Psycho-Cybernetics: How to Change Your Self Image

Have you ever been at the grocery store and picked out a shopping cart, only to discover that it has defective wheels?  You try pushing the cart forward, but it keeps veering off to the left or to the right.

Trying to achieve a particular goal when your self-image is not aligned with that goal is pretty much the same thing.  It’s not about pushing harder–that won’t get you anywhere–, it’s about readjusting the wheels.

In the self-help classic “Psycho-Cybernetics” (ignore the strange title)–which has sold over 25 million copies–Dr. Maxwell Maltz argues that most people don’t reach their goals because of the mental picture that they have of themselves. That is, because of their self-image.

Maltz was a world-renowned plastic surgeon who witnessed the amazing changes that would often occur in his patients’ personalities when he corrected or removed a facial deformity. Most would experience an almost immediate rise in self-esteem and self-confidence.

However, some patients would complain–even after an impressive reconstruction procedure–that they couldn’t see the difference, and would state that they still felt ugly. Maltz deduced that this was a product not of the image they were seeing in the mirror, but of the image that they had of themselves in their minds.

Here’s a quote from “Psycho-Cybernetics”:

“When a facial disfigurement is corrected by plastic surgery, dramatic psychological changes result only if there is a corresponding correction of the mutilated self-image.”

Maltz concluded that some people need a self-image face lift.   He came up with the following general principles:

• Self-image is the key to human personality and behavior.
• Your self-image controls what you do.
• If you change the self-image, you change the personality and the behavior.
• Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment; it defines what you can and cannot do.
• When you expand the self-image, you expand the limits of what a person is capable of attaining.

(Locked photograph courtesy of sashomasho.)

Your Mental Blueprint

Maltz explains that we each carry within us a mental blueprint or image of ourselves. This self-image is our perception of “the sort of person that I am”.  It was created by the beliefs that we have about ourselves. These beliefs, in turn, were created by our past experiences and by the way in which others have reacted to us.

In addition, a lot of these beliefs were created during our childhood and have gone largely unexamined. That is, for the most part, we don’t question the validity of our beliefs; we simply act as if they were true.  Maltz adds the following:

“Specifically, all your actions, feelings, behavior, even your abilities, are always consistent with this self-image. In short, you will ‘act like’ the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. More important, you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts and willpower.”

The Snap-Back Effect

A person can’t escape their self-image. Even if they do escape temporarily, they’ll be snapped back like a rubber band. If a person has a “fat” self-image–a self image that claims to have a sweet tooth, that can’t resist junk food, and that hates exercise–they will be unable to lose weight and keep it off.

Even if they force themselves to go on a diet and go to the gym for a few weeks, they’ll soon go back to the behavior that is consistent with their “fat” self-image.

In the same way, a person who considers themselves to be a failure will find a way to fail, even if a great opportunity is thrown in their lap. In addition, someone who thinks that they’ll never be in a happy relationship will take action to ruin every relationship that they’re in, even if they don’t do so consciously.

(Rubber band photograph courtesy of laogooli.)

Modify Your Self-Image and Achieve Your Goals

Psychologist Prescott Lecky was one of the pioneers in self-image psychology. He conceived of the personality as a system of ideas, all of which had to be consistent with each other. Ideas that are inconsistent with the system are rejected, and therefore not acted upon. On the other hand, ideas that seem to be consistent with the system are accepted.

In Lecky’s own words: “people can only be true to themselves. Individuals will behave in a way that is consistent with their self concept, even if this behavior is otherwise unrewarding to them.”

Lecky was a teacher and he tested his theories on thousands of students. He theorized that if a student had difficulty in a certain subject, it was because it would be inconsistent for them to learn it. However, if that student changed their self-definition, then their learning ability would also change. He was proven right:

• One student who flunked so many subjects that he was held back a year had a general average of 91 out of 100 the next year.
• A boy who was told that he had no aptitude for English by a testing bureau won honorable mention the next year for a literary prize.
• A girl who was dropped by one college for poor grades entered Columbia and became a straight “A” student.

