Maxwell Maltz

Curiously enough, this is not because “self-image psychology” has not worked, but because it has worked so amazingly well. As one of my colleagues expressed it, “I am reluctant to publish my findings, especially for the lay public, because if I presented some of the case histories and described the rather amazing and spectacular improvements in personality, I would be accused of exaggerating, or trying to start a cult, or both.”

Insofar as function is concerned, the brain and nervous system constitute a marvelous and complex “goal-striving mechanism,” a sort of built-in automatic guidance system that works for you as a “success mechanism,” or against you as a “failure mechanism,” depending on how “YOU,” the operator, operate it and the goals you set for it.

This Creative Mechanism within you is impersonal. It will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending on the goals that you
yourself set for it. Present it with “success goals,” and it functions as a Success Mechanism. Present it with negative goals, and it operates just as impersonally, and just as faithfully, as a Failure Mechanism.

Visualizing (creative mental picturing) is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some 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.

Dr. Maltz’s words “If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe”

We are able to accomplish the goal of picking up the pen because of an automatic mechanism, and not by “will” and forebrain thinking alone. All that the forebrain 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.

Let us 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 let us 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.

Actually, there is 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.

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—but to what is happening.

The habit is particularly insidious because it is seldom recognized for what it is. When we feel jittery, or 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: We can only do one thing
at a time.

Dr. John A. Schindler defines happiness as “a state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time.”