Psycho-Cybernetics Summary, Review and Quotes | Maxwell Maltz

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A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

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We’re scratching the surface here. If you don’t already have Maxwell Maltz’s classic book on the importance of self-image, order it here or get the audiobook for free to learn the juicy details. 

Introduction

Most people experience moments of doubt in their abilities or lack of self-esteem. These are natural processes. But there are ramifications that occur when they become a consistent habit. In such instances, your progress towards your goals gets impeded. This causes your doubt to compound further. 

Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz explores the fundamentals of how the mind works. The mind is a powerful tool. When harnessed correctly, it can positively impact your life and drive meaningful change. However, the life you live depends on your self-image. 

Maltz uses practical examples to explain how your self-view controls your success. 

Psycho-Cybernetics is an ideal read for people seeking to break past mental barriers. The book suggests evidence-backed theories on reprogramming your mind and implementing behavior changes.

About Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon and author. Many believe his books have inspired the modern self-help book genre. Maltz graduated from Columbia University with a doctorate in medicine in 1923. After graduating, Maltz trained to be a plastic surgeon. His experiences of surgery inspired his thoughts about self-image and success. This led him to write Psycho-Cybernetics. To date, the book has changed the lives of over 40 million people.

Maltz was born in 1899 in New York’s Lower East Side. He was the third child of Josef and Taube Elzweig, who were Jewish immigrants from Resche, a town in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (today Rzeszów, Poland).

He also wrote fiction, such as the 1947 play “Unseen Scar” and the 1975 novel “The Time is Now.” His autobiography, “The Pygmalion of a Plastic Surgeon,” was influential and was discussed in many other books about body and identity. After his self-help book was released, it was renamed “Dr. Psycho-Cybernetics.”

StoryShot #1: Experience Is Important

As a plastic surgeon, Dr. Maltz realized one thing. Even if people get plastic surgery, their feelings and attitudes remain the same. He then came across cybernetics. Cybernetics is the actions and requirements of machines that allow them to complete tasks effectively. People can apply the same processes to achieve success or failure. 

People’s experiences are like machine programming. Your experiences lead to specific outcomes. Similar to programming a language, we can change these experiences. We should consider how we can use our experiences to achieve successful outcomes. Maltz encourages you to read this book with experience in mind. That’s why he suggests you actively read the book by taking notes.

StoryShot #2: Change Your Success Mechanisms

We each have a self-image developed based on our experiences. Your self-belief guides how you live your life. Some people are perpetually successful, while others seem to fail continually. Their experiences – success or failure – guide their future behaviors. 

Most people aim to change their self-image by making external changes, like plastic surgery. Others encourage positive thinking, but do not address their self-image beliefs. Both types will fail. True happiness comes from achieving an adequate self-image you can live with.

In this book, the subconscious is a mechanism controlled by your mind. The function of your subconscious depends on the goals you set. These goals develop through your self-image. Based on these assumptions, your self-image dictates the limits of your accomplishments. 

There are five fundamentals for setting up success mechanisms:

1. Create goals and targets you believe you might achieve. Success mechanisms depend on goals.
2. Make sure your goals focus on the end, not the means. Your mechanism will find a way to work if you remain centered on your goals.
3. Making mistakes feeds your auto-correct. This is a positive reaction that helps you redirect toward your goal.
4. Forget your past errors and move on. You should focus on the final successful choice that will lead you toward your goal.
5. Trust the process without worrying about having to adjust it. Let your mechanisms work. Don’t make them work. 

StoryShot #3: Imagination and Relaxation Matter

Our reactions to our environment are generally automatic and without thought. We react based on our internal systems. The most important thing is what you believe to be true. These beliefs create the reaction. Many studies have found that mental practice can improve performance. You must practice correcting your mental image of a specific action. Changing what you believe is far easier than just trying harder. Instead of excessive effort, you can relax and enjoy the process.

Alter your self-image to improve your outcomes. By picturing yourself differently, you will act differently and improve your life. Avoid being too harsh on yourself and maintain a conservative, optimistic attitude. It is easy to feel inferior when we measure ourselves to someone else’s expectations. Instead, believe in who you know you are and who you can be.

Relaxation is crucial when seeking to alter our self-image. Your imagination is vital in encouraging relaxation. You should get comfortable and consciously relax each muscle group in your body. Then, practice positive and calming mental images over and over. Over time, these mental images will align with your physical feelings. 

StoryShot #4: Use Rational Thinking 

Rational thinking is an effective tool for changing your beliefs and behaviors. Rationality allows you to realize that negative unconscious thoughts do not always have to be resurfaced to move on. Instead, it is more rational to focus only on the mistakes that will help you towards your goals. You should forget even these mistakes once you have practiced achieving your goals. 

We can create personal success by purging negative memories. When you start feeling negative, look for the cause of this negativity. In most cases, this negativity is irrational. Use rational thinking to show yourself the absurdity of your negativity. You should repeat this practice whenever negative thoughts or memories surface. In this space, encourage rational and positive beliefs. 

There are four questions you can ask yourself to evaluate whether a belief should remain:

1. Is there any rational reason for such a belief?
2. Could it be that I am mistaken in this belief?
3. Would I come to the same conclusion about another person in a similar situation?
4. Why should I continue to act and feel as if this were true if there is no compelling reason to believe it?

You should be angry about these negative beliefs. These beliefs are the barrier between you and success. Allow this anger to surface and use it as motivation to create new beliefs. Besides this anger, you should also accompany your rational thoughts with feelings and desires. Try to get excited about your desires. If you can make this transition, you dwell more on positive and desirable goals than negative ones. 

