Review of The New Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
This is a book review of Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-Cybernetics: The Original Science of Self-Improvement and Success That Has Changed the Lives of 30 Million People.
Maxwell Maltz became a plastic surgeon in the 1920′s and successfully changed people’s physical appearance for decades. In his private New York practice he operated on people from all around the world like well-known celebrities. People entered Maltz’s practice with poor perceptions of themselves as they underwent operation in hope to look and feel like a new person.
Some clients following their operations left Dr. Maltz’s practice feeling happy with the surgery he performed. Other times, though patients had successful operations, they left feeling unhappy. It wasn’t too long until Dr. Maltz operated on them again to correct another “wrong feature” of their body. Dr. Maltz became curious. He wondered why some individuals maintained unusual perceptions of their body despite undergoing successful plastic surgery and correcting their unlikable body features. He investigated why people had inflated and distorted pictures of their physical “defects”.
After years of research and experience, Dr. Maltz came up with the reason plastic surgery did not solve people’s image problems: plastic surgery successfully healed people’s physical defects, but these people still had “emotional scars” from their inaccurate self-image. After coaching athletes, patients, salespeople, and many others who become interested in his findings, he came to write Psycho-Cybernetics.
Passing away in 1975 at the age of 76, Dr. Maltz’s teachings have more than survived over the years. Dr. Maltz is the founder of modern self-improvement. All teachings after 1960 about visualization, creative imagination, and relaxation, stem from Psycho-Cybernetics.
The New Psycho-Cybernetics is an updated version of the author’s original teachings, edited and updated by Dan Kennedy, a well-known copywriter and entrepreneurial genius. Kennedy has successfully kept Maltz’s style of writing in tact throughout the new version, which includes more examples and elaboration on Maltz’s original teachings.
Throughout the book, Maltz and Kennedy focus on the self-image because Maltz says it determines whether you achieve a goal. Along with the self-image is an in-depth discussion on what the original author calls the “automatic-success mechanism”, which each of us has within ourselves. We all have what it takes to achieve our goals, but we fail to achieve them by poorly using this mechanism. We are brought up to believe that we must experience pain, work hard, and use willpower, but this fights our creative mechanism to easily get what we want. One way we stimulate the automatic-success mechanism is by vividly visualizing our future – and by doing this we create a new self-image that helps us achieve our goals.
The New Psycho-Cybernetics contains 31 exercises you can use for various circumstances. Some remove anxiety when you phone a customer or start a conversation, while other exercises direct at long-term goals like gaining a promotion at work. The techniques mentioned in the book will help anyone lose weight, slow down the aging process, improve their athletic performance, become more confident, make more sales, and improve their relationships. Why? The self-image and creative imagination shapes our lives.
In terms of communication, The New Psycho-Cybernetics is a must-read for anyone that experiences anxiety, fear, or worry in situations like public speaking, meeting the opposite sex, talking with someone famous, and the list goes on. The book is definitely not limited to these areas – as it will change the way you think and feel about anything – but I felt these were its strong points. Maltz provides thorough explanations and mental exercises for relaxation and developing a success-type personality in a way that transcends many modern day teachings. His experience as a plastic surgeon seems to have given him insights about visualizations and self-perception that other authors fail to grasp.
As The New Psycho-Cybernetics is an updated version of Psycho-Cybernetics – the origin of modern day self improvement material – this book is a must-have in any person’s bookshelf. With millions of lives already changed, the book speaks for itself. It changed my life because I realized the severe degree my mental theater shapes who I am. I cannot emphasize enough the impact The New Psycho-Cybernetics will have on your life. It will change how you think and perceive yourself in an easy way that doesn’t use the hard work of willpower. If you are after an easy way to achieve what you want, grab your copy of the book now from Amazon by clicking here.
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Update: What Christmas present did you get for yourself? You can tell me ;-) None for me this year.