Psycho-Cybernetics - See Yourself at Your Best

Matt Furey's Super Human Success Blog

How to Whoop an 11,000-Pound Elephant

by

Over the past few days I have talked with several people who are frustrated because they haven’t been taking action to accomplish what they’ve set out to do.

It’s a common predicament that many people find themselves in, especially after crafting a list of big goals that initially “got them excited.”

I refer to this as the “Going to Bed Excited and Waking Up Anxious” realm of reality.

Feelings of overwhelm quickly set in when you cannot get your butt off the coach to do what you supposedly claimed you wanted to do.

Why does this happen to so many well-intentioned people?

The reason is simple: You’ve bought into the wrongness of Thinking Big when you really ought to be focused on the “small stuff.”

As a writer, if I have a big project to tackle, I cannot get myself going if I think too much about the enormity of the task. This causes the Resistance Reflex to manifest. But if I think only about warming up my index finger with a few strokes of my pen (or on a keyboard), I forget about myself and my feelings, and I get on with the simplest of tasks.

There is usually zero resistance to simple tasks and small goals. The key is finding out how you can woo the elephant into submission.

Picture an 11,000 pound elephant. Even if you’re a leviathan, you’ll probably have trouble tackling it. The elephant can fling you away with a light movement of its trunk. It can also latch onto you and remove your limbs, or stomp you into the ground. And yes, this does happen on occasion.

But if you are wise, you figure out how to coax the elephant and remain out of harms way.

Imagine that your big goal is an elephant. In order to subdue it you must figure out and utilize the simplest approach; an approach wherein you do not spook or startle the elephant, because if you do it will resist and retaliate.

This resistance is what happens when people set big goals before their subconscious mind is ready for them. You can attempt to overpower your subconscious with positive thinking, but this is unlikely to work as you’re dealing with an 11,000-pound animal.

So you chunk that elephant into much smaller goals to make it ridiculously easy for you to take your first step. Once you’ve taken your first step, the next ones come easier.

When you focus on getting started, you begin to realize the value of the saying, “Beginning is half-done.”

Consider this: When you take your first step, even if you have a long road ahead of you, you’re half-done.

Why? Because beginning is the hardest part. Beginning is when you show that you’ve reduced and overcome the resistance, which is far greater before you begin than it is in the middle.

Once you’re in the middle, chances are that you’re no longer concerned with how long it will take or how hard it is. You’re so busy doing that you’re no longer thinking.

Last night I spoke with a man who is flustered, who cannot get himself going. After he answered a few easy questions, he realized that all his goals are too big and too far off I explained to him that he doesn’t need to drop his big goals, but he could benefit from having some bite-sized goals that do not activate resistance.

I told him:

“When you focus on goals for today,
you move resistance out of the way.”

Then I added one of my all-time favorite Fureyisms:

“When you think too big, you stumble on every twig.
When you think small, you realize you can have it all.”

The man exhaled. It was an exhale of relief.

Now he’s taking action and gaining traction.

He’s going to conquer that elephant by focusing on its tail instead of its trunk.

Here endeth the lesson.

Matt Furey

By the way, you can remove your resistance to success by utilizing the techniques in Zero Resistance Living, available at psycho-cybernetics.com

What’s Up With “Massive Action”

by

Ever think there’s something missing in the way people are taught to set goals?

In most cases, you’re taught to think big, set goals that scare you, get out of your comfort zone, take massive action, change all your limiting beliefs and eliminate your negative self-talk. 

Meanwhile, a much easier and far less time consuming approach is possible for you. 

Consider the Principle of Momentum. 

When you have momentum flowing for you, you’re almost impossible to stop.

It begins with something as simple as a positive daily habit that you stick with. Next thing you realize is that this positive habit is bearing fruit. It’s working wonders in your life that you might not have imagined when you began. 

You established momentum when you took your first step forward, which made it easier to take the next step, and the next and the next. 

When you’re not doing anything on a daily basis to achieve a goal, you have no momentum… no energy. When you’re creating a positive result every day, it’s hard to stop yourself. 

So the principle of Momentum is activated with small steps, with daily habits and daily goals. It is NOT activated by the idea of ‘massive action,’ as there is no such thing in the universe. You only get to take one step a time. You only get one breath at a time. You can desire more steps and more breaths at the same time, but sorry, that’s not how nature works.

