Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) was 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.
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It is the young man of little faith who says, ‘I am nothing.’ It is the young man of true conception who says, ‘I am everything,’ and then goes to prove it. That does not spell conceit or egotism, and if people think it does, let them think so. Enough for us to know that it means faith, trust, confidence, the human expression of the God within us. He says. ‘Do my work.’ Go and do it. No matter what it is. Do it, but do it with a zest; a keenness; a gusto that surmounts obstacles and brushes aside discouragement.
—Maxwell Maltz
Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Security
People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Always have something ahead of you to “look forward to”—to work for and hope for.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Goals
Begin to imagine what the desirable outcome would be like. Go over these mental pictures and delineate details and refinements. Play them over and over to yourself.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Imagination
Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. Man alone can direct his success mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Imagination
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 act.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Ability, Ideas, Action
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.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Crises, Bravery, Courage
Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than “you” ever could by conscious thought. “You” supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Goals, Thinking, Lies, Dance, Results, Thought
When you believe you can-you can.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Attitude
We must have courage to bet on our ideas, on the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Courage, Happiness
We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Difficulty, Obstacles
Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.
—Maxwell Maltz
Realizing that our actions, feelings and behavior are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.
—Maxwell Maltz
We are injured and hurt emotionally, Not so much by other people or what they say and don’t say, But by our own attitude and our own response.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Attitude
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.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Imagination
One of the reasons it has seemed so difficult for a person to change his habits, his personality, or his way of life, has been that heretofore nearly all efforts at change have been directed to the circumference of the self, so to speak, rather than to the center.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Motivation
This is where you will win the battle—in the playhouse of your mind.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: The Mind
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.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Imagination
We, whoever we are, must have a daily goal in our lives, no matter how small or great, to make that day mean something.
—Maxwell Maltz
To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Habit
Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Health, Optimism
The “self-image” is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Behavior
Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person’s feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Cooperation
What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live—with your self-respect alive and growing.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Opportunity
Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow – after you have done your best to achieve success today.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Mistakes, Failure
We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Failure, Courage, Risk, Success, Risk-taking
Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: The Mind
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.
—Maxwell Maltz
If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Acceptance, Awareness, Realization
Our self-image strongly held essentially determines what we become.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Optimism, Positive Attitudes
You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Adversity
Close scrutiny will show that most “crisis situations” are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Growth
Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Imagination
Get into the habit of laughing; too many of us have forgotten how to laugh. As people grow older, they sometimes forget that they ever laughed. It is a part of their childhood that they can no longer remember.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Laughter
Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown—but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. The catch is that they can’t seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable Traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. I don’t mean some vague moment in the present—next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: The Present, Present
It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear.
—Maxwell Maltz
Topics: Fear
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