielding was adequate but he couldn't hit each time his father threw the ball across the plate the boy froze up and missed it by a foot I decided to try something you're so anxious to hit the ball and so afraid you won't that you can't even see it clearly I said all that tension and anxiety was interfering with his eyesight and his reflexes his arm muscles weren't executing the orders from his brain for the next 10 pitches I said don't even try to hit the ball don't try at all keep your bat on your shoulder but watch the ball very carefully keep your eyes on it from the time it leaves your daddy's hand until it goes by you stand easy and loose and just watch the ball go by after 10 Trials of this I advised him now for a while watch the ball go by and keep the bat on your shoulder but think to yourself you are going to bring the bat around so it will really hit the ball solidly and dead center after this I told him to keep on feeling the same way and to keep watching the ball carefully and to let the bat come around and meet the ball making no attempt to hit it hard the boy hit the ball after a few easy hits like this he was knocking the ball a country mile and I had a friend for life the salesman who practiced not selling you can use the same technique to hit the ball in selling teaching or running a business a young salesperson complained to me that he froze up when calling on prospects his one big trouble was his inability to properly reply to the prospect's objections when a prospect raises an objection or criticizes my product I can't think of a thing to say at the time he said later I can think of all kinds of good ways to handle the objection I told him about Shadow Boxing and about the kid who learned to bat by letting the ball go by with the bat on his shoulder I pointed out that hitting a baseball or thinking on your feet requires good reflexes your automatic success mechanism must respond appropriately and automatically too much tension too much motivation or too much anxiety for results jams the mechanism I said you think of the proper answers later because you're relaxed and the pressure is off right now your trouble is you're not responding quickly and spontaneously to the objections your prospects throw at you in other words you're not hitting the ball that the prospect throws I told him first of all to practice a number of imaginary interviews actually walking in introducing himself to a prospect making his sales pitch then imagining every possible objection no matter how screwballish and answering it out loud next he was to practice with his Bat on his shoulder on an actual live client he was to go in with an empty gun as far as intents and purposes were concerned the purpose of the sales interview would not be to sell he had to resign himself to being satisfied with no order the purpose of the call would be strictly practice bat on the shoulder empty gun practice in his own words this Shadow Boxing worked like a miracle as a young medical student I used to Shadowbox surgical operations on cadavers this no pressure practice taught me much more than technique it taught a future surge in calmness deliberateness clear thinking because he had practiced all these things in a situation that was not do or die life or death how to make your nerves work for you the word crisis comes from a Greek word that means literally decisiveness or point of decision a crisis is a fork in the road one fork holds a promise of a better condition the other of a worse condition in medicine the crisis is a turning point where the patient either gets worse and dies or gets better and lives thus every crisis situation is two-pronged the relief pitcher who goes into the game in the ninth inning with the score tied and three men on base can become a hero and gain in Prestige or he can become a villain who loses the game Hugh Casey who was one of the most successful and the calmest relief pitchers of all time was once asked what he thought of when he was sent in a game in the middle of a crisis situation I always think about what I'm going to do and what I want to happen he said instead of what the batter is going to do or what may happen to me he said he concentrated on what he wanted to happen felt that he could make it happen and that it usually did this same attitude is another important key to reacting well in any crisis situation if we can maintain an aggressive attitude react aggressively instead of negatively to threats and crises the very situation itself can act as a stimulus to release untapped powers keep your goal in mind the essence of all this is remaining goal oriented you keep your own positive goal in mind you intend to go through the crisis experience to achieve your goal if you can do this the crisis situation itself acts as a stimulus that releases additional power to help you accomplish your goal in fact in many instances what begins is a crisis ends as yet another opportunity for real progress toward the overriding objectives I once visited with a woman who had taken the reins of a very troubled Inner City High School as its principal at the time she was most unusual a woman in a man's job she was also hip deep in problems from teachers who had given up and were just going through the motions to inadequate resources to kids completely uninvolved in learning to actual crime and violence she told me that each day was Crisis City two years after taking this position for which I might add there was little competition she had turned this school around dramatically attendance was up grade averages were up bad apples were plucked and extracted real learning not just warehousing was taking place the change was so remarkable that school administrators from distant cities came to observe this school and consult with this principle again this was all the more remarkable because it was a woman captaining the turnaround in the late 1960s when I asked her how she'd been able to weather the Relentless storminess of this environment day after day she explained that she kept reminding herself that each crisis presented another different opportunity to accomplish something linked to her ultimate objective her handling of each problem was an opportunity to gain the trust or grudging respect of a teacher or a student and she told herself that she would use these as building blocks constructing her influence and control over this unwieldy organism called a school one brick at a time at the end of a particularly bad day she acknowledged to herself that a few bricks she thought had been properly laid had been knocked back out of place but that it only meant she would need to put them back and get another one in place the next day when some crisis exploded into her office she not only asked herself how to solve it but how to utilize solving it as a means of moving closer toward her vision of what this school was going to be like when it was made over it was like a jigsaw puzzle in my mind she told me I had a picture from the box of what it would look like when it was done then I had all these loose scrambled pieces in a pile most of the time I didn't get to methodically search for the next piece I had one Leap out of the pile and demand I try to fit it into the puzzle sometimes the piece was on fire and had to be saved before it could be used sometimes it was crumbling and had to be taped together but piece by piece I was still completing a puzzle the trick was to keep the Box handy with the picture of the hole and not lose sight of it unquote if you think about her experience and the words she used to explain her approach you can clearly see that she was heavily relying on psycho-cybernetics for equilibrium in a pressure cooker situation Prescott Leckie has said that the purpose of emotion is reinforcement or additional strength rather than to serve as a sign of weakness he believed that there was only one basic emotion excitement and that excitement manifests itself as fear anger courage Etc depending on our own inner goals at the time whether we are inwardly organized to conquer a problem run away from it or destroy it in self-consistency a theory of personality from Island press New York lekki wrote the real problem is not to control emotion but to control the choice of which tendency shall receive emotional reinforcement unquote if your intention or your attitude goal is to go forward if it is to make the most of the crisis situation and win out in spite of it then the excitement of the occasion will reinforce this tendency it will give you more courage more strength to go forward if you lose sight of your original goal and your attitude goal becomes one of running away from the crisis of seeking to somehow get past it by evading it this running away tendency will also be reinforced and you will experience fear and anxiety don't mistake excitement for fear many people have made the mistake of habitually interpreting the feeling of excitement as fear and anxiety and therefore interpreting it as proof of inadequacy any normal person who is intelligent enough to understand the situation becomes excited or nervous just before a crisis situation until you direct it toward a goal this excitement is neither fear anxiety courage confidence nor anything else other than a stepped up reinforced supply of emotional steam in your boiler it is not a sign of weakness it is a sign of additional strength to be used in any way you choose here's a prescription to help you along stop thinking in terms of fear anxiety or nervousness and think only in terms of excitement it is fine to be a bit excited before you step into the spotlight in whatever you do experienced actors know that this feeling of excitement just before a performance is a good token many of them deliberately work themselves up emotionally just before going on stage I've been told by those who would know that even after many years hosting the Tonight Show Johnny Carson was still so hyper backstage that he would sometimes feel nauseous right before the curtains parted and he walked out to deliver his opening monologue a wonderful man and for years one of America's most beloved speakers to sales organizations the founder of the National Speakers Association Cavett Robert used to say don't try to get rid of the butterflies in your stomach just get them to fly in formation many people place their bets at racetracks on the basis of which horse appears to be the most nervous just before going to the post trainers also know that a horse that becomes nervous or spirited just before a race will perform better than usual the term spirited is a good one the excitement that you feel just before a crisis situation is an infusion of spirit and should be so interpreted by you you do not need to get rid of this you need to Marshal it as a force for your own benefit in fact the absence of this excitement can pose its own problems not long ago I met a man on a plane whom I had not seen for several years in the course of conversation I asked if he still made as many public speeches as he had in the past yes he said as a matter of fact he had changed jobs so that he would be able to speak more and now made at least one public speech every day knowing his love for public speaking I commented that it was good he had this type of work yes he said in one way it is good but in another way it is not so good I don't make as many good speeches now as I used to I speak so often that it has become old hat to me and I no longer feel that little tingly feeling in the pit of my stomach which tells me that I'm going to do well some people become so excited during an important written examination that they are unable to think clearly or even hold a pencil steadily in their hands other people become so aroused under the same circumstances that they perform over their heads their minds work better and clearer than usual memory is sharpened it is not the excitement per se that makes the difference but how it is used what is the worst that can possibly happen many people have a tendency to magnify out of all proportion the potential penalty or failure that the crisis situation holds we use our imaginations against ourselves and make mountains out of mole Hills or else we do not use our imaginations at all to see what the situation really holds but habitually and unthinkingly react as if every simple opportunity or threat or a life or death matter if you've ever watched daytime TV soap operas and I confess I have you can quickly see a Common Thread stitching these programs together crisis after crisis after crisis but in these dramas every event represents crisis and everyone reacts with grossly exaggerated emotions the perfect home for a ham actor is one of these daytime dramas you do not want to turn your life into one of these soap operas where every incident small or large is greeted with the same gigantic excitement after all a traffic accident that is a mere fender bender and only inconveniences you a bit does not warrant the same level or range of excitement as one that sends you or others to the hospital with life-threatening injuries in a soap opera one is the same as the other you can be more discerning I once counseled a woman who was terribly unhappy with her life and everyone in it not a day passed without some provocation sparking a bitter argument with spouse sibling or neighbor her descriptions of these disputes were as dramatic as any soap opera scriptwriter could imagine she perceived the slightest problem as an epic crisis the most trivial slight a mammoth assault on her dignity she even took inclement weather personally a simple spill of beverage on the carpet was the same to her as a five alarm fire she had become a drama queen such people exist everywhere in marriages in the workplace in political circles and they are toxic to themselves and to everyone around them with an inappropriate level of excited response to events and other people's behavior such a person is a stick of TNT tossed