Maxwell Maltz
Maxwell Maltz
Maxwell Maltzwas an American cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics, which was a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one's self-image. In turn, the person would lead a more successful and fulfilling life. He wrote several books, among which Psycho-Cybernetics was a long-time bestseller — influencing many subsequent self-help teachers. His orientation towards a system of ideas that would provide self-help is considered the forerunner of the now popular self-help books...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth10 March 1899
CountryUnited States of America
Stand up to crises. Don't let them throw you! Fight to stay calm... even surmount the crisis completely and turn it into an opportunity. Refuse to renounce your self-image. No matter what happens, you must keep your good opinion of yourself. No matter what happens, you must hold your past successes in your imagination, ready for showing in the motion picture screen of your mind. No matter what happens, no matter what you lose, no matter what failures you must endure, you must keep faith in yourself. Then you can stand up to crises, with calm and courage, refusing to buckle; then you will not fall through the floor. You will be able to support yourself.
Faith, courage, optimism, looking forward, bring us new life and more life. Futility, frustration, living in the past are not only characteristic of 'old age'; they contribute to it.
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.
Ignore past failures and forge ahead.
The minute that we change our minds, and stop giving power to the past, the past with its mistakes loses power over us.
The un-happiest of mortals is that man who insists upon reliving the past, over and over in imagination - continually criticizing himself for past mistakes - continually condemning himself for past sins.
Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown - but the present is real, and your opportunities are now.
The ''self-image'' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.
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 a striving toward an important goal.
Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as you can change your beliefs.
For imagination sets the goal ''picture'' which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of ''will,'' as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
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.''
Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on.
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.