Rational thoughts are essential when establishing your goals and dismissing negative self-images. But you should not let rational thoughts dictate your entire life. If you continuously focus on rationality, you will be anxious and stressed. Once you have set up rational goals, you need to just let go and allow success to come to you. This act of letting go encourages the spontaneity and creativity that is fundamental to success. Part of letting go includes avoiding multitasking. Multitasking takes your focus away from the moment and increases stress.

StoryShot #5: Happy Habits Breed Success

Happiness is natural and leads to positive behaviors: unselfishness, creativity, and helpfulness. However, we can learn and practice to be happy. Learning to be happy is refraining from responding negatively to your environment. Being happy also involves separating facts from opinions. Working towards your goals is another action that encourages happiness. You should view negative experiences as challenges, rather than setbacks, when pursuing a goal.

The following is a reminder of what success looks like:

1. Sense of direction: Maintain your personal focus and goals.
2. Understanding: Try to separate fact from fiction, including accepting your errors and correcting them.
3. Courage: Have the courage to act on your goals and beliefs to make them a reality. 
4. Charity: Start by treating others with even more kindness than you currently do. If you treat others with more kindness, you will start treating yourself with more kindness.
5. Esteem: Have a healthy picture of who you are. If you can appreciate your strengths, you can appreciate other people.
6. Self-confidence: Your self-confidence will grow as you gain more successful experiences. You can also maximize self-confidence by remembering past successes and forgetting failures.
7. Self-acceptance: Accept yourself for who you are. Remember that creating a better self-image does not involve creating new abilities, talents, or powers.

StoryShot #6: Avoid Emotional Scars

Individuals with weak self-images are likely to become emotionally damaged by challenging experiences. Your response to experiences can leave you with emotional scars. Practicing relaxation can prevent emotional scars from forming. 

You can also remove emotional scars that have already formed. Forgiveness is the scalpel that removes emotional wounds. You can start forgiving others and yourself once you realize that unforgiveness only leaves you with a debt of emotion. You should never leave space for hatred or condemnation. Forgiving yourself involves accepting that you have made mistakes. You should also understand that blaming yourself achieves nothing.

Inhibition will leave you worried about what other people think of your mistakes. Self-consciousness (monitoring what you do because of how others might perceive you) can lead to inhibition. Again, the best approach to tackle self-consciousness is to engage with relaxation techniques. Remember a time and place when you felt comfortable and supported. Your self-consciousness will begin to fade once you recreate the feelings you felt at that time. Then, you can start practicing disinhibition by being less concerned about what other people think.

StoryShot #7: Remove Bad Conditioning

Most of your responses to the environment are conditioned. They are reactions you have learned and executed automatically. Some conditioned responses have a negative effect on your life. However, you can unlearn conditioned responses. Start by delaying your response to the stimulus. This period of non-response is relaxation and encourages positive feelings. These positive feelings act as a natural form of tranquilizer. 

One way to delay your response is to create a quiet room for yourself. This should be a place of total relaxation within your mind. This is a mental space, not a physical one. Start by practicing this before you go to sleep. Once you have mastered entering this relaxation room, you can move this practice to the moments before you tackle challenges. Upon mastering this practice, you will carry a calmness into all aspects of your life. Another calming practice is to refuse to respond to all the negative possibilities you think of during the day. Instead, focus on your goals.

StoryShot #8: Find the Good in Everything

Crises are considered universally adverse events. A crisis can make or break you. Suppose you learn to react appropriately to crises. In that case, you can get strength, power, and wisdom that you could not otherwise have got. To turn a crisis into an opportunity, you need to react to all challenges in the same way you would respond to a crisis. In effect, these reactions are your fire drills before the crisis. Learning the actions without stress will allow you to respond naturally to a crisis despite greater pressure.

You should learn to react actively to crises. In particular, adopt a combined attitude of calmness, confidence, and competence. Your mentality should be that you can handle any crisis, no matter what happens. However, before choosing your approach, you must evaluate the crises. This evaluation allows you to sort the genuine crises from the false ones.

One benefit of actively responding to crises is that you automatically adopt a positive approach. Your brain can’t tell the difference between real and imagined experiences. Thinking negatively about crises could lead to failure becoming part of your goal-setting. Bring to mind feelings of success by focusing on positivity. Focusing on positivity leads to successful actions and outcomes. You can also take time to recall successes in your past. The imprinting in the brain is strong for these and becomes stronger with recall. 

StoryShot #9: Small Successes Will Improve Your Life

Over time, adopting a failure mechanism will have a significant impact on your life. You will have poor health and well-being. You will also heal slower than people with a positive mindset. 

You should focus on fulfilling seven needs to improve your well-being:

1. Love
2. Security
3. Creative Expression
4. Recognition
5. New Experiences
6. Self-esteem
7. Positivity about the future

Final Summary and Review of Psycho-Cybernetics

Psycho-Cybernetics is a term coined by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Psycho-Cybernetics focuses on how you can use your mind to steer yourself toward positive goals and success. Maltz was the first researcher and author to explain how self-image controls an individual’s ability to achieve any goal. Based on his outline of self-image, he also provides several suggestions for how to use your self-image to improve your chances of success.

Here’s a recap of the key insights from Psycho-Cybernetics. Tag us on social media and let us know which one resonated with you the most:

1. Experience is important.
2. Change your success mechanisms.
3. Imagination and relaxation matter.
4. Use rational thinking.
5. Happy habits breed success.
6. Avoid emotional scars.
7. Remove bad conditioning.
8. Find the good in everything.
9. Small successes will make your life better.

Rating

We rate this book 4.5/5.

Editor’s Note

This article was first published in 2021. It was updated and revised on 15 Oct 2022.

If you have feedback about this analysis and summary or would like to share what you have learned, comment below.

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