Psycho-Cybernetics Force Behind View of Ourselves

William “Bud” Hart, of Haverhill, shares “Success Principles”—ideas for living a greater, better and more accomplished life, and building habits that stick. He also coaches clients to incorporate strategies for boosting their mental and physical performance during everyday living.

William “Bud” Hart, of Haverhill, shares “Success Principles”—ideas for living a greater, better and more accomplished life, and building habits that stick. He also coaches clients to incorporate strategies for boosting their mental and physical performance during everyday living.

In the words of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

What we imagine ourselves and our life to be is very important. As I wrote in my last article, there is nothing, no obstacles or opponents that can derail our hopes and dreams faster and with greater ease than our own negative thinking, self defeating routines and bad habits. When we live with these things long enough, we fall victim to what appears to be failure. And in that, we fail ourselves. I other words we can achieve goals and dreams only to the level we see them to be personally possible.

Everything we create including and most assuredly the appearance of failure starts with a thought. This may be common sense to you. But what is more difficult to grasp is the idea of the brain’s neuroplasticity. Science tells us neuroplasticity is at work in our brains throughout life. With every repetition of a thought or emotion we connect brain neurons and reinforce neural pathways and what we imagine as true. So in essence repeating a thought or action again and again increases its power. Over time it becomes automatic and we literally become what we imagine.

Maxwell Maltz an American cosmetic surgeon authored a self help book in 1960 called Psycho-Cybernetics. It became a best seller and it remains in print today, adding to the more 35 million copies already sold. In his book Maltz put forth the idea we all carry with us a mental picture (self image) of ourselves most of which has been unconsciously formed from past experiences. Once this idea of self becomes our truth we don’t question its validity. We simply act it as if it is true.

Maltz’s book was first to provide a scientific rationale for dream fulfillment, as well as techniques and psychological methods of personal development training that are used by coaches in athletics, business and other areas today. He found that the beauty of a positive self image is that it not only is the supreme factor in determining success, but it is also extremely malleable.

Ultimately, we all have this flexibility. We can decide how and what we think about ourselves and the situations, circumstances and events we encounter daily. For some any failure is devastating. For others, every failure is seen as just the beginning of something better. It is how we choose to imagine everything that determines whether the former or the latter rules our life when we fail.

What Thoreau and all the great thinkers throughout time tell us, and what Maxwell Maltz and people of science are discovering more and more everyday, is imagination pays a great role in our lives. It is the creative power we use consciously or unconsciously in most of our daily lives and a principle factor in determining just how far we all can get achieving our dreams.

The philosophical and scientific message is the same. We can choose not to entertain any thought or action perpetuating a reality that is less than optimal for bringing about what we want. To choose instead to use every thought to imagine and advance confidently in the direction of our dreams and endeavors is to live the life in which we will meet with unexpected success.

William “Bud” Hart is a certified “Mindset” Coach, Accountability Partner and Business Consultant. Visit Hart Group, www.hartgroupma.com for more on coaching.