Maxwell Maltz

His plight is somewhat comparable to the young man who cannot secure a job because he has no experience, and cannot acquire experience because he cannot get a job.

“Nothing succeeds like success.” We learn to function successfully by experiencing success. Memories of past successes act as built-in “stored information,”

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, and transform victims of “personality failure.”
On another plane, discovering your real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity.

1. All your actions, feelings, behaviors—even your abilities—are always consistent with this self-image. In short, you will “act like” the sort of person you conceive yourself to be.

Theatre of the Mind. I’d close my eyes, then remember and relive my best moments—seeing them play out like a mental movie. My victories. My successes. My happiest times.

In much the same way our attitudes, emotions, and beliefs tend to become habitual. In the past we “learned” that certain attitudes, 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.”

When a person begins to feel more compassion about others, he invariably begins to feel more compassion toward himself.

Do not downgrade the product merely because you haven’t used it correctly.

For real self-esteem is not derived from the great things you’ve done, the things you own, the mark you’ve made—but 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.

Stop carrying around a mental picture of yourself as a defeated, worthless person. Stop dramatizing yourself as an object of pity and injustice. Use the practice exercises in this book to build an adequate self-image.