Maxwell Maltz Quotes & Sayings

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a 'real' experience. — Maxwell Maltz

The greatest cause of ulcers is mountain-climbing over molehills. — Maxwell Maltz

You are embarking on the greatest adventure of your life - to improve your self-image, to create more meaning in your life and in the lives of others. This is your responsibility. — Maxwell Maltz

Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. — Maxwell Maltz

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

Happiness is the art of relaxation. — Maxwell Maltz

Your automatic guidance system cannot guide you when you're standing still. — Maxwell Maltz

Failure feelings - fear, anxiety, lack of self-confidence - do not spring from some heavenly oracle. They are not written in the stars. They are not holy gospel. Nor are they intimations of a set and decided fate which means that failure is decreed and decided. They originate from your own mind. — Maxwell Maltz

Life is a series of problems. — Maxwell Maltz

It is the job of conscious rational thought to decide what you want, select the goals you wish to achieve-and concentrate upon these rather than upon what you do not want. To spend time and effort concentrating upon what you do not want is not rational. — Maxwell Maltz

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

The biggest secret of self-esteem is this: Begin to appreciate other people more; show respect for any human being merely because he is a child of God and therefore a thing of value. — Maxwell Maltz

If you wait until circumstances justify your thinking pleasant thoughts, you are likely to wait forever. — Maxwell Maltz

Do not say to yourself, 'I am going to act this way tomorrow.' Just say to yourself - 'I am going to imagine myself acting this way NOW - for 30 minutes - today.' — Maxwell Maltz

The clay or putty-like material stays soft and malleable enough to do so many, many times. In his infinite wisdom, God manufactured the self-image of similar material, so it remains malleable throughout our entire lives. No one is ever too old, too jaded, too frightened, or too traumatized to "wet the clay" and begin remaking it as they imagine and desire. — Maxwell Maltz

This is where you will win the battle - in the playhouse of your mind. — Maxwell Maltz

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

If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you can succeed with Psycho-Cybernetics! — Maxwell Maltz

Self-esteem is as necessary to the spirit as food is to the body. — Maxwell Maltz

When we consciously and deliberately develop new and better habits, our self image tends to outgrow the old habits and grow into the new pattern. — Maxwell Maltz

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. — Maxwell Maltz

True success and true happiness not only go together but each other enhances the other. — Maxwell Maltz

Why not imagine yourself successful? — Maxwell Maltz

The self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment. It defines what you can and cannot do. Expand the self-image and you expand the "area of the possible." The development of an adequate, realistic self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents, and literally turn failure into success. — Maxwell Maltz

You will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. — Maxwell Maltz

Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are. — Maxwell Maltz

We act, we behave, and we feel the vibration that we're in at the present time according to what we consider our self image to be. And we do not deviate from that pattern. The image you hold of yourself is a premise, a foundation (idea) on which your entire personality is built. This image, not only controls your behavior but your circumstances as well. — Maxwell Maltz

The lucky of successful person has learned a simple secret. Call up, capture, evoke the feeling of success. When you feel successful and confident, you will act successfully. — Maxwell Maltz

Happiness is native to the human mind and its physical machine. We think better, perform better, feel better, and are healthier when we are happy. — Maxwell Maltz

In an interview in 1992, Leary stated, "It is a genetic imperative to explore the brain. Because it's there. If you're carrying around in your head 100 billion mainframe computers, you just have to get in there and learn how to operate them. — Maxwell Maltz

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

Forgiveness is a scalpel that removes emotional scars. — Maxwell Maltz

It is well known that when Thomas A. Eddison was stymied by a problem, he would lie down and take a short nap. — Maxwell Maltz

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

The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one. — Maxwell Maltz

Another cause of confusion, and the resulting feelings of nervousness, hurry, and anxiety, is the absurd habit of trying to do many things at one time. — Maxwell Maltz

Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and 'natural' as opposed to self-conscious and studied. — Maxwell Maltz

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

Beauty Is More Than Skin Deep — Maxwell Maltz

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

It was as if personality itself had a 'face'. This non-physical face of personality seemed to be the real key to personality change. It remained scarred, distorted, 'ugly' or inferior the person himself acted out this role in his behaviour regardless of the changes in physical appearance. If this 'face of personality' could be reconstructed, if old emotional scars could be removed, then the person himself changed, even without facial plastic surgery. — Maxwell Maltz

Of all the traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome: for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands, summed up in the phrase, 'It's no use - I can't do it.' — Maxwell Maltz

Happiness is a mental habit, a mental attitude, and if it is not learned and practiced in the present it is never experienced. It cannot be made contingent upon solving some external problem. When one problem is solved, another appears to take its place. Life is a series of problems. If you are to be happy at all, you must be happy - period! Not happy "because of". — Maxwell Maltz

See yourself reacting to threats, not by running away or evading them, but by meeting them, dealing with them, grappling with them in an aggressive intelligent manner. — Maxwell Maltz

Every day you must try to make yourself grow. This you can do. — Maxwell Maltz

Remember that both behavior and feeling spring from belief. To root out the belief that is responsible for your feeling and behavior - ask yourself, "Why?" Is there some task that you would like to do, some channel in which you would like to express yourself, but you hang back feeling that "I can't"? Ask yourself, "Why?" "Why do I believe that I can't?" Then ask yourself, "Is this belief based on an actual fact or on an assumption - or a false conclusion?" Then ask yourself the questions: 1. Is there any rational reason for such a belief? 2. Could it be that I am mistaken in this belief? 3. Would I come to the same conclusion about some other person in a similar situation? 4. Why should I continue to act and feel as if this were true if there is no good reason to believe it? — Maxwell Maltz