into each situation but remember to her her over-excitement is a perfectly appropriate response and altering that will involve fundamental work with her self-image if you face a real crisis you need a lot of excitement the excitement can be used to good advantage in the crisis situation however if you overestimate the danger or the difficulty if you react to information that is faulty distorted or unrealistic you are likely to call up much more excitement than the occasion calls for because the real threat is much less than you have estimated all this excitement cannot be used appropriately it cannot be gotten rid of through creative action therefore it remains inside you bottled up as the Jitters a big excess of emotional excitement can harm rather than help performance simply because it is inappropriate philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell tells of a technique which he used on himself to good advantage in toning down excessive excitement in the conquest of Happiness he wrote when some Misfortune threatens consider seriously and deliberately what is the very worst that could possibly happen having looked this possible Misfortune in the face give yourself sound reasons for thinking that after all it would be no such very terrible disaster such reasons always exist since at the worst nothing that happens to oneself has any Cosmic importance when you have looked for some time steadily at the worst possibility and have said to yourself with real conviction well after all that would not matter so very much you will find that your worry diminishes to a quite extraordinary extent it may be necessary to repeat the process a few times but in the end if you have shirked nothing in facing the worst possible issue you will find that your worry disappears altogether and is replaced by a kind of exhilaration unquote I believe it is also important to have the self-image of someone who responds well to crisis and is frequently successful at finding opportunity in adversity the person who sees himself as no good in an emergency cannot do much with Bertrand Russell's advice life is long many people allow themselves to be thrown off course by minor or even imaginary threats which they insist on interpreting as a life or death or do or die situations to the teenage girl just spotting her boyfriend or even her hoped for a boyfriend sitting and talking amiably with another attractive girl is of life or death importance I just want to die she exclaims we all know that a few years from that moment she won't even remember it or him life is long but many adults keep on behaving like teenagers their entire lives many people allow themselves to be thrown off course by very minor or even imaginary threats which they insist upon interpreting as life or death or do or die situations a sales professional calling on an important Prospect may act as if it were a matter of life or death if I don't close this account she tells herself I will have wasted months of effort I'll misquota I won't make bonus and how will I tell my husband we can't take our planned vacation my sales manager may cut my territory and so on the single appointment takes on earth-shaking importance yet over a year's time such a muffed opportunity will be offset by solid successes even by Lucky breaks that seemingly deliver new accounts or larger orders from unexpected sources if this life or death sales call occurs in March it will be part of a blur of past activity by Christmas and over an entire selling career of no importance whatsoever life is long perhaps this life or death feeling that many people experience in any sort of crisis situation is a Heritage from our dim and distant past when failure to primitive man usually was synonymous with death regardless of its origin however the experience of numerous patients has shown that it can be cured by calmly and rationally analyzing the situation rather than responding automatically blindly and irrationally ask yourself what is the worst that can possibly happen if I fail remind yourself that life is long and seek the perspective of 2020 hindsight in advance the curtain will rise on a second act close scrutiny will show that most of these everyday so-called crisis situations are not life or death matters at all but opportunities to either Advance or stay where you are for example what is the worst that can happen to the salesperson she will either get an order and come out better off than she was or she will not get the order and be no worse off than before she made the call the applicant will either get the job or not if he fails to get it he will be in the same position as before he asked few people realize just how potent such a simple change of attitude can be one salesperson I know doubled his income after he was able to change his attitude from a scared and panicky Outlook everything depends on this to the attitude I have everything to gain and nothing to lose Walter Pidgeon the great actor told how his first public performance was a complete flop he was scared to death however between acts he reasoned with himself that he had already failed therefore he had nothing to lose that if he gave up acting altogether he would be a complete failure as an actor and therefore he really had nothing to worry about by going back on he went out in the second act relaxed and confident and made a big hit it seems there's always a second act waiting for you if you calmly organize yourself to take advantage of it there was a time when Frank Sinatra's career was so far in the doldrums he couldn't find work few remember any of that Sinatra is remembered as a giant George Foreman had completely left boxing was struggling as an evangelist struggling just to earn sufficient money to feed his family and was outright laughed at and ridiculed when he began his boxing comeback during his first act his personality had been so unpleasant he had few friends in the media he talks about how he deliberately mounted his comeback with a very different personality so as to become a valuable sports Personality by the end of the second act not just a washed up old boxer and he succeeded masterfully ultimately becoming a millionaire thanks to his immense popularity as a commercial spokesman public speaker and sports commentator a small kitchen appliance company became a giant in short order on the strength of George Foreman's pitching its products on TV infomercials and TV home shopping channels in the late 1990s Regis Philbin had bounced around the TV business hosting mostly local talk shows in different markets for 20 years and was widely regarded as a minor player in the industry and by critics before his syndicated Morning Show and is hosting the enormously popular Who Wants To Be A Millionaire made him big and led to a reported 20 million dollar contract with ABC regis's second act will make the 20 years that preceded it irrelevant former President Jimmy Carter had by most measurements a woefully unsuccessful and troubled presidency was voted out of office after his first term in a landslide and returned to small town Plains Georgia with his tail between his legs admittedly depressed but his second act has led to prestige prominence influence and bipartisan respect and many historians agree that he has been the best former president we can read about the second act in the lives of such famous people but don't lose sight of the fact that most successful but non-famous people have second acts too many a prosperous business person has a business bankruptcy in the past that at its moment was humiliating and seemed of life or death importance many a gratified parent with a good relationship with grown son or daughter has a spectacularly Rocky patch when the relationship was in shambles to look back on many happily married men and women have woefully unsuccessful first marriages and ugly bitter divorces in their pasts for the most part today's crisis winds up being but one little blip on a long life history for today there's an immediate second act tomorrow for this week There's a second act beginning next Monday for even the authentic tragedy there's a second act waiting to be scripted and played out over time remember above all that the key to any crisis situation is you practice and learn the simple techniques of this chapter and you like hundreds of others before you can learn to make crisis work for you by making crisis a creative opportunity try this mental training exercise creating 2020 hindsight as foresight is yet another immensely valuable and creative use of your imagination stop and recall a few situations from your past that seemed of dire earth-shaking consequence at the time but have proven inconsequential overtime then project yourself three four or five years into the future looking back on today's event and consider how you will feel about it and how much impact it will have had on your life chapter 14. how to get and keep that winning feeling Yogi Berra said slump I ain't in no slump I just ain't hitting your powerful Servo mechanism is teleological that is it operates in terms of goals and end results once you give it a definite goal to achieve you can depend on its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than you ever could by conscious thought you supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby if your muscles need to perform some motion to bring about the end result your automatic mechanism will guide them much more accurately and delicately than you could by taking thought if you need ideas your automatic mechanism will supply them there are even many who believe that if you need contacts your Servo mechanism can magnetically attract them whatever the extent of its powers one thing is certain it will lie sleepy lazy and dormant if undirected note the word Servo it is your servant if not called on will servants in the Mansion polish the silver prepare high tea or launder the clothes solely on their own initiative attempting to anticipate the lord of the Manor's wishes don't count on it also if the servants employed speak only in an unintelligible foreign tongue and the master speaks only in English unintelligible to the servant how much will get accomplished you see psycho-cybernetics is both the language translator so that you the master can communicate with and be understood by your inner servant and the means of organizing the to-do list directives you give to the inner servant so that they may be brought to fruition think in terms of possibilities you must Supply the goal and to supply a goal capable of activating your creative mechanism you must think of the end result in terms of a present possibility the possibility of the goal must be seen so clearly that it becomes real to your brain and nervous system so real in fact that the same feelings are evoked as would be present if the goal were already achieved this is not as difficult or mystical as it may first appear you and I do it every day of Our Lives what for example is worry about possible unfavorable future results accompanied by feelings of anxiety inadequacy or perhaps humiliation for all practical purposes we experience the very same emotions in advance that would be appropriate if we had already failed we picture failure to ourselves not vaguely or in general terms but vividly and in great detail we repeat the failure images over and over again to ourselves we go back in memory and dredge up memory images of past failures remember what has been emphasized earlier our brain and nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real experience and one which is vividly imagined our automatic creative mechanism always acts and reacts appropriately to the environment circumstance or situation the only information concerning the environment circumstance or situation available to it is what you believe to be true concerning them your nervous system can't tell real failure from imagined failure thus if we dwell on failure and continually picture failure to ourselves in such vivid detail that it becomes real to our nervous system we will experience the feelings even the physical responses that go with failure on the other hand if we keep our positive goal in mind and picture it to ourselves so vividly as to make it real and think of it in terms of an accomplished fact we will also experience winning feelings self-confidence courage and faith that the outcome will be desirable we cannot consciously peek into our creative mechanism and see whether it is geared for success or failure but we can determine its present set by our feelings when it is set for success we experience that winning feeling setting your machinery for success and if there is one simple secret to the operation of your creative Servo mechanism it is this call up capture evoke the feeling of success when you feel successful and self-confident you will act successfully when the feeling is strong you can literally do no wrong the winning feeling itself does not cause you to operate successfully but it is more in the nature of a sign or symptom that we are Geared for Success it is more like a thermostat which does not cause the heat in the room but measures it however we can use this thermostat in a very practical way remember when you experience that winning feeling your internal Machinery is set for success too much effort to consciously bring about spontaneity is likely to destroy spontaneous action it is much easier and more effective to Simply Define your goal or end result picture it to yourself clearly and vividly then simply capture the feeling you would experience if the desirable goal were already an accomplished fact then you are acting spontaneously and creatively then you are using the powers of your subconscious mind then your internal Machinery is geared for success to guide you in making the correct muscular motions and adjustments to supply you with creative ideas and to do whatever else is necessary to make the goal an accomplished