Here what does work: If you nail at least one goal per day, after a month, you’ve “met” 30 goals and your confidence grows. After a year, you have 365 successes you can bank on. And now you can easily tackle bigger goals because you have Momentum on your side. 

Meanwhile, so many of those with the big goals (not daily) feel as though they aren’t any closer than when they started.  In short, they have no momentum.

As I frequently say, “Start small and you can have it all. Start too big and you’ll stumble on every twig.”

Here endeth the lesson.

Matt Furey

Take a Rest Several Times a Day

by

“It is my belief that each personality does already have a quiet center within, which is never disturbed, and is unmoved, like the mathematical point in the very center of a wheel or axle that remains stationary. What we need to do is to find this quiet center within us and retreat to it periodically for rest, recuperation, and renewed vigor.”

Maxwell Maltz, M.D. – Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded 

In Asian martial arts, this center within that Dr. Maltz referred to is called the dan tian or “sea of energy.” 

In fact, there are three of these centers. The first center is located behind the navel. The second is in the center of the chest and the third is in the center of your brain.

When you put your focus and concentration on the navel or heart center, you begin to feel calmer and more peaceful, almost immediately, especially when you are paying attention to your breathing.  

Each day, between activities, you can clear the cobwebs from your thinking, or refresh your energy by focusing on your retreat center.

Once you feel centered, you clear the screen of your mind. By doing this you eliminate any residue from a previous activity that you don’t want spilling into or interfering with the next one. 

More on this later…

Matt Furey

Taming the Dog Inside Your Mind

by

“When the phone rings, I ignore it. I conditioned my mind a long time ago to realize that I don’t have to react to the phone.”
– el Furecat

All of us have Pavlovian responses inside our minds. It could be a knock on the door, the phone ringing, a text message coming in or the notification of a new post on social media.

Boom. We feel we must immediately respond. 

The truth is that we have been conditioned to believe that we must respond to every ding we hear. In many ways, we’re no different than the dog in Pavlov’s experiments.

Pavlov rung the bell to let the dog know that food was being served. After doing this a few times, the dog began to salivate as soon as it heard the bell.

But there’s more to the story…

Because even when Pavlov rang the bell and food was not given, the dog still salivated. The dog expected food every time the bell rang, and its nervous system reacted the same way every time.

The dog never caught on.

Human beings respond to all sorts of bells in their environment in much the same way. We see or hear something and we react in a predictable manner. And this continues  for our entire lives… unless we take the time to make our minds quiet and change our conditioned response to something better.

I have two dogs. And they bark every time anyone comes near our house. It doesn’t matter who it is, they respond by barking. 

For quite some time, when I was reading, I used to respond to the dogs barking by closing the book, getting out of my chair and going to the door as I told the dogs to be quiet. 

I responded in a Pavlovian way to the dogs. I didn’t salivate, but I did react in a similar way to their barking.

One day I decided to change my response to the dogs. I entered the quiet room of my mind and imagined the dogs barking. As I heard them sounding off, I introduced a new mental picture of what I would do in the future. 

Instead of getting up and going to the door, I would remain calm and continue reading. And I wouldn’t say a word to the dogs. 

To my delight, the next time the dogs went nuts, I was unaffected. I continued reading. Quietly. 

All I did was change the mental imagery playing inside my head, and my response completely changed.

This situation gave me deep insight into the meaning of the phrase, “Act without doing.”

It doesn’t mean that you don’t do anything. Instead, you picture yourself doing something different, in advance of the bell being rung.

And when the bell rings (or the dogs bark), you end up doing what you pictured.

Instead of “obeying” the conditioned response inside your mind, you act in accord with the new image you are installing in your mind.

It’s easy to do, if you’re willing to stop trying. 

Picture what you want to be doing, and be amazed when you automatically begin doing it, without effort.

Let the dogs bark. Let the phone ring.

Here endeth the lesson.

Matt Furey

How to Build a Quiet Room Inside Your Mind

by

“Each person needs a quiet room inside his own mind-a quiet center within him, like the deep of the ocean that is never disturbed, no matter how rough the waves may become on the surface.”

“This quiet room within, which is built in imagination, works as a mental and emotional decompression chamber. It depressurizes you from tensions, worry, pressures, stresses, and strains, refreshes you, and enables you to return to your workday world better prepared to cope with it.”