We simply must get it through our heads that holding a low opinion of ourselves is not a virtue, but a vice. — Maxwell Maltz

Loneliness is caused by an alienation from life. It is a loneliness from your real self. — Maxwell Maltz

As soon as the error has been recognized and corrections made, it's equally important that the error be forgotten and the successful attempt remembered and dwelt upon. — Maxwell Maltz

It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear. — Maxwell Maltz

Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent. — Maxwell Maltz

Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. — Maxwell Maltz

Ignore past failures and forge ahead. — Maxwell Maltz

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

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

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

Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the othe — Maxwell Maltz

Within you, whoever you may be, regardless of how big a failure you may think yourself to be, is the ability and the power to do whatever you need to do to be happy and successful. — Maxwell Maltz

You make mistakes, mistakes don't make you — 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

No man is hurt but by himself," said Diogenes. — Maxwell Maltz

Your present negative beliefs were formed by thought PLUS feelings. Generate enough emotion, or deep feeling and your new thoughts and ideas will cancel them out. — Maxwell Maltz

Realizing that our actions, feelings and behaviour are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality. — Maxwell Maltz

Plan all you want for the future. Prepare for it. But don't worry about how you will react tomorrow, or even five minutes from now. Your creative mechanism will react appropriately in the 'now' if you pay attention to what is happening now. — Maxwell Maltz

Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle. A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it's moving forward towards something. — Maxwell Maltz

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

When you're not goal-striving, not looking forward, you're not really living. — Maxwell Maltz

Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on. — Maxwell Maltz

The greatest miracle you can hope for is self-acceptance. — Maxwell Maltz

Develop an enthusiasm for life, create a need for more life, and you will receive more life. — Maxwell Maltz

You are not your mistakes. Just because you have done something stupid does not make you stupid. — Maxwell Maltz

Self-discipline is the golden key; without it, you cannot be happy. — Maxwell Maltz

A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment...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

To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior. — Maxwell Maltz

Adopt the motto - It doesn't matter who's right, but what's right. — Maxwell Maltz

One's capacity for friendship, which can be developed, is basic to one's capacity for happiness. — Maxwell Maltz

The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognize your own worth. — Maxwell Maltz

This Creative Mechanism within you is impersonal. It will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending upon the goals which you yourself set for it. Present it with success goals and it functions as a Success Mechanism. Present it with negative goals, and it operates just as impersonally, and just as faithfully as a Failure Mechanism. — Maxwell Maltz

I am a firm believer in 'negative thinking' when used correctly. We need to be AWARE of negatives so that we can steer clear of them. A golfer needs to know where the bunkers and sand traps are - but he doesn't think continuously about the bunker - where he doesn't want to go. His mind glances at the bunker, but he DWELLS upon the green. — Maxwell Maltz

It is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us underrate ourselves, short-change ourselves, sell ourselves short. Actually, there is no such thing as a superiority complex. People who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority; their "superior" self is a fiction, a coverup, to hide from themselves and others their deep-down feelings of inferiority and insecurity. — Maxwell Maltz

His experiments proved that the best way to break a habit is to form a clear mental image of the desired end result, and to practice without effort towards reaching that goal. Dunlap found that either "positive practice" (refraining from the habit) or "negative practice" (performing the habit consciously and voluntarily) would have beneficial effect provided the desired end result was kept constantly in mind. — Maxwell Maltz

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

If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone. — Maxwell Maltz

Our present state of self-confidence and poise is the result of what we have "experienced" rather than what we have learned intellectually. — Maxwell Maltz

Your most important sale in life is to sell yourself to yourself. — Maxwell Maltz

Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations, and talents (and not the symbols which the "Joneses" expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function. Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is "built that way," he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made to function - as a goal striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other. — Maxwell Maltz

Conscious effort inhibits and 'jams' the automatic creative mechanism. — Maxwell Maltz

Nothing can work me damage except myself," said St. Bernard. — Maxwell Maltz

When a person has adequate self-esteem little slights offer no threat at all - they are simply "passed over" and ignored. Even deeper emotional wounds are likely to heal faster and cleaner, with no festering sores to poison life and spoil happiness. — Maxwell Maltz

Our errors, mistakes, failures, and sometimes even our humiliations, were necessary steps in the learning process. However, they were meant to be means to an end - and not an end in themselves. When they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten. If we consciously dwell on the error, or consciously feel guilty about the error and keep berating ourselves because of it, then - unwittingly - the error or failure itself becomes the "goal" that is consciously held in imagination and memory. — Maxwell Maltz

To really 'live,' that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can life with. You must find yourself acceptable to 'you.' — Maxwell Maltz

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. — Maxwell Maltz

Experimental and clinical psychologists have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an "actual" experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. — Maxwell Maltz

You can always find the sun within yourself if you will only search. — Maxwell Maltz

Change your mental imagery, and the feelings will take care of themselves. — Maxwell Maltz

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something. — Maxwell Maltz

He must have a burning desire to solve the problem. But after he has defined the problem sees in his imagination the desired end result secured all the information and facts that he can then additional struggling fretting and worrying over it does not help but seems to hinder the solution. — Maxwell Maltz

Worry is one of the most destructive scourges of mankind. — Maxwell Maltz

Do not tolerate for a minute the idea that you are prohibited from any achievement by the absence of in-born talent or ability. This is a lie of the grandest order, an excuse of the saddest kind. — Maxwell Maltz

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