fact how that winning feeling won a golf tournament Dr Carrie middlekoff writing in the April 1956 issue of Esquire magazine said that the winning feeling is the real secret of Championship golf he said four days before I hit my first drive in the Masters last year I had a feeling I was sure to win that tournament I felt that every move I made in getting to the top of my backswing put my muscles in perfect position to hit the ball exactly as I wanted to and in putting too that marvelous feeling came to me I knew I hadn't changed my grip any and my feet were in the usual position but there was something about the way I felt that gave me a line to the cup just as clearly as if it had been tattooed on my brain with that feeling all I had to do was swing the clubs and let nature take its course unquote middlekoff went on to say that the winning feeling is everybody's secret of good golf that when you have it the ball even bounces right for you and that it seems to control that elusive element called luck before pitching his famous perfect game in the World Series Don Larson said that the night before he had the crazy feeling that he would pitch perfectly the next day today's athletes sometimes talk about this winning feeling as being in the zone as entering a time and place and emotional state where they are totally relaxed totally confident of the outcome many times we can sense that they are in the zone just by observation recall John Elway's last minute End Zone to end zone March that deprived the Cleveland Browns of competing in the Super Bowl now known to football fans as the drive just about everybody who watched the drive looked at each other when it began and nodded it seemed predestined and inevitable even to Browns fans that the drive was about to occur but let's remember that the zone is not a real physical Place nor is it a sudden change in physical skill or technical capability nor is it even rationally justified by statistical probabilities or past experience it is purely an emotional state in my opinion it is the complete and utter release of responsibility for hitting a Target to the servo mechanism it is in a way surrender to the servo mechanism to such a degree that all anxiety worry stress and Desperation disappear in an instant and the person just goes about performing the necessary functions in a calm business-like manner much work has gone into finding ways to trigger this emotional state on demand the popular motivational Guru of recent years Tony Robbins is reportedly paid huge sums by a handful of top athletes notably including Andre Agassi and Greg Norman to teach them such get into State fast techniques there is truly magic in this winning feeling it can seemingly cancel out obstacles and impossibilities it can use errors and mistakes to accomplish success JCPenney tells how he heard his father say on his Deathbed I know Jim will make it from that time onward Penny felt that he would succeed somehow although he had no tangible assets no money no education the chain of JCPenney stores was built on many impossible circumstances and discouraging moments whenever Penny would get discouraged however he would remember the prediction of his father and he would feel that somehow he could whip the problem facing him after making a fortune he lost it all at an age when most men have long since been retired he found himself penniless past his Prime and with little tangible evidence to furnish Reason for Hope but again he remembered the words of his father and soon recaptured the winning feeling which had now become habitual with him he rebuilt his fortune and in a few years was operating more stores than ever Mr Penny had as his most concrete foundation a profound fundamental belief grooved into his self-image that he was the kind of a person who would make it unfortunately many people have heard just the opposite from parents or other influences causing them to give far greater import to the times when they fail than to The Times They succeed gradually becoming convinced that they are the kind of persons who never seem to make it happen the simple distinction in self-concept and self-talk should not have its strength and power underestimated how that winning feeling made less Giblin successful Les Giblin founder of the famous Les Giblin human relations clinics and author of the book how to have power and confidence in dealing with people read the first draft of this chapter then told me how imagination coupled with that winning feeling had worked like magic in his own career less had been a successful salesperson and sales manager for years he had done some public relations work and had gained some degree of reputation as an expert in the field of human relations he liked his work but he wanted to broaden his field his big interest was people and after years of study both theoretical and practical he thought he had some answers to the problems people often have with other people he wanted to lecture on human relations however his one big obstacle was lack of experience in public speaking Les told me one night I was lying in bed thinking of my one big desire the only experience I'd had as a public speaker was addressing small groups of my own salesmen in sales meetings and a little experience I'd had in the Army when I served part-time as an instructor the very thought of getting up before a big audience scared the wits out of me I just couldn't imagine myself doing it successfully yet I could talk to my own salesman with the greatest of ease I had been able to talk to groups of soldiers without any trouble lying there in bed I recaptured in memory the feeling of success and confidence I'd had in talking to these small groups I remembered all the little incidental details that had accompanied my feeling of poise then in my imagination I pictured myself standing before a huge audience and making a talk on human relations and at the same time having the same feeling of poise and self-confidence I'd had with smaller groups I pictured to myself in detail just how I would stand I could feel the pressure of my feet on the floor I could see the Expressions on the people's faces and I could hear their Applause I saw myself making a talk successfully going over with a bang something seemed to click in my mind I felt elated right at that moment I felt that I could do it I had welded the feeling of confidence and success from the past to the picture of my imagination of my career in the future my feeling of success was so real that I knew right then I could do it I got what you call that winning feeling and it has never deserted me although there seemed to be no door open to me at the time and the dreams seemed impossible in less than three years time I saw my dream come true almost in exact detail as I had imagined it and felt it because of the fact that I was relatively unknown and because of my lack of experience no major booking agency wanted me this didn't deter me I booked myself and still do I have more opportunities for speaking engagements than I can fill unquote Les Giblin became known as an authority on human relations over 200 of the largest corporations in America have paid him thousands of dollars to conduct human relations clinics for their employees his book how to have confidence and power has become a classic in the field and it all started with a picture in his imagination and that winning feeling Les's experience demonstrates how we must search our past experiences for signs that the goal we are now tentatively imagining can be achieved those signs are almost always there or the goal would never have occurred to us in the first place you undoubtedly have little past indications that you can do what it is you would most like to do and if you will look for them and highlight them in your mind you can begin proving to your self-image that you are in fact qualified to be as you desire to be secure its acceptance of this as new truth and send your Servo mechanism hurrying to make it so when you shine your Spotlight on these can-do indicators and consign everything else to the Shadows your winning feeling will be reflected back and envelop you in its warmth two men two different feelings I once had occasion to observe two men I knew quite well they had remarkably similar backgrounds education intelligence and skill both attempting to master a brand new Endeavor at the same time each was totally unknown to the other but both observed by me the details of the task being undertaken are unimportant suffice it to say it represented considerable difficulty offered up considerable frustration and required considerable patience one of these men said to me I'll never get this you know Max all my life everything's been difficult for me I've had to do everything the hard way I can't recall ever getting a break I just don't have it in me to fight my way through this too the other fellow said to me Max I'll tell you something all my life everything's been difficult for me every single thing I now do well every single thing I can now do effortlessly and every success I've had I started out doing it badly and struggled mightily to get from bad to good if there's one thing I know exactly how to do it is to go from being a bumbling incompetent to capable looks like I'm going to do that again with this which one of these men do you suppose gave up on this goal and walked away empty-handed and unfulfilled which do you suppose wound up successful this is more than just the old cliche about positive thinking glass half full versus glass half empty that's superficial and tends to be consciously forced this is deeper foundational right there in the self-image how these two men have interpreted their lives how they feel about themselves one will see the slightest Improvement as encouraging proof that he is again progressing as usual from ineptness to competence while the other will see the exact same slight Improvement as proof that he has mired in struggles so great and challenged so unyielding he is not up to the task how your brain records success and failure much research in the workings of the brain has taken place since I wrote the original psycho-cybernetics book but this explanation condensed from it remains helpful in understanding how the winning feeling or failure feeling comes about the human cortex is composed of billions of neurons each with numerous axons feelers or extension wires which form synapses or electrical connections between the neurons when we think remember or imagine these neurons discharge an electrical current that can be measured when we learn something or experience something a pattern of neurons forming a chain or the tattooing of a pattern is set up in brain tissue the pattern is not in the nature of a physical Groove like a Groove in a record although the analogy is not far off the mark but more in the nature of an electrical track the arrangement and electrical connections between various neurons being somewhat similar to a pattern recorded on a CD the same neuron May thus be part of any number of separate and distinct patterns making the human brain's capacity to learn and remember almost Limitless these patterns or engrams are stored away in brain tissue for future use and are reactivated or replayed whenever we remember a past experience in short there is a tattooing or action pattern of engrams in your brain for every successful action you have ever performed in the past and if you can somehow furnish the spark to bring that action pattern into life or replay it it will execute itself and all you'll have to do is Swing the clubs and let nature take its course when you reactivate successful action patterns out of the past you also reactivate the winning feeling that accompanied them by the same token if you can recapture that winning feeling you'll also evoke all the winning actions that accompanied it view this as a circular process feeling begets action action begets feeling or imagined action especially memory-based imagined action begets feeling feeling begets action fortunately it doesn't matter much where in that Loop you strike the spark build success patterns into your gray matter Dr Elliott when president of Harvard once made a speech on what he called the habit of success many failures in elementary schools he said were due to the fact that students were not given at the very beginning a sufficient amount of work at which they could succeed and thus never had an opportunity to develop the atmosphere of success or what we call the winning feeling students he said who had never experienced success early in their school life had no chance to develop the habit of success the habitual feeling of faith and confidence in undertaking new work he urged the teachers arranged work in the early grades so as to ensure that students experienced success the work should be well within the ability of the student yet interesting enough to arouse enthusiasm and motivation these small successes said Dr Elliott would give students the feel of success which would be a valuable Ally in all future undertakings when a quarterback is injured and removed from the game and the second Stringer has been warming the bench is rushed in the astute coach tries to give him easy plays with a high probability of success even if small in order to establish a sense of success a rhythm to spark that winning feeling rather than having him attempt to pass down field or over the middle that might result in a gain of 10 20 or 30 yards but is difficult to complete the play might be a little swing pass almost sideways that may result in a gain of only two or three yards but has a very high probability of being successfully completed a top salesman I know in the printing industry habitually arranges his schedule so that his first two sales calls of each day are in Friendly territory he visits clients where he knows he will be welcomed where he writes business repetitively where there is a high likelihood