– Maxwell Maltz, M.D. – Psycho-Cybernetics, Updated and Expanded

The emotional decompression chamber mentioned above is something that every human being has within, yet few take the time to use it. We spend an inordinate amount of time pondering the issues of the day, and almost no time on retreat to the quiet center within. 

Take an emotional vacation each and every day. Turn off the tee-vee, the radio and all your devices. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Begin to let the steam out. 

Build a room in your mind where nothing can get to you, where nothing can disturb you.

Relax, unwind your mind, recharge and renew.

When you go on a daily retreat to this quiet place within your mind, you will realize that your life begins to blossom and bear fruit in ways unforeseen to you before.

See it. Feel it. Be it.

Matt Furey

Positive Change Happens After Doing This

by

“A human being all acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment. This is a basic and fundamental law of mind. It is the way we are built.”
– Maxwell Maltz, M.D. – Psycho-Cybernetics, Updated and Expanded – page 36

In the above passage, you can see that I underlined and emphasized the word “imagines.”

I have done so because so many self-development coaches automatically associate the word “imagines” with the word “believes.”

Can you imagine something and bring it about without believing it in a deep and significant way?

Yes, you can.

This is what we refer to as “testing” something to see what happens. You’re not really sure as to whether something will make a difference or not, so you give it a whirl and take note of your results.

Here’s a simple example:

One evening, not so long ago, I was observing a baseball player who wanted to throw the ball 90 miles per hour. He was stuck and struggling, maxing out around 87. The coach who was working with him kept giving him mechanical fixes, none of which added an iota of extra velocity.

After several minutes I asked the coach if I could make a suggestion. He agreed. I pulled the athlete to the side and gave him a different mental picture, one of him effortlessly throwing the ball. It was an exaggerated, hyperbolic and nonsensical mental picture, one that could NOT be turned into reality, one that the athlete could NOT possibly believe was true. I made no comment to this athlete whatsoever about his existing beliefs, or what I thought they should be.

On the next pitch the athlete threw the ball 89 miles per hour. This got him excited. He grabbed another ball and hit 89.9. And on his next throw, using the ridiculous mental imagery I gave him, he topped 90 miles per hour for the first time in his life.

When the radar gun showed 90, he looked at me and exclaimed, “Oh my, God. I can’t believe it. This is incredible. What you teach really works.”

“You didn’t need to believe it,” I replied. “All you needed to do was imagine it – and then it happened. Remember this as it applies in every area of your life, not just baseball.”

I realize the above flies in the face of those who think you need to change your limiting beliefs before any change takes place in your life.

I have not found that to be true.

On the other hand, I have found that once a person begins to change his or her limiting mental pictures into positive, broad and expansive images, a whole lot of positive change is forthcoming… and oftentimes, at a speed that defies logic.

Here endeth the lesson.

Matt Furey

The Best Way to Focus

by

“Picture yourself vividly as defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone with contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.” – Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick

It is not positive words or phrases that turn your life around. Rather, it is the mental pictures we form when we see, hear, recite or write positive words or phrases.

If you are trying to think positive with your words, and you’re not feeling a shift in how you feel (and you’re not getting positive results), then chances are beyond excellent that you are unconsciously and unintentionally picturing the opposite.

If you are feeling down, take note of what you are picturing that causes this feeling. You will discover it is NOT the words that do you in; it IS the images that ride along with the words.

When you change your negative mental pictures to ones that are positive, your emotional state will completely shift.. automatically, and almost regardless of the words you are using.

If you have a positive mental picture – you can express yourself with negative self-talk and it will be virtually irrelevant.

If you say, “I am going to flunk this exam,” but you are picturing yourself getting an A, the negative words are cancelled by the imagery.

If a boxer says, “I am going to win,” but he is picturing himself losing, he will probably lose.

This doesn’t mean you should pay zero attention to your words. It does mean that you will be better off when you are paying 99.9999 percent attention to your mental pictures.

Here endeth the lesson.

Matt Furey

What are Your Goals?

by

“The goals that our own Creative Mechanism seeks to achieve are mental images, or mental pictures, which we create by the use of imagination.”

Maxwell Maltz, M.D. – Psycho-Cybernetics, Updated and Expanded

So there you have it, my friend.  

The goals that you achieve are not mere words or affirmations written on a sheet of paper.

The words you write (or speak), when turned into mental images or pictures, contain enormous power. These mental images generate positive feelings, and as a result, lead you toward what you want to accomplish. 

