Maxwell Maltz - Psycho-Cybernetics and Self-Fulfillment

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As we go forward into the second half of the twentieth century, we find ourselves in the midst of a great electronics revolutioncomputers undertake incredible tasks in industry and in our exploration of outer space we have perfected complicated devices which enable us to haul our astronauts back to safety on earth even under emergency conditions.

At the same time, a revolution takes place in the vast inner space of our minds. For we find evidence that in making man, our Creator has endowed him with a servo-mechanism more wonderful than any electronic brain or guidance system that man has inventedand operating on the same basic principles.

Our Creator has given us all a built-in goal-striving device with which to achieve our goals. In the final analysis, this should enable us to rise above the mere physical survival aspect of living to a form of successful, satisfying living.

For animals life implies physical survival as well as the procreation of the species. Thus we find that birds in wintertime fly to warmer climates in self-protectionand their flights of thousands of miles they undertake without even getting hold of the TV weather reports. And a squirrel born in the spring will, without ever having experienced a winter, collect nuts for the winter for survival.

Animals, however, do not select their goals. Their goals of procreation and self-preservation are pre-set.

Human beings, on the other hand, have advanced beyond the animal stage. We possess a power of creative imagination which makes us more than creaturescreators. And, because of this productive imaginative power our goals are limitless.

Within your midbrain is a very small electronic computer, a tape recorder, an automatic servo-mechanism, a success mechanism that you operate like an electronic computer, a goal-striving mechanism that will help you move toward your goals. Like an astronaut whizzing toward his goal somewhere so far awayand returning to earthyou may grope within the vast inner space of your mind to discover the wealth within you before you return to yourself. Not only can your brain function automatically to help you solve problems, but it also can help you adapt more acceptably to life, giving you insight into human behavior, with one overriding goal in viewyour complete fulfillment as a human being.

I call this creative psycho-cybernetics, or steering your mind to a productive goal. This does not imply that man is a machine, but that man controls a machine that is his. In my book Psycho-Cybernetics I explain this in great detail.

Within us, however, we have, in addition to a success mechanism, a failure mechanism. This failure mechanism is a composite of frustrated, negative feelings which pull us off course, sidetracking our positive inclinations, shrinking our self-image, blocking our attempt to reach our full stature as dignified human beings.

For example, I sit at a table and pick up a spoon. I pick it up in my hand effortlessly. But was this always so? No. As a child, I doubtless dropped my spoon many times until I learned how to pick it up. Then I forgot the many failures to pick up the spoon but remembered the successful performance, stored this in the tape recorder of my mind and now I pick up my spoon successfully.

Thus to reach a goal in the present, you call upon your past experiences the total of which are stored in the electronic computer in your midbrain. If you reach back to past successes, you reawaken confidence to succeed in the present. But if you go back to past failures, you defeat yourself.

If you move toward failure, you distort your self-image. You dislike and distrust yourself. You fail to guide yourself properly.

The solution? Upgrade yourself; stop downgrading yourself. See yourself in your best moments; do not let success die. Keep on visualizing these good momentsno matter how fewand doggedly focus on these wonderful success pictures until you incorporate them into your basic personality.

You live in two worlds. In one world you see darkness and gloom, foreboding and failure, and catastrophe is always around the corner. In the second world your eyes see sunshine, the fields are green, the sky is blue, and your prospects seem brighter each moment.

Let us project ourselves into this second worldof happiness. Let us do this by gearing ourselves to reach out toward our goals.

This is the first chapter in this discussion of ours on how to go about achieving self-fulfillment. And one fundamental way we do this is to harness our energies and direct them at our goals.

And so, forward to our goals, and let us make an adventure of this exercise, because adventure is fun and fun is a goal in itself.

Here, spelled out again, because I believe that such a procedure crystallizes things more readily in our minds, is our formula for moving toward goals:

Ready? Set? Lets go.

1. Reach for todays opportunities

You forget yesterdays blunders; you stop worrying about the past. Today is the day, and you reach out toward todays opportunities.

We are all fragile, sensitive human beings. We are more easily hurt by our failures and by the way others react to us than we like to admit. Still, the business of life is in the present. Opportunities exist for us in the present, and we must reach out to grasp them as eagerly as a baby clutches for its mother or a football tackle takes out after the ball carrier.

Every day is a challenge to you, and you respond to this challenge with the best that is in you. You reach out toward the world, setting your goals, delineating their limits, choosing your methods of moving toward them, then taking action. These goals of the day, these opportunities of the daymake a habit of reaching out toward them.

Do not surrender this excitement, this excitement of reaching out toward opportunitiesto overcome negative feelings. Negative feelings, no goalsame thing. You render yourself stationary. You have not broken a leg, yet you place your leg in a cast and you cannot move.

Give yourself a sense of direction and crystallize your opportunities. Move toward your destination, instead of languishing on a merry-go-round.

A goal implies desire and when you feel this desire acutely enough you give yourself an atomic power that will help propel yourself toward the opportunities that the day brings. You insist on fulfilling yourself; you will not take no for an answer.