of being asked to bid a job or even immediately take an order or at the very least he'll be treated respectfully and courteously then he moves on to cold calling on possible new accounts where the welcome may not be nearly as warm or visiting the tough customers who are Ultra price conscious where he is frequently outbid he tells me he wants a winning feeling already in place before testing his patience and persistence his sales manager says small victories lead to Big victories Fred DeLuca the founder of the Subway sandwich shop chain a champion of micro business launches councils make pennies first it is easier to Envision making dollars if you've made pennies easier to Envision making thousands if you've made hundreds what you might call the small victory process is the Natural Evolution of things crawl stand by holding on to something stand independently toddle forward by holding on to something walk having mastered walking it's a bit easier to believe you can ride a bicycle having ridden a bicycle it's easier to picture yourself riding a motorcycle we can acquire the habit of success or rhythm of success we can build into our gray matter patterns and feelings of success at any time and at any age by following Dr Elliott's advice to teachers The Savvy coaches strategy for the inexperienced quarterback the printing sales reps trick for starting each day if we are habitually frustrated by failure we are very apt to acquire habitual feelings of failure which color all new undertakings but by arranging things so that we can succeed in little things we can build an atmosphere of success that will carry over into larger undertakings we can gradually undertake more difficult tasks and after succeeding in them be in a position to undertake something even more challenging success is literally built on success and there is much truth in the saying nothing succeeds like success obviously as adults we are eager to speed up this process to accelerate success to have such a good foundation in place we can even trigger Our Winning feeling on command the experienced quarterback who has been parked on the bench for weeks needs and wants to turn on his winning feeling in an instant when subtly needed in the game without requiring the gentle patient buildup of small victories this acceleration must be created totally through imagination not actuality in the theater of the Mind rather than the arena of real experience because synthetic and actual experience have virtually identical impact this can be done how to play back your own built-in success patterns everyone has at some time or another been successful in the past it does not have to have been a big success it might have been something as unimportant as standing up to the school bully and beating him winning a race in grammar school winning the sack race at the office picnic winning out over a teenage rival for the affections of a girlfriend or it might be the memory of a successful sale your most successful business deal or winning first prize for the best cake at the County Fair what you succeeded in is not so important as the feeling of success that attended it all you need is an experience where you succeeded in doing what you wanted to in achieving what you set out to achieve and something that brought you some feeling of satisfaction go back in memory and relive those successful experiences in your imagination revive the entire picture in as much detail as you can in your mind's eye see not only the main event but all the little incidental things that accompanied your success what sounds were there what about your environment what else was happening around you at the time what objects were present what time of year was it were you cold or hot and so forth the more detailed you can make it the better if you can remember insufficient detail just what happened when you were successful at some time in the past you will find yourself feeling just as you felt then try particularly to remember your feelings at the time if you can remember your feelings from the past they will be reactivated in the present you will find yourself feeling self-confident because self-confidence is built on memories of past successes now after arousing this general feeling of success apply it in your thoughts to the important sale conference speech business golf tournament Rodeo competition whatever you are engaged in now use your creative imagination to picture to yourself just how you would act and just how you would feel if you had already succeeded positive and constructive worry mentally begin to play with the idea of complete and inevitable success Don't force yourself don't attempt to coerce your mind don't try to use effort or willpower to bring about the desired conviction just do what you do when you worry only worry about a positive goal and a desirable outcome rather than about a negative goal and an undesirable outcome don't Begin by trying to force yourself to have absolute faith in the desired success this is too big a bite for you to mentally digest it first use gradualness begin to think about the desired end result as you do when you worry about the future when you worry you do not attempt to convince yourself that the outcome will be undesirable instead you begin gradually you usually begin with suppose just suppose such and such a thing happens you mentally say to yourself you repeat this idea over and over to yourself you play with it next comes the idea of possibility well after all you say such a thing is possible it could happen next comes mental imagery you begin to picture to yourself all the various negative possibilities you play these imaginative pictures over and over to yourself adding small details and refinements as the pictures become more and more real to you appropriate feelings begin to manifest themselves just as if the imagined outcome had already happened and this is the way that fear and anxiety develop how to cultivate faith and courage faith and courage are developed in exactly the same way only your goals are different if you're going to spend time in worry why not worry constructively Begin by outlining and defining to yourself the most desirable possible outcome begin with your suppose suppose the best possible outcome did actually come about next remind yourself that after all this could happen not that it will happen at this stage but only that it could remind yourself that after all such a good and desirable outcome is possible you can mentally accept and digest these gradual doses of optimism and faith after having thought of the desired end result as a definite possibility begin to imagine what the desirable outcome would be like go over these mental pictures and delineate details and refinements play them over and over to yourself as your mental images become more detailed as they are repeated over and over again you will find it more appropriate feelings are beginning to manifest themselves just as if the favorable outcome had already happened this time the appropriate feelings will be those of Faith self-confidence courage or all of them wrapped up into one package that winning feeling don't take counsel of your fears General George Patton the hell for leather Old Blood and Guts General of World War II Fame was once asked if he ever experienced fear before a battle yes he said he often experienced fear just before an important engagement and sometimes during a battle but he added I never take counsel of my fears If you experience negative failure feelings fear and anxiety before an important undertaking as everyone does from time to time it should not be taken as a sure sign that you will fail it all depends on how you react to them and what attitude you take toward them if you listen to them obey them and take counsel of them you will probably perform badly but this need not be true first of all it is important to understand that failure feelings fear anxiety lack of self-confidence do not spring from a Heavenly Oracle they are not written in the stars they are not holy gospel nor are they intimations of a set and decided fate that means that failure is decreed and decided they originate from your own mind they are indicative only of attitudes of Mind within you not of external facts that are rigged against you they mean only that you are underestimating your own abilities overestimating and exaggerating the nature of the difficulty before you and that you are reactivating memories of past failures rather than memories of past successes that is all that they mean and all that they signify they do not pertain to or represent the truth concerning future events but only your own mental attitude about the future event knowing this you are free to accept or reject these negative failure feelings to obey them and take counsel of them or to ignore their advice and go ahead moreover you are in a position to use them for your own benefit accept negative feelings as a challenge if we react to negative feelings aggressively and positively they become challenges that automatically arouse more power and more ability within us the ideas of difficulty threat and Menace arouse additional strength within us if we react to them aggressively rather than passively in the last chapter we saw that a certain amount of excitement if interpreted correctly and employed correctly helps rather than hinders performance it all depends on the individual and his or her attitudes whether negative feelings are used as assets or liabilities react aggressively to your own negative advice everyone has known individuals who can be discouraged and defeated by the advice from others that you can't do it on the other hand there are people who rise to the occasion and become more determined than ever to succeed when given the same advice an associate of industrialist Henry J Kaisers said if you don't want Henry to do a thing you had better not make the mistake of telling him it can't be done or that he can't do it for he will then do it or bust it is not only possible but entirely practicable to react in the same aggressive positive manner to the negative advice of our own feelings as we can and should when the negative advice comes from others overcome evil with good feelings cannot be directly controlled by willpower they cannot be voluntarily made to order or turned on and off like a faucet if they cannot be commanded however they can be wooed if they cannot be controlled by a direct Act of will they can be controlled indirectly a bad feeling is not dispelled by conscious effort or willpower it can be dispelled however by another feeling if we cannot drive out a negative Feeling by making a frontal assault on it we can accomplish the same result by substituting a positive feeling remember that feeling follows imagery feeling coincides with and is appropriate too what our nervous system accepts as real or the truth about environment whenever we find ourselves experiencing undesirable feelings we should not concentrate on the undesirable feeling even to the extent of driving it out instead we should immediately concentrate on positive imagery on filling the mind with wholesome positive desirable images imaginations and memories if we do this the negative feelings take care of themselves they simply evaporate we develop new feeling tones appropriate to the new imagery if on the other hand we concentrate only on driving out or attacking worry thoughts we necessarily must concentrate on negatives and even if we are successful in driving out one worry thought a new one or even several new ones are likely to rush in since the general mental atmosphere is still negative Jesus warned us about sweeping the Mind clean of one demon only to have seven new ones move in if we left the house empty he also advised us not to resist evil but to overcome evil with good the substitution method of curing worry Dr Matthew Chapel a modern psychologist recommends exactly the same thing in his book how to control worry we are warriors because we practice worrying until we become Adept at it says Dr Chapel we habitually indulge in negative imagery out of the past and in anticipating the future this worry creates tension the warrior then makes an effort to stop worrying and is caught in a vicious cycle effort increases tension tension provides a worrying atmosphere the only cure for worry he says is to make a habit out of immediately substituting Pleasant wholesome mental images for unpleasant worry images each time you find yourself worrying use this as a signal to immediately fill the mind with Pleasant mental pictures out of the past or in anticipating Pleasant future experiences in time worry will defeat itself because it becomes a stimulus for practicing anti-worrying the Warrior's job says Dr Chapel is not to overcome some particular source of worry but to change mental habits as long as the mind is set or geared in a passive defeatist I hope nothing happens sort of attitude there will always be something to worry about when I was a medical student I remember being called on by the professors to orally answer questions on the subject of pathology somehow I was filled with fear and anxiety when I stood up to face the other students and I couldn't answer the questions properly yet on other occasions when I looked into the microscope at a slide and answered the typewritten questions before me I was a different person I was relaxed confident and sure of myself because I knew my subject I had that winning feeling and did very well as the semester progressed I took stock of myself and when I stood up to answer questions I pretended I didn't see an audience but was looking through a microscope I was relaxed and substituted that winning feeling for the negative feeling when quizzed orally at the end of the semester I did very well in both oral and written examinations the negative feeling had finally become a sort of bell that created a conditioned reflex to arouse that winning feeling today I