Psycho-Cybernetics: The Most Thorough Summary (Free PDF)

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Some people get success after success, easily, while others struggle. Why?

Maxwell Maltz’s all-time classic “Psycho-Cybernetics” explains the why. And solves the how.

This is the most thorough and in-depth summary of Psycho-Cybernetics on the internet. You get all of Maltz’s lessons on how to activate your mind’s “automatic servo-mechanism” and become your most successful version.

This summary of Psycho-Cybernetics will teach you in an hour:

• your self-image = the way you see and think of yourself.
• how your self-image predicts your success and failures in life.
• to re-engineer your self-image so that you start achieving your goals.
• how to switch into an abundance mindset, even if you have had many past failures.

There’s also a free PDF to download and keep. It’s a capsule course on success mindset mastery.

Key Takeaways

1. Self-image is the mental blueprint for success and goal achievement.
2. A “cosmetic surgery on self-image” can enhance our chances of success and fame.
3. Often, a person’s full potential can be limited by negative self-talk due to past failures.
4. The success system can be activated via mental rehearsal of psycho-cybernetics principles.

Quick Summary of Psycho-Cybernetics

Psycho-Cybernetics is a self-help book by Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon, that focuses on the power of the mind and self-image to achieve personal goals and success. It introduces the concept of “cybernetics success system” as the key to unlocking human potential, overcoming limitations, and creating one’s best life. The book gives practical techniques and exercises to help readers build a positive self-image and achieve their desired achieve success, happiness, and abundance.

First published in 1960, the book has been translated into 25+ languages and has sold over 30 million copies to date.

“Your self-image determines your self-worth.”

— Maxwell Maltz, “Psycho-Cybernetics”

[Download a PDF of this post: Summary of Psycho-Cybernetics: Mindset Mastery Made Easy]

How Psycho-Cybernetics Works?

Psycho-cybernetics works by training your subconscious mind with conscious instructions.

Imagine your subconscious mind as a big elephant. It dutifully follows your conscious mind’s instructions, like that elephant being led by a little human mahout.

• The subconscious mind, like the powerful elephant, has immense power and potential. It can operate automatically, process vast amounts of information, and accomplish remarkable feats. But it cannot work well without proper instructions.
• The conscious mind, like the human mahout, is the rational, decision-making part of the mind. It can train, direct, and guide the subconscious mind toward specific goals and outcomes, harnessing its power effectively.

Maltz’s innovative approach pairs the principles of machines — cybernetics — with the psychology of self-image.

Maltz says he wrote “Psycho-Cybernetics” to steer “your mind to a productive, useful goal, so you can reach the greatest port in the world: peace of mind.”

How Maltz Discovered Psycho-Cybernetics

Maxwell Maltz was a cosmetic surgeon. He noticed that some of his patients had completely transformed into new personas after their surgeries.

He had just sculpted their faces to look attractive. But they had changed their behaviors, attitudes, habits, and lifestyles to match their new looks.

This was a remarkable find. So he dug in to know more, and realized this:

When a person sees a better self-image (like those people seeing their attractive selves in mirrors), their minds automatically start “beautifying” the other parts of their life.

He concluded that the human mind operates like a “servo-mechanism” or a “cybernetics” system. It takes instructions from your self-image to tune your entire life in sync with that image.

How To Use Psycho-Cybernetics To Succeed In Life

“Servo-mechanisms are so constructed that they automatically “steer” their way to a goal, target, or “answer.””

— Maxwell Maltz, “Psycho-Cybernetics”

The strategy to harness “psycho-cybernetics” system:

• A. Analyze current self-image.
• B. Apply psycho-cybernetics principles.
• C. Create a brand new, positive self-image.

A. Analyze Your Current Self-Image

Self-image is how you see yourself in your mind’s eye.

First, review your self-image honestly:

• Who am I in a few words?
• Who do I see in the mental mirror?
• What type of person am I to myself?
• What stories do I tell people about myself?
• How does my past shape my view of myself?
• What beliefs about myself do I accept without a question?
• In what ways do I limit myself based on my opinions and beliefs?
• How do my past successes and failures color my present self-image?

Did you find some negative self-beliefs while answering those?

• Do you believe you are unlucky or unlovable or untalented?
• Do you doubt that you aren’t made for success, fame, or a rich life?
• Does this fear lurk in your mind that you will fail, no matter how hard you try?
• Are you always ashamed of how people would mock you if you tried to do big things?