If you’re rewriting or reciting affirmations to no avail, turn your words into images and observe the difference it makes. 

A word without a mental image of what it represents is nothing but a collection of letters.

A word with an image attached to it is a catalyst that moves you closer to the target you want to reach.

Matt Furey
Psycho-Cybernetics.com

Introducing… the Dr. Maxwell Maltz Classic Library

by

Now you can own the Dr. Maxwell Maltz Classic Library.

Dr. Maxwell Maltz created his self-improvement phenomenon, Psycho-Cybernetics, at age 61, after an already varied, colorful and exceptionally successful career as a cosmetic surgeon, writer and speaker.

He discovered that outer scars could be healed but inner scars remain as distorted beliefs and perceptions in the subconscious mind. Dr. Maltz wrote his flagship book which went on to sell millions of copies. He also wrote companion books explaining how to best use his system of “success conditioning techniques” now available to you in these new classic reprints.

The first five books of the Maxwell Maltz Classic Library are ready for you.

Exclusively Available at maxwellmaltzlibrary.com/books

Matt Furey

5 Big Visualization Mistakes – and How to Avoid Them

by

When it comes to the practice of visualization, there are a great many mistakes people make that can lead to frustration, confusion and more importantly, a lack of results.

Here’s a quick list of five of the most common mistakes:

Mistake #1 – Visualizing more than one goal at a time. 

When you visualize more than one goal during a session, you jam your automatic servo-mechanism. You create confusion on what to do and when to begin. When you focus on one goal, you gain mental clarity and give yourself the edge you are looking for. You also end up accomplishing more than you thought possible.

Mistake #2 – Practicing too much. 

After you visualize, be sure to “let go.” You do NOT try to picture what you want all day long. Picture your goal for a short period of time each day, then move on. Eventually the skill builds upon itself, and you are able to picture what you want throughout the day, but you’re not “trying” to do this. Growth takes place naturally and spontaneously, not by force.

Mistake #3 – Setting big goals

You might think setting big goals is a good thing, and it can be, after you’ve proven beyond a doubt that you can accomplish smaller, daily goals, over and over again. It is never a good idea to set goals that cause emotional resistance, i.e. fear, worry, self-doubt. This is why, in Zero Resistance Living, Dr. Maltz encourages you to ALWAYS start with small, manageable daily goals. Once you are on a roll, accomplishing one daily goal after another, you have gained momentum and confidence, and this leads to you moving onto bigger goals – and doing so without the emotional resistance you would have encountered if you began with them.

Mistake #4 – Ignoring where you are

Everyone loves to picture being on top of the mountain, but the reality is you’ve got a long hike ahead of you. Ignoring where you are, only picturing what you want, strips you of the power and energy you need to make the climb. If you ignore where you are, chances are excellent you will remain stuck.

Mistake #5 – Trying to hard to see it clearly

In the beginning, before your visualization skills are developed, you do NOT need to see everything clearly. You most certainly do NOT need to see what you are visualizing in HD, or as clearly as if you are looking at a scene outdoors with your eyes open. When starting out, a pencil sketch or silhouette is enough. Your brain can still make sense out of images drawn on the walls of caves, and those images were not drawn by Michelangelo. So stop thinking you need to see everything as clear as crystal. Start with something simple and allow yourself to grow.

There are many other mistakes people make in regard to visualization, such as not adding feeling or emotion to the imagery. More to flow your way in the future.

Here endeth the lesson.

Matt Furey

Free PDF of Theatre of the Mind Newsletter

Free PDF of Theatre of the Mind Newsletter

Hello and welcome to Psycho-Cybernetics.com - the official site for the original (and expanded) teachings of Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of the 35 million copy best-seller, Psycho-Cybernetics. I’m Matt Furey, author of the best-selling Nightingale-Conant audio book, Maxwell Maltz’ Theatre of the Mind.

When you subscribe to our Psycho-Cybernetics emails, I will immediately send you an email containing a FREE PDF ($100 value) of my Theatre of the Mind Masters Newsletter called Defeating the Failure Mechanism, which also features a Dr. Maltz piece, When Positive Thinking Doesn't Work. This highly regarded newsletter will show you how to apply the suggestions contained within it into your own life… and make changes for the BETTER!

Best,
Matt Furey
President, Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation

You have Successfully Subscribed!