lecture and speak with ease at any gathering in any part of the world because I am relaxed and know what I'm talking about when I do speak more than that I bring others into the conversation and make them feel relaxed too the choice is up to you within you is a vast mental Storehouse of past experiences and feelings both failures and successes like inactive recordings on tape these experiences and feelings are recorded on the neural engrams of your gray matter there are recordings of stories with happy endings and recordings of stories with unhappy endings one is as true as the other one is as real as the other the choice is up to you as to which you select for playback another interesting scientific finding about these engrams is that they can be changed or modified somewhat as a tape recording may be changed by dubbing in additional material or by replacing an old recording with a new one these recordings in the human brain tend to change slightly each time they are played back they take on some of the tone and temper of our present mood thinking and attitudes toward them we now know that not only does the past influence the present but that the present clearly influences the past in other words we are neither doomed nor damned by the past our present thinking our present mental habits our attitudes toward past experiences and our attitudes toward the future all have an influence on Old recordings the old can be changed modified replaced by our present thinking old recordings can be changed another interesting finding is that the more a given recording or engram is activated or replayed the more potent it becomes the permanence of engrams is derived from synaptic efficacy the efficiency and ease of connections between the individual neurons that make up the chain and further that synaptic efficiency improves with use and diminishes with disuse here again we have good scientific ground for forgetting and ignoring those unhappy experiences from the past and concentrating on the happy and pleasant by so doing we strengthen those engrams having to do with success and happiness and weaken those having to do with failure and unhappiness how we manufacture feelings or state when a family member or friend dies we recall many past memories involving this person we tend to set aside most of the bad memories and not only recall but improve on and magnify the good ones an uncle who was often Sullen and distant and hypercritical but occasionally warm and witty is transformed into the life of the party and a great encourager who will be sadly missed at every Future Family occasion a sister you were quite content to see only two or three times a year at holidays and never missed or thought of much in between is now a confidant you'll miss talking to every day this is all part of the morning feeling it is manufactured by choosing to replay only certain recordings to completely forget about others and even to modify the recordings played history is literally Rewritten to permit the morning feeling we believe to be appropriate based on everything programmed into our own self-image about the kind of person we are and how we should behave in these circumstances I remember attending a funeral where the brother of the deceased who had been estranged from his brother for years following a very bitter War over the family business stood up and spoke for nearly 15 minutes delivering an emotional moving eulogy that had the Halo glowing brightly over the coffin and left no dry eyes in the house a few weeks later I encountered him in a neighborhood coffee shop and we sat down together to talk I gingerly said Bill I know all about the bad feelings between you and your brother and I wonder how did you find it in you to be so gracious at his memorial ceremony his answer reveals the chief secret to how we manufacture our feelings he answered I'm the kind of person who never speaks ill of the Dead the phrase I'm the kind of person who is incredibly revealing and Incredibly powerful it reveals what is at the core not the circumference of the self-image to which all other thought feeling action and outcome must conform it also reveals exactly how you can lock in and assure the emergence of a winning feeling whenever it is appropriate try this mental training exercise change negative self-talk the voice of the automatic failure mechanism to a positive affirmation I am the kind of person who repeat the affirmation as a personal Mantra until it becomes an automatic response to any sliver of itself doubt that slips through the door here are a few examples I am the kind of person who effectively plans the day ahead sets goals and accomplishes them listens carefully then communicates confidently and persuasively takes the initiative in solving problems and suggesting ideas stays calm under pressure prefers fresh fruit and other healthy foods to junk food chapter 15. more years of life and more life in your years Dr Arnold hutchnecker wrote we age not by years but by events and our emotional reactions to them the search for the Fountain of Youth does every human being have a built-in Fountain of Youth can the success mechanism keep you young does the failure mechanism accelerate the aging process Woody Allen said I do not want to achieve immortality through my work I want to achieve immortality by not dying at my age I identify with this statement in fact I'd gladly trade away whatever Legacy I have thanks to my psycho-cybernetics work for another decade of comparative youth but I have lived a very vibrant healthy interesting and rewarding life without significant loss of Vitality activity or Acuity in my later years so I have no complaint I believe I have done so in large part by aggressively working on my psychological health and letting it take care of my physical health I posit that the role of emotional well-being in anti-aging or longevity medicine will only expand and grow and become more accepted respected and prominent in the years to come truths that cannot yet be proven are nonetheless useful William James once said that everyone scientists included developed his own over beliefs concerning known facts which the facts themselves do not justify as a practical measure these over beliefs are not only permissible but necessary our Assumption of a future goal which sometimes we cannot see is what dictates our present actions and our practical conduct Columbus had to assume that a great land mass laid to the westward before he could Discover it otherwise he would not have sailed at all and having sailed would not have known whether to set his course to the south east north or west scientific research is Possible only because of faith in assumptions research experiments are not Helter Skelter or aimless but directed and goal-oriented the scientist must first set up a hypothetical truth a hypothesis based not on fact but on implications before being able to know which experiments to make or where to look for facts that may prove or disprove the hypothetical truth in this last chapter I want to share with you some of my own over beliefs hypotheses and philosophy not as an MD but as a man as Dr Hans Celia has said certain truths cannot be used by medicine but can be used by the patient life force the secret of healing and the secret of Youth I believe that the physical body including the physical brain and nervous system is machine-like composed of numerous smaller mechanisms all purposeful or goal directed I do not believe however that a human is a machine I believe that the essence of humans is that which animates this machine that which inhabits the machine directs and controls it and uses it as a vehicle humans are not machines any more than electricity is the wire over which it flows or the motor that it turns I believe that the essence of humanity is extra physical for many years individual scientists psychologists physiologists biologists have suspected that there was some sort of universal energy or Vitality that ran the human machine they also suspected that the amount of this energy available and the way it was utilized explained why some individuals were more resistant to disease than others why some individuals aged faster than others and why some Hardy individuals lived longer than others it was also fairly obvious that the source of this Basic Energy whatever it might be was something other than the surface energy we obtained from the food we eat caloric energy does not explain why one individual can snap back quickly from a serious operation withstand long continued stress situations or outlive another we speak of such persons as having a strong Constitution the strong Constitution exhibited by individuals who live long and Live Well seems linked to elements over which we have considerable control not the least of which is the never-ending setting and resetting of goals so that we have something meaningful to live for a very famous professional speaker on the circuit for three decades was finally beginning to feel burnout not so much toward the speaking itself as to the Grind of incessant travel with all its inherent frustrations the Endless Blur of nights in innocuous hotel rooms friends mentioned that they could see the travel was aging him he was on the verge of quitting his profession which he actually loved and arguably required to have meaning and purpose about the same time probably in anticipation of retirement he had taken up Golf and became fascinated with even addicted to the game and reasonably Adept at it one day on yet another lengthy flight a new goal popped into his head to play on at least one famous golf course in every state of the union he began mulling this idea over in his imagination seeing himself being photographed after hitting a hole in one at the famously difficult Pebble Beach chuckling at being in the real rough on a golf course in rural Alaska the mulling over became increasingly serious until he found himself thinking about it often over the ensuing days he decided to test it by taking his clubs on his next 10-day trip and scheduling rounds of golf between his engagements not surprisingly he found himself looking forward to the next day's travel rather than dreading it locked on this new Target he has uncovered a whole new level of passion and energy for securing speaking engagements in locations where there are golf courses he wants to play he has not only extended and breathed new life into his career he has quite likely extended and breathed new life into his life this occurred some six or seven years ago and as of this writing at age 73 this speaker golfer is going strong it seems he has the life force or Elan vital of a much younger man are you older or younger than your chronological years the counting itself is arguably arbitrary after all if our calendars put 15 months instead of 12 months into each year you'd be celebrating a different year's birthday this time around that smaller number might very well convince your self-image of a different truth about your age and you might very well feel and act differently we all know people who are 35 going on 65 and 65 going on 35. I suppose something less extreme is desirable but regardless of pondering about age itself we all seek to tap more life force science discovers the life force this life force was established as a scientific fact by Dr Hans Celia of the University of Montreal since 1936 Dr Celia has studied the problems of stress clinically and in numerous laboratory experiments and studies Dr Celia has proved the existence of a basic life force which he calls adaptation energy throughout life from the Cradle to the Grave we are daily called on to adapt to stress situations even the process of living itself constitutes stress or continual adaptation Dr Celia has found that the human body contains various defense mechanisms local adaptation syndromes or Las which defend against specific stress and a general defense mechanism a General Adaptation Syndrome or gas which defends against non-specific stress stress includes anything that requires adaptation or adjustment such as extremes of heat or cold Invasion by disease germs emotional tension the wear and tear of living or the so-called aging process in his book the stress of Life Dr Celia wrote the term adaptation energy has been coined for that which is consumed during continued adaptive work to indicate that it is something different from the caloric energy we receive from food but this is only a name and we still have no precise concept of what this energy might be further research along these lines would seem to hold great promise since here we appear to touch upon the fundamentals of Aging unquote Dr Celia has written 12 books and hundreds of Articles explaining his clinical studies and his stress concept of health and disease it would be a disservice to him for me to try to prove his case here suffice it to say that his findings are recognized by medical experts the world over and if you wish to learn more of the work that led to his findings I suggest that you read Dr Celia's book written for Layman the stress of life to me the really important thing that Dr Celia has proved is that the body itself is equipped to maintain itself in health to cure itself of disease and to remain youthful by successfully coping with those factors that bring about what we call old age not only has he proved that the body is capable of curing itself but that in the final analysis that is the only sort of cure there is drugs surgery and various therapies work largely by either stimulating the body's own defense mechanism when it is deficient or toning it down when it is excessive the adaptation energy itself is what finally overcomes the disease heals the wound or burn or wins out over other stressors is this the secret of Youth this Elan vital life force or adaptation energy call it what you will manifests itself in many ways the energy that heals a wound is the same energy that keeps all our other