If yes, then those negative self-beliefs need to change. They might have come from your past, childhood experiences, how people treated you, or your successes and failures.

But the good thing is, there is a way to deal with them, as Maltz suggests:

• Realize that your negative self-belief is a feeling — not than a fact.
• And since it’s only a feeling, you must not absorb it as your defining self-image.
• Instead, use the rational logic that it’s only a feeling and that all feelings are temporary.

Tip: The way you see yourself is based on your emotional interpretations of events. Interpret them differently, and you can have a new self-image.

B. Apply Psycho-cybernetics

Psycho-cybernetics is how you instruct your subconscious mind — which already runs like a machine — to do the right things.

1. Replace Unhelpful Beliefs:

• You might have built over the years some growth-limiting beliefs that stunted your self-image.
• Find and write down these. Does your inner voice tell you, “You’re not good enough,” “You will live a mediocre life,” or “You’ll never be successful.”
• Then change these for positive, helpful ones, like “I am capable of achieving my goals,” “I am moving toward a life of success that I dream of,” or “I have the power to create the life I want.”

2. See Your Ideal Self:

• What “new” person do you dream of becoming: list the traits, behaviors, and attitudes that make this person.
• Vividly imagine yourself living this desired future self — how you look, think, and act; what you wear, eat, go to; who you mix with, who you avoid, who you admire.
• Regularly seeing this improved version would redesign your self-image and subconscious mind, and open up the path and processes to reach your desired goals.
• As you practice picturing your future ideal self, it will become more real and tangible.

3. Create Affirmations:

• Affirmations are a powerful tool in Psycho-Cybernetics. They help you expand your mental limits and push you toward your true potential.
• Put together some positive affirmations that magnify your ideal self-image, like: “I am confident and on the way to achieving my goals,” “I am kind, empathic, and make a positive impact,” “I am in control of my thoughts and actions,” “I am creative, innovative, and adaptable,” or “I am worthy of success and fulfillment.”
• Over time, this consistent self-talk will help reshape your traits, behaviors, and attitudes into manifesting your ideal self.

4. Reflect on Successes:

• Regularly reflect on your past successes, no matter how small.
• Recall moments when you overcame challenges and achieved your goals to build a self-image of capability and competence.
• Focusing on your past accomplishments, big or small, opens your mind to find more opportunities to find success.
• The old saying goes that success breeds success. So, remember your stories of success to boost your belief in your ability to succeed.
• Review your winsome acts to understand what went well despite challenges, to reprogram your subconscious with a success-oriented mindset.

5. Challenge Negative Thoughts:

• Humans are more biased towards negative things. So, be prepared that you will have some negative thoughts about your path and journey from time to time.
• When negative thoughts arise, or you hear self-critical inner voices, actively challenge them. Say “Stop!” in your mind, or even loudly, to interrupt the negative train of thoughts.
• Replace them with positive “I am …” empowering statements. Affirm your worthiness, capabilities, and potential.
• Continually replacing negative self-talk with constructive inner dialogue rewires your mindset for success.

6. Seek New Experiences:

• Find activities and experiences that match your future self’s nature and lifestyle, and do them.
• You might need to step outside your comfort zone; do so boldly. Try new adventures to give courage and vitality to your self-image. Go on solo-vacations.
• Accept growth opportunities that come your way, even if you don’t have the full skills to take them. It would help you test your limits.
• Over time, your self-image would gather courage to take up unknown challenges, grit to deal with them, and the resilience to bounce back if there’s a failure.

7. Practice Self-Compassion:

• Change takes time. Forcing it overnight doesn’t yield lasting results.
• Avoid self-criticism or harsh judgments during your transformation process.
• Be kind to yourself. Celebrate small wins. Act gentle with yourself when you fail.
• Offer yourself the same compassion and encouragement you would give to a close friend.
• Try writing a self-compassion letter to sustain the motivation and resilience to reshape your self-image.

C. Create A New Self-Image

We can’t control our circumstances, but we can control how we respond to and interpret them. So, despite adverse circumstances, happiness is a choice. And choosing happiness is the best thing we can do for a worthwhile life.

Some steps to build and solidify a new, positive self-image are:

• Decide To Reset: Consciously decide to reset the unhelpful parts of your current self-image.
• Positive Visualization: Start regularly visualizing a confident, successful version of yourself.
• Embrace New Roles: Actively take on roles and responsibilities that match your new self-image.
• Positive Peer Influence: Surround yourself with people who reflect the qualities you aspire to.
• Affirmation and Action: Combine affirmations with actions that reinforce your new self-image.
• Celebrate Small Wins: Own and celebrate even small achievements that match your new self-image.
• Record Progress: Keep a journal of your growth and changes in self-perception.
• Embrace Change: Be open to evolving and refining your self-image as you grow.