The problem with these students wasn’t that they were dumb or that they lacked basic aptitudes. Their problem was their self-image. When they released their negative self-image– “I can’t spell”; “English is just not a subject I can do well in”; “I’m not smart enough to do well in college”; and so on–they adjusted their behavior in a way that allowed them to do very well academically.

Cybernetics: Your Automatic Goal-Striving Mechanism

Cybernetics has to do with the goal-oriented behavior of mechanical systems. The founder of cybernetics was Norbert Wiener, an American mathematician who spent WWII refining guided missile technology. When a missile is fired, it will correct its course in order to hit its target.

Maltz saw human behavior as a cybernetic system: the subconscious is an automatic, goal-striving mechanism consisting of the brain and nervous system.  This mechanism “steers” its way to a target or goal by using feedback data and stored information, automatically adjusting its course as necessary.  This can have both positive and negative implications.

If you have a negative self-image, even if you want something positive and you try to achieve it, your negative self-image will be the mental picture that you’ll be holding up in your mind.  At the same time, what you see in your mind is the target your automatic mechanism steers toward.  Therefore, your subconscious is going to continually adjust your behavior so that you hit a target that is consistent with your negative self-image, that is, a goal of failure.

On the other hand, here’s what happens if you can release your negative self-image: When you set a clearly defined goal–such as hitting a certain sales quota, getting an “A” on your next math test, losing twenty pounds, and so on– the image that you’ll be holding up in your mind will be that of your intended target (your positive goal).  You will then begin to automatically adjust your behavior in order to do what is necessary to hit that target.

When a missile is on the right track, it receives positive feedback; therefore, it continues moving along the same trajectory.  If the missile starts to veer off course, it receives negative feedback; based on this negative feedback, it readjusts its position.  This process of moving forward, making mistakes, and correcting course in order to hit an intended target is the same process that your automatic mechanism uses.

(Gainful photo courtesy of edbrambley.)

How to Change Your Self-Image

The self-image is changed not through intellectual knowledge, but through experience.  As stated previously, that’s how you developed your self-image in the first place: through the experiences you’ve had in the past.

The way you learn to function successfully is by experiencing success.  When you need to complete a task, memories of past successes give you the confidence you need in order to accomplish the task successfully.

But what happens if all you’ve experienced is failure?  In that case, you don’t have a store-house of successes to draw from in order to help you succeed.  Maltz makes a comparison to the job-applicant who is required to have experience in order to get a job.  However, he can’t acquire experience because he can’t get a job.

What can a person who has only experienced failure do in order to experience success?  Experimental and clinical psychologists have proven that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail.  Maltz argues that the way to change your self-image is through visualization.

If you consciously create the desired image of yourself–that is, if you visualize your desired outcome–the brain and nervous system will steer you toward that image.  Your success will then serve as a learning experience which will help you to repeat the process in the future.

Here are some examples of the power of visualizing:

• Psychologist R. A. Vandell proved that mental practice in throwing darts at a target, wherein a person sits for for a few minutes each day in front of the target and imagines throwing darts at it, improves aim as much as actually throwing darts.
• In another experiment, students were divided into three groups.  The first group practiced shooting baskets every day for 20 days.  The second group did not practice.  The third group spent twenty minutes a day imagining that they were shooting baskets.  While the second group showed no improvement, the third group improved almost as much as the first group.
• Ben Hogan was an American golfer who is generally considered to be one of the greatest golfers in the history of the game.  Maltz indicates that Time Magazine reported that Hogan would mentally rehearse each shot just before making it. He would make the perfect shot in his imagination and then depend on “muscle memory” to carry out the shot just as he imagined it.

Conclusion

Creating the right self-image is vital so that you can reach your goals, and Maltz does a fabulous job of explaining this in “Psycho-Cybernetics”, as well as providing several exercises that will help you to alter your self-image. The “New Psycho-Cybernetics” is an updated version of the author’s original teachings; it was edited and updated by well-known marketer and lecturer Dan Kennedy (there’s also an audio version).

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