body organs functioning when this energy is at an Optimum all our organs function better we feel good wounds heal faster we are more resistant to disease we recover from any sort of stress faster we feel and act younger and in fact biologically we are younger it is thus possible to correlate the various manifestations of this life force and to assume that whatever works to make more of this life force available to us whatever opens to us a greater influx of life's stuff whatever helps us utilize it better helps us all over we may conclude that whatever non-specific therapy AIDS wounds to heal faster might also make us feel younger whatever non-specific therapy helps us overcome aches and pains might for example improve eyesight and this is precisely the direction that medical research is now taking and that appears most promising science is search for the elixir of Youth in the original edition of this book in this chapter I wrote at length about some medical research and promising medical Miracles coming to the Forefront at the time that is 1960. I think you would find it interesting to revisit those comments in light of what is actually transpired now more than 40 years later what is unwaveringly true regardless of changes in the specifics is that the search for The elusive Fountain of Youth never ends today human growth hormone or HGH injections are much the rage among Hollywood celebrities wealthy Executives and aging athletes and many over-the-counter nostrums purporting to mimic the effects of these injections populate the shelves of health food stores and pharmacies alike perhaps you've read about or used DHEA nutritional supplements testosterone patches on and on diet exercise certain herbal and nutritional supplements as well as drug therapies all have influence and there will undoubtedly be many exciting discoveries and breakthroughs to come we have of course made huge strides in medically extending physical life but are less successful regarding quality of life I have been more intrigued with psychological life extension and Improvement in Bridging the two physical and psychological I once searched for other factors or common denominators that might explain why the surgical wounds of some patients heal faster than others the medicine used for this purpose worked better for some people than for others this in itself was food for thought because the results obtained in mice were practically uniform ordinarily mice do not worry or become frustrated frustration and emotional stress can be induced in mice however by immobilizing them so that they cannot have freedom of movement immobilization frustrates any animal laboratory experiments have shown that under the emotional stress of frustration very minor wounds May heal faster but any real injury is made worse and healing sometimes made impossible it has also been established that the adrenal glands react in very much the same way to emotional stress and to the stress of physical tissue damage how the failure mechanism injures you thus it might be said that frustration and emotional stress those factors we have previously described as the failure mechanism literally add insult to injury whenever the physical body suffers damage if the physical damage is very slight some emotional stress May stimulate the defense mechanism into activity but if there's any real or actual physical injury emotional stress adds to it and makes it worse this knowledge gives us reason to pause and think if aging is brought about by using up of our adaptation energy as most experts in the field seem to think then are indulging ourselves in the negative components of the failure mechanism can literally make us old before our time by using up that energy faster what is the secret of Rapid Healers among my human patients who did not receive the serum some individuals responded to surgery just as well as the average patient who did receive it differences in age diet pulse rate blood pressure Etc simply did not explain why there was however one easily recognizable characteristic that all the rapid healers had in common they were optimistic cheerful positive thinkers who not only expected to get well in a hurry but invariably had some compelling reason or need to get well quick they had something to look forward to and not only something to live for but something to get well for I've got to get back on the job I've got to get out of here so I can accomplish my goal in short they epitomized those characteristics and attitudes that I have previously described as the success mechanism thoughts bring organic as well as functional changes we do know this much mental attitudes can influence the body's healing mechanisms placebos or sugar pills capsules containing inert ingredients have long been a medical mystery they contain no medicine of any kind that could bring about a cure yet when placebos are given to a control group in order to test the effectiveness of a new drug the group receiving the phony pills nearly always shows some improvement and quite often as much as the group receiving the medicine students receiving placebos actually showed more immunization against colds than the group receiving a new cold medicine during World War II the Royal Canadian Navy tested a new drug for seasickness Group 1 received the new drug and group 2 received sugar pills of those groups only 13 percent suffered from seasickness while 30 percent of group 3 which received nothing got sick visible results from invisible medicine patients receiving placebos must not be told that the treatment is phony if it is to be effective they believe they are receiving legitimate medicine that will bring about a cure to write off placebos is merely due to suggestions explains nothing more reasonable is the conclusion that in taking the medicine some sort of expectation of improvement is aroused a goal image of health is set up in the mind and the creative mechanism Works through the body's own healing mechanism to accomplish the goal the so-called placebo effect is now common knowledge a powerful form of Auto suggestion aided and abetted by convincing physical props but this is more than another set of evidence that the servo mechanism is unable to distinguish synthetic from real this is evidence that the servo mechanism can even bring about restorative physical changes without the assistance of actual medicine Dr John Schindler in his book How To Live 365 days a year published by Prentice Hall Incorporated Englewood Cliffs New Jersey pointed out what he believed to be six basic needs that every human being has one the Need For Love two the need for security three the need for Creative expression four the need for recognition five the need for new experiences six the need for self-esteem to these six I would add another basic need the need for more life the need to look forward to tomorrow and to the future with gladness and anticipation you might think of this as expectation and engagement look forward and live this brings me to another of my over beliefs I believe that life itself is adaptive that life is not just an end in itself but a means to an end life is one of the means we are privileged to use in various ways to achieve important goals we can see this principle operating in all forms of life from the amoeba to man the polar bear for example needs a thick fur coat to survive in a cold environment it needs protective coloration to stalk game and hide from enemies the life force acts as a means to these ends and provides the polar bear with a white fur coat these adaptations of life to deal with problems in the environment are almost infinite and there is no point in continuing to enumerate them I merely want to point out a principle in order to draw a conclusion if life adapts itself in so many varied forms to act as a means toward an end is it not reasonable to assume that if we place ourselves in the sort of goal situation where more life is needed that we will receive more life if we think of humans as goal Strivers we can think of adaptation energy or life force as the propelling fuel or energy that drives us forward toward our goal a stored automobile needs no gasoline in the tank and a goal striver with no goals doesn't really need much life force I believe that we establish this need by looking forward to the future with joy and anticipation when we expect to enjoy tomorrow and above all when we have something important to us to do and somewhere to go create a need for more life creativity is certainly one of the characteristics of the life force and the essence of creativity is a looking forward toward a goal creative people need more life force and actuary tables seem to confirm that they get it as a group creative workers research scientists inventors painters writers philosophers not only live longer but remain productive longer than non-creative workers Michelangelo did some of his best painting when past 80. Goethe wrote Faust when he was past 80. Edison was still inventing at 90. Picasso passed 75 dominated the art world right at 90 was still considered the most creative architect Shaw was still writing plays at 90. one of the most visible poster boys for Eternal youth is entertainment industry entrepreneur Dick Clark people Marvel and joke about his boyish look is never seeming to age is he drinking some water or taking some pill we don't know about no he is not is there some genetic Edge involved probably but that alone cannot explain the phenomenon we see if you learn much about Mr Clark you will discover he is one of the busiest most Diversified most Innovative impresarios in all of the entertainment industry he has as they say many irons in the fire with no sign or suggestion of cutting back this is not to suggest youthfulness requires continued work until you are carried out of your workplace by your pallbearers for some people any form of retirement could be anathema but the secret is positive expectations and engagement not necessarily in the same vocation you have built your career in or at the same pace there are Endless Options for staying out of the proverbial rocking chair I began my career as a writer and lecturer on psycho cybernetics at age 61. after already having a long varied and colorful career I remained active in both arenas for quite some time sometimes performing a surgery in New York during the day then flying to Los Angeles for a lecture that same night at an age when too many men and women are thinking of stopping and fossilizing I began Anew doing something that fascinated me in my case I have been very fortunate as it has led to published books lecturing and meeting and corresponding with many Fascinating People fans of psycho-cybernetics including Hollywood personalities like Jane Fonda Civic leaders like Nancy Reagan even Salvador Dali who presented me with his own original painting depicting the essence of psycho-cybernetics but even if my work had not led to this kind of public acceptance and recognition I would still be a happy and fulfilled man engaged in activity meaningful to me and to others setting and progressing toward goals there is absolutely no rational reason that you cannot do the same this is why I tell my patients to develop a Nostalgia for the future instead of for the past if they want to remain productive and vital develop an enthusiasm for Life create a need for more life and you will receive more life have you ever wondered why so many actors and actresses managed to look far younger than their years and present a youthful appearance at age 50 and Beyond could it not be that these people have a need to look young that they are interested in maintaining their appearance and simply do not give up the goal of staying young as most of us do when we reach the middle years in the revised edition of the will to live published by Prentice Hall Incorporated of Englewood Cliffs New Jersey Dr Arnold a hutsnecker wrote we age not by years but by events and our emotional reactions to them the physiologist rubner observed that peasant women who work as cheap labor in the fields in some parts of the world are given to early withering of the face but they suffer no loss of physical strength and endurance here is an example of specialization in aging we can reason that these women have relinquished their competitive role as women they have resigned themselves to the life of the working bee which needs no beauty of face but only physical competence unquote Hutch Necker also comments on how widowhood ages some women but not others quote if the Widow feels that her life has come to an end and she has nothing to live for her attitude gives outward evidence in her gradual withering her graying hair another woman actually older begins to Blossom she may enter into the competition for a new husband or she may embark on a career in business or she may do no more than busy herself with an interest for which perhaps she has not had the Leisure until now unquote Faith courage interest optimism looking forward bring us new life and more life futility pessimism frustration living in the past are not only characteristic of old age they contribute to it retire from a job but never retire from life many people go downhill rapidly after retirement they feel that their active productive life is completed and their job is done they have nothing to look forward to they become bored inactive and they often suffer a loss of self-esteem because they feel left out of things not important anymore they develop a self-image of uselessness worthlessness being worn out a hanger on and a great many Die within a year or so after retirement it is not retiring from a job that kills these people it is retiring from life it is the feeling of uselessness of being washed up the dampening of self-esteem courage and self-confidence which are present attitudes of society help to encourage we need to know that these are outmoded and unscientific Concepts some 50 years ago psychologists thought