“To really live, that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with. You must find your self acceptable to you.”

— Maxwell Maltz

Case Study On Self-Image Transformation

How Maltz’s friend Alfred Adler changed his self-image?

Maxwell Maltz shares a story of his friend, Dr. Alfred Adler, a respected psychiatrist and neurologist who founded the School of Individual Psychology

Adler was poor at math in his school. He internalized how his teacher saw him — talentless in math. This led him into a sense of inferiority complex that he would forever be bad at math.

One day, Adler solved a difficult problem that surprised both his teacher and himself. This gave him confidence and allowed him to redefine his limiting self-image. He became better at math.

This is a glorious example of how discovering who you truly are can spark unprecedented growth.

The best surprise in life is when you realize how much you are worth, whatever your age. Maltz assures us that “one is never too young nor too old to change his self-image and thereby start to live a new life.”

My Experience with Psycho-Cybernetics

“Psycho-Cybernetics” was transformative for me during my medical studentship days. I had this book for a long time.

When I entered medical school, I had no one to guide me. No one in my family was in the medical field, and I was in an alien city far from home. I felt culturally and academically pressured to fit in during my first two years of training. My grades suffered.

One day, I distinctly remember, I took a notepad and went to the Calcutta Botanical Garden — home to the 250-year-old massive and colossal Great Banyan Tree.

I sat there and wrote down all my negative opinions about my life and academic abilities. Then I reversed them into positive self-statements. I picked five and kept writing them down until they stuck in my head.

Back at my hostel, I made a point of repeating them every day before the mirror.

I started asking teachers and senior college mates to explain the complex concepts. Also spent more time in the library, taking notes, and pre-reading the chapters. Over time, the anxious student in me transformed into a curious learner.

That was a long time ago (I wish I had that notepad!). I still go back to that process whenever I feel stuck.

My best lesson from the book will always be this: You may have made a mistake, but this does not mean you are a mistake.

Implementing Psycho-Cybernetics in Daily Life

Taking steps is the only way to achieve your goals.

• Challenge your negative thoughts and self-limiting beliefs.
• Repeat your positive affirmations a few times every few hours.
• Reinforce your positive self-image by visualizing your successful, happy self.
• Start with small, achievable goals that are modest enough to build confidence.
• Practice mental rehearsal by imagining achieving your goals by completing them step-by-step.
• Gradually move outside your comfort zone, increasing the complexity and scale of your goals (stretch goals).

Positive Affirmations

Positive affirmations are short and simple positive declarations to yourself. They replace your negative self-talk with empowering beliefs.

Choose affirmations that feel real and convincing to you, or else you would be reluctant to repeat them. Repeat them daily to let them sink into your subconscious mind.

Some examples of positive affirmations:

• “I am worthy of success.”
• “I am confident and capable.”
• “I am attracting abundance into my life.”
• “I am achieving my goals one step at a time.”

Focus on the emotional side of your affirmations. Your subconscious receives the message more strongly when you feel the emotions you’d get with your desired result.

Mental Rehearsal

Mental rehearsal is like a “dry run” for your desired outcomes, where you visualize each step of your journey towards goals in your imagination.

Mental rehearsal boosts your confidence. It reduces performance-related anxiety. It makes your mind aware of possible mistakes. And stay focused and keep moving.

How To Practice Mental Rehearsal:

1. Set a few clear goals: Define what you want to achieve — be specific. The more detailed your goal, the better you can rehearse it.
2. Close your eyes and relax: Find a quiet place and get comfortable. Close your eyes and focus on your breath to calm your mind and enter a relaxed state. Maltz says, “Scientific experiments have shown that it is absolutely impossible to feel fear, anger, anxiety, or negative emotions of any kind while the muscles of the body are kept perfectly relaxed.”
3. Visualize the process in detail: Imagine yourself completing each step of your goal. See yourself taking action, feeling emotions, and experiencing the positive outcome in vivid detail. Engage all your senses—sight, sound, smell, touch, and even taste—to make the visualization as real as possible.
4. Feel the emotions: Immerse yourself in the positive emotions you would feel upon achieving your goal. Feel the confidence, joy, and satisfaction of reaching your desired outcome.
5. Repeat and refine: Practice your mental rehearsal regularly. The more you do it, the more your subconscious mind will be programmed for success. As you practice, you can refine your visualization and make it even more vivid and powerful.