that man's mental power peaked at the age of 25 and then began a gradual decline the latest findings show that a man reaches his Peak mentally somewhere around the age of 35 and maintains the same level until well past 70. such nonsense as you can't teach an old dog new trick still persists despite the fact that numerous researchers have shown that learning ability is about as good at 70 as it is at 17. we are always about pluses and minuses the young person embarking on a business career may have the advantages of great physical energy and stamina a wide open and uncluttered mind intense curiosity adventurousness and a sharp and facile mind a much older person competing in the same business Arena may have far less physical stamina and may wrestle with certain physical difficulties he or she may have certain built up biases that block creativity and maybe risk-averse and conservative less mentally quick however the Young Buck lacks experience emotional maturity confidence built on competence and credibility with others the Elder Statesman has much more relevant experience in some cultures still revered as wisdom to draw on in making important decisions and in recovering from mistakes each has a different list of pluses and minuses in business if either is especially astute they will counter their minuses with Associates or advisors much like a president constructs a cabinet lacking access to such an advisory committee made up of actual persons a person can develop a round table in his or her own fertile imagination and solicit advice from any expert my point is that at any age even confronted with any adversity tragedy handicap illness people can determine how they are going to respond and with regard to the symptoms and exhibitions of Aging their determined emotional responses may have at least as much to do with their actual life experience of the moment as their biological calendar or genetics or medicine if you accept this to any great degree then you should have additional motivation for mastering the concepts and techniques of psycho-cybernetics to stay younger than your years why I believe in miracles while confessing my over beliefs I might as well make a clean breast of it and say that I believe in miracles Medical Science does not pretend to know why the various mechanisms within the body perform as they do we know a little bit about the how and something about what happens we can describe what happens and how the mechanisms function when the body heals a cut but description is not explanation no matter in what technical terms it may be couched I still do not understand why or even the ultimate how when a cut finger heals itself I do not understand the power of the life force which operates the mechanisms of healing nor do I understand how the force is applied or just what makes it work I do not understand the intelligence that created the mechanisms nor just how some directing intelligence operates them Dr Alexis Carroll in writing of his personal observations of instantaneous healings at lured said that the only explanation he could make as a medical doctor was that the body's own natural healing processes which normally operate over a period of time to bring about healing Were Somehow speeded up under the influence of intense faith if Miracles as Dr Carroll says are accomplished by the acceleration of or the intensifying of natural healing processes and Powers within the body then I Witness A Small Miracle every time I see a surgical wound heal itself by growing new tissue whether it requires two minutes two weeks or two months makes no difference insofar as I can see I still witness some power at work that I do not understand Medical Science Faith Life all come from same source Dubois the famous French surgeon had a large sign in his operating room the surgeon dresses the wound God heals it the same might be said of any type of medication from antibiotics to cough drops yet I cannot understand how rational persons can forego medical help because they believe it inconsistent with their faith I believe that medical skill and medical discoveries are made possible by the same intelligence the same life force that operates through the media of Faith healing and for this reason I can see no possible conflict between Medical Science and religion medical healing and Faith healing both derive from the same source and should work together no father who saw a mad dog attacking his child would stand idly by and say I must do nothing because I must prove my faith he would not refuse the assistance of a neighbor who brought a club or a gun yet if you reduce the size of the Mad Dog trillions of times and call it a bacteria or a virus the same father May refuse the help of his doctor neighbor who brings a tool in the form of a capsule a scalpel or a syringe don't Place limitations on life which brings me to my parting thought in the Bible we are told that when the prophet was in the desert and hungry God lowered a sheet from the heavens containing food only to the prophet it didn't look much like good food it was unclean and contained all sorts of crawling things whereupon God rebuked him admonishing him not to call unclean that which God had offered some doctors and scientists today still turn up their noses at whatever smacks of Faith or religion some religionists have the same attitude suspicion and revulsion concerning anything scientific the biased lack of cooperation is everywhere and repugnant to me doctors of Chiropractic and Medicine choose to Feud rather than recognize the value and validity of their respective contributions and work together for the good of their patients psychiatrists psychologists and Academia sneer at self-help yet the anecdotal undocumented evidence of hundreds of thousands of people being genuinely and profoundly assisted by books like these is so overwhelming and consistent no sane person would prosecute against it so why not embrace it when a professional therapist angrily criticizes the pop psych author or Guru who appears on Oprah or even the Home Shopping Network is the rebuke genuine or ego and jealousy driven while all these sources war with each other and deny each other legitimacy you need not be caught up in their Petty differences you have the freedom to seek out and mix and match whatever works best for you do not close your mind to any potential benefit or assistance use your own rational thought test hypotheses for yourself everyone's real goal as I said in the beginning is for more life more living whatever your definition of Happiness may be you will experience happiness only as you experience more life more living means among other things more accomplishment the attainment of worthwhile goals more love experienced and given more health and enjoyment more happiness for both yourself and others I believe that there is one life one ultimate source but that this one life has many channels of expression and manifests itself in many forms if we are to get more living out of life we should not limit the channels through which life may come to us we must accept it whether it comes in the form of science religion psychology or whatnot another important channel is other people let us not refuse the help happiness and joy that others may bring us or that we can give to them let us not be too proud to accept help from others nor too callous to give it let us not say unclean just because the form of the gift may not coincide with our prejudices our ideas of self-importance the best self-image of all finally let us not limit our acceptance of Life by our own feelings of unworthiness God has offered us forgiveness and the peace of mind and happiness that come from self-acceptance it is an insult to our creator to turn our backs on these gifts or to say that his creation humanity is so unclean that he is not worthy or important or capable the most adequate and realistic self-image of all is to conceive of yourself as made in the image of God you cannot believe yourself the image of God deeply and sincerely with full conviction and not receive a new source of strength and power says Dr Frank G Slaughter the ideas and exercises in this program have helped many of my patients get more living out of life it is my hope and my belief that they will do the same for you chapter 16. true stories of lives changed using psycho-cybernetics the case of the least likely to succeed stockbroker Cela Quinn was born with a gift an advantage far above average intelligence she is a Mensa member an association of people with IQ in the top two percent of the entire population but this gift was of little use to her for quite some time thanks to other birth disadvantages she was born with a severe cleft lip and palate a birth defect that is a split in the roof of the mouth and the upper lip and that produces mangled speech it is often accompanied by a deformed nose seller described hers as looking like a quonset hut with one corner of the roof collapsed the crude minimal surgery of the time did not help her speech Her speech was so unintelligible to many she carried a pad and pencil with her to communicate with her jaw teeth and face often ached Cella had a very difficult time in school other children picked on her and even teachers presumed her stupid when you can't speak Cela said people think you're stupid my family teachers other children thought so and even I started to believe it she was 16 when she left home catching a bus to the nearest big city with 44 dollars in her pocket she had no plan no idea where she was going she only knew she had to escape where she was she got a dishwasher job at a drugstore lunch counter she was able to rent a basement room from a black woman who worked as a prostitute this woman encouraged Stella to improve herself to continue her education and to push to do something with her life in conversations Stella learned that the woman owned real estate and even invested in stocks something that both surprised her and motivated her a dentist who stopped for coffee each morning at the Walgreens Lunch Counter got a note passed to him one morning from sellot it read my teeth hurt so much I can only pay you five dollars a month will you help me the dentist arranged for her to receive surgeries and subsequent Dental Care at a total cost of over three thousand dollars sella remembers bursting into tears over the Sun however she worked at multiple jobs paid those bills paid to attend business school to become a secretary and saved up to pay for plastic surgery for her nose then she worked her way through the University of Nebraska obtaining a degree in journalism after 12 years for the next seven years she worked in Lincoln Nebraska as a reporter an ad for a trainee for Merrill Lynch intrigued her she soon began a career with Merrill Lynch somewhat to their surprise she did well and after seven years she was recruited by Smith Barney and made a vice president Selah Quinn went on to achieve truly extraordinary success as a stockbroker investment advisor ultimately as president of her own investment firm her personal lifestyle has mirrored that of the Rich and Famous complete with a mansion with a swimming pool in its living room luxury automobiles Civic leadership and security how did this woman manage to persevere through so many disadvantages and hardships to achieve such success she says her conversion was never easy my self-image was terrible but due to a combination of necessity an occasional push from someone else and gradually discovering abilities I moved ahead unquote early in her selling career she consulted a psychiatrist to improve her self-esteem he told her she was not stupid as she believed in fact to the contrary she was extremely intelligent and he urged her to take the Mensa examination and she passed she discovered the original edition of this book while still working at Walgreens and says it was pivotal in getting her to pursue and obtain plastic surgery she also credits the book with giving her the courage to seek therapy finally she began to understand that she need not be held back by any of her childhood traumas and that she could take pride and Confidence from the progress she had made Dr moltz's ideas made it possible for me to go from an 88 Cent an hour dishwasher to owning my own investment firm says sella Quinn regardless of the impetus the important point is that selaquin tested the truths about herself and discovered they were not true at all be inspired by this example and test every believed but limiting truth in your self-image's inventory you too may very well discover some of the most inhibiting are not true at all the case of the professors f I was flunking out of college and contemplating suicide when I first read psycho-cybernetics and it literally turned my life around that traumatic statement comes from college professor professional speaker author and successful businessman Marshall Reddick Mr Reddick says that at age 20 he was struggling just to stay in college and believed he lacked the intelligence necessary to make it to graduation let alone to go farther towards success in life he was also painfully shy a representation of his poor self-image and near total absence of self-confidence after reading psycho-cybernetics he began experimenting with some of its simplest most basic prescriptions and techniques I began to reprogram myself he says for example I placed little notes all around me in my pockets on my mirror in my car reminding me that I was a confident person and a capable person sure enough after just 21 days I started to feel and behave differently unquote Marshall Reddick went on with a successful academic career obtaining his bachelor's degree in business and economics a master's degree in Business from Colorado State University his PhD in business from Texas Tech University and a three-year tenure as professor of business and economics at California State University I had all my students read and then write a