Tips for Effective Mental Rehearsal:

• Daily visualization: Dedicate time each day to practice mental rehearsal.
• Start small: Start with simple goals to build your confidence in the technique.
• Be specific: Visualize in clear detail to make your mental rehearsal more effective.
• Feel the emotions of success: Imagine and embrace the positive emotions of success.
• Diverse Scenarios: Practice with different success aspects/scenarios to build versatility.
• Reflect on Progress: After a few days, track your progress and reflect on insights gained.

How To Make Your New Self-image Attract Success?

These are some psycho-cybernetics exercises to attract success:

1. Stop comparing yourself to others. Embrace your uniqueness. Take note of Maltz’s advice, “You as a personality are simply not in competition with any other personality because there is not another person on the face of the earth like you.”
2. Keep tuning your self-image positively. Use mental processes to enhance your self-image. Interpret experiences positively to have more self-belief, optimism, and a positive mindset.
3. Create believable and achievable goals. Success begins with setting effective goals — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
4. Focus on the end goal. Keep your vision focused on the end rather than the means. Once you have fixed the end goal, the cybernetics system will find ways to take you toward it. It is automatic.
5. Mistakes will happen on the way to your success, and they are feedback to fine-tune and autocorrect. Errors handled this way are positive reactions that propel you toward your goal.
6. Let your past mistakes stay in the past, and do not let them direct your future. Rethink your past in a positive light, finding what you gained from it. Focus on the present choices that push you toward your goal.
7. Use the brain’s feedback mechanism: Actively give your brain feedback — it must know what to do more of, and what to stop doing. The brain stores successful responses, which help with similar tasks in the future. Positive feedback encourages the brain to continue a behavior, while negative feedback prompts a behavior change.
8. Activate cybernetics with imagination: Use your imagination to envision positive outcomes. This can influence your actions in a positive direction. Like hypnosurgery, where patients imagine they have been given anesthesia to block pain, use imagination to overcome negative beliefs.
9. Trust your journey. Psycho-cybernetics works, so believe in its efficacy. Let it work automatically after installing a positive self-image, without forcing it to work.
10. Embrace new experiences. Try novel activities that make you feel happier, reinforcing your optimism and positivity.

Goal Setting with Psycho-Cybernetics

Defining Clear and Achievable Goals

• Specify Your Objectives: Clearly define what you want to achieve.
• Realistic and Attainable: Ensure goals are achievable and realistic.
• Time-Bound Targets: Set deadlines for your goals.
• Write Them Down: Document your goals for clarity and commitment.
• Review Regularly: Regularly revisit and adjust your goals as needed.

Role of Goals in the Cybernetic Mechanism

• Direction for the Mind: Goals provide a clear direction for subconscious focus.
• Activates Success Mechanism: Clear goals activate the mind’s ‘success mechanism’.
• Guides Decision-Making: Helps in making decisions aligned with your objectives.
• Feedback Loop: Use progress towards goals as feedback to adjust actions/plans.
• Fosters Growth and Learning: Goal pursuit promotes personal development and learning.

Maxwell Maltz’s Principles To Live By

Integrating Maltz’s principles into your life can help you pave the way for personal growth, happiness, and fulfillment.

1. Embrace Past Mistakes as Lessons: View past failures as learning experiences, not as sources of fear. Remember the lessons, but let go of the associated fears.
2. Belief in Self-Transformation: Understand that positive change starts with self-belief. Personal transformation is unlikely without the belief in one’s ability to change.
3. Trust Your Mind’s Cybernetic Mechanism: Focus deeply on an issue, then temporarily set it aside. This allows your mind’s cybernetic system to unconsciously work towards a solution, often revealing insights upon revisiting the problem.
4. Cultivate a Positive Self-Image: Harness the power of imagination. Your brain perceives imagined scenarios as real, so envisioning a positive self-image can lead to tangible success.
5. Find Happiness in the Present: Do not postpone happiness for future achievements. Happiness should be a current state, independent of goals or successes.
6. Strive for Holistic Well-being: Prioritize fulfilling the seven needs for well-being as identified by Maltz: Love, Security, Creative Expression, Recognition, New Experiences, Self-Esteem, and Positivity about