report on psycho-cybernetics Reddick says and I still recommend the book today unquote today Mr Reddick is a much in demand professional speaker and has earned the certified speaking professional or CSP designation from the National Speakers Association his seminar company has been presenting programs on time management negotiations and Peak Performance for corporate clients worldwide since 1975. isn't it remarkable that a failing student can metamorphose into a stellar student earn a PhD and step to the other side of the desk as Professor from such simple techniques self-made multi-millionaire W Clement Stone has a favorite saying little hinges swing big doors it has many profound applications and this is one of them that frequently little tests of truths embedded in the self-image little experiments in exercising new control over one's thoughts can swing open huge doorways to Rapid and dramatic personal growth it isn't necessarily the size of the idea but the size of the opportunity that governs the result by experimenting with even the simplest of the ideas found in psycho-cybernetics you too may make amazing self-discoveries the case of the alcoholic's daughter this is the story of Peggy Collins as she relates I am a professional speaker the other day as I was getting ready to leave my office to deliver a keynote address for a large association's luncheon my eyes went to the bookcase in my office where one book stands out from all the others soft cover tattered in places used and worn it takes me back to 1960. I was working my way through Lamar University in Beaumont Texas by being the girl Friday for a prestigious Law Firm the managing partner became my mentor I know today that he saw the low self-esteem in that 19 year old girl in one of our meetings that year he handed a copy of psycho-cybernetics to me to read if he said it was worthwhile then it was and I digested its contents that very weak Maxwell maltz offered me tools to re-engineer my thoughts and feelings about myself in ways that had never occurred to me for the first 16 years of my life my father was a troubleshooter for a huge manufacturing company and they must have had a lot of troubles because we moved every year sometimes twice in the same year coast to coast and Back Again 17 schools in 12 years on weekends after traveling all week my dad came home and crawled into a bottle my mom was rarely able to leave the house and as the eldest of four children I became her legs I was the one who got the utilities connected each time we moved got bills paid groceries purchased yet in her eyes I never quite did anything well enough with this as background I was attempting to function effectively in the world of work and struggling obviously enough that my employer handed me this book about the self-image the first year that I was given psycho-cybernetics I read it five times over the next five years I reread it several times each year Maxwell maltz became my encourager he not only opened the door to a new way of living for me but he birthed a lifelong interest in mind-body studies that directed my career and brought me a lifetime of fulfillment today I speak to audiences all over the country on issues of self-esteem and communication I know firsthand that we cannot connect with others until we connect with ourselves unquote Peggy Collins traveled from Law Firm clerk to a top producer in real estate selling to senior vice president of a banking institution before embarking on her current career as a professional speaker and workshop leader with an impressive corporate client list including Mobile Oil Frito-Lay Burger King and the JCPenney Corporation her story reinforces the important fact that the past need not predict the future it is a well-known psychological fact that children of Alcoholics face significant and special problems but depending on your definition of dysfunctional family nearly everyone has one each person must rise above childhood experiences or adverse adult experiences to take control of his or her own personality beginning now and moving forward one of American business's favorite speakers Joel Weldon gave a speech for many years titled jet Pilots don't use rear view mirrors We Must ALL Stop looking in our rear view mirrors and focus on the present moment and the future the case of the rodeo Cowboys when Doug Butler agreed to take the reins as coach of the California state Polytechnic University at Pomona also known as Cal Poly Pomona Rodeo team in the fall of 1969 they occupied last place in the western region of the national Intercollegiate Rodeo Association one of the students in Doug's horseshoeing class a top Rodeo Cowboy stuck on this last place team urged Doug to step in as coach insisting that the team had more ability than they were demonstrating Doug Butler recalled I had recently read Dr malt's psycho-cybernetics was impressed by it and working to apply its methods in my life I felt the methods could be used to coach Rodeo athletes although I had never heard of the techniques being used for that purpose later I discovered that Gary lefew was using these methods to coach students in his bull riding school but at the time I thought I was breaking new ground unquote Doug developed a plan for turning the team around including new rules training disciplines a code of behavior for the athletes and use of psycho-cybernetics as a text for personal Improvement the director of the University's animal science department a former professional hockey player agreed to support the plan Doug then met with the rodeo team members and made it clear he would not accept the coaching responsibilities unless they would agree to all of his conditions the rules included no alcohol no tobacco no drug use good grades even a well-groomed appearance and participation in a rigorous practice schedule at the college Rodeo Arena two days a week supplemented by daily mental practice Doug LED an aggressive program of physical and mental conditioning quote three days a week we worked out at the gym starting at 6 30 a.m We Used weight training machines did calisthenics and ran wind Sprints as we cooled down we would discuss insights from our study of psycho-cybernetics everybody had a copy of the book and read it and reread it each team member would practice visualizing his own Champion performance and would share their detailed descriptions of these imagined experiences with each other unquote by late spring of 1970 the team had moved from the basement to second place in the division behind a team that featured a future six-time world champion cowboy as the team's image performance and record improved Rodeo athlete scholarships became available for students for the very first time Doug said the students presented me with an engraved silver belt buckle and a standing ovation at the year-end banquet I still wear the Buckle and will always treasure the great psycho-cybernetics experience we shared and every one of these team members has gone on to become successful in their chosen professions unquote Doug Butler has his PhD from Cornell University in Veterinary anatomy and equine nutrition is only one of 500 certified journeyman farriers was three times a member of the North American horseshoeing team and is the author of over 30 books and tapes on horseshoeing and horsefoot care in 1980 he won the North American challenge cup horseshoeing contest in 1997 he was inducted into the international horseshoeing Hall of Fame and in 1999 he won the journalism award from the American farriers Association today Doug conducts classes teaching blacksmith to apply visualization techniques to be more efficient and competent Craftsmen he also speaks to business groups associations and corporate audiences on the cowboy code dealing with character leadership and self-mastery he says that his continued use of the techniques of psycho-cybernetics has steered him towards successful accomplishment of every goal as you can see it doesn't matter what your occupation or vocation is even rodeo rider the principal's Concepts and techniques of psycho-cybernetics are Reliable Tools for achieving Peak Performance also as the story of Doug's team illustrates it doesn't matter what your starting point may be even if like his team you are in last place in disarray absent Focus self-discipline or self-confidence all that can change at your own determination no collection of circumstances founded on past experience need remain in control of your present or your future the case of the woman who could not walk dear Dr malts please let me express to you my feelings of gratitude for your book psycho-cybernetics so began a letter much like thousands of others received in Dr malta's office over the years however this letter went on to describe a truly amazing story quote what I'm about to share with you is very personal and charged with emotion when I think of how one paperback book has changed my whole life is it any wonder I want to tell you my story hoping it may help others my life began in Providence Kentucky on October 1st 1924 as a healthy normal nine pound baby girl I was stricken with muscular dystrophy at age 10. I recall overhearing the doctor telling my parents that they might as well take me out of school as I had less than one year to live this etched fear deep into me gradual changes took place in my motor abilities I began to stumble soon it became difficult to walk then I began to experience great difficulty using my hands with loving and understanding I began a journey that would span 20 years trying to cope with this Progressive disease this shadow of Doom muscular dystrophy many Summers were spent in hospitals in body casts in therapy finally specially built shoes with steel braces attached were provided to help me walk my whole body was showing signs of weakness tasks that were so simple for others were great frustrations for me still in spite of numerous obstacles I managed to complete my education which included College then came 13 years teaching school at the age of 25 I was told I must undergo an operation on both ankles or risk spending the remainder of my life in a wheelchair after suffering these operations almost a year of confinement in casts and wheelchair I had to learn to walk again it was months before I could stand for periods of time several years before I was able to return to work even though for the most part the operations were a success mental scars remained and they became a greater handicap to me than did my physical disabilities I lacked self-confidence self-esteem and self-reliance I seem to have lost a sense of direction and a purpose in living unquote we will interrupt the author only for a moment to make this important point it does not matter how or by what series of events a person loses the purpose for living and with its self-esteem and self-confidence it happens to tens of thousands of people thousands of different ways it certainly does not require severe physical handicaps or trauma to wind up in this very same emotional state however the pathway out of this Darkness into the light is the same regardless of what brought on the darkness in the first place the letter continues well-meaning friends and my family tried to help me inspirational booklets books and a desperate search into all types of philosophy filled every waking moment I investigated everything from Buddhism to Transcendental Meditation I even delved into some of the ancient Vedas one day while browsing in a bookstore my eye caught sight of a book titled psycho cybernetics the title aroused my curiosity I was told by the clerk in the store that she simply couldn't keep enough copies on hand that it was one of the best-selling books in her store that was all I needed to hear I bought a copy and found that I couldn't lay it down for the first time in my life I began to gain an insight into my own behavior when I finished the book I decided that someday I would meet the author I didn't know how this meeting could come about but I knew I must have the opportunity to tell Dr maltz of my appreciation over a period of years psycho-cybernetics has served as an action manual for me my attitude has changed from the negative to a winning feeling what now appears to be a miracle to others is simply my working to change my own self-image I have become somewhat of a medical phenomenon every doctor that has examined me has said that I do not have the physical muscle ability to walk from a medical standpoint there seems to be no logical explanation for the fact that I do walk I was recently named handicapped professional Woman of the Year at The District 4 pilot International Convention this award is jointly sponsored by Pilot and the president's committee on employment for the handicapped I have just been appointed to governor askew's subcommittee on information and press relations on employment of the handicapped here in Florida through my work in television I have had the good fortune and pleasure of working with many well-known personalities among the notables was you Dr maltz I have come to know what it is to live a fulfilling useful and happy life signed Jean Sanders Jean and her husband Peter became good friends of Max and Ann maltz about her Dr maltz once wrote sooner or later in life every person must face catastrophe each person then chooses to rise above it no matter how Herculean the effort required or to succumb to it how can Gene Sanders walk and drive a car without the muscle capability and strength required to do so according to all medical experts because of the muscle strength of her self-image which cannot be so readily seen or medically evaluated unquote it is significant that Gene Sanders noted that she used psycho-cybernetics as an action manual unlike philosophical writings and unlike scores of other self-improvement books psycho-cybernetics emphasizes things to do not just things to think this is important because it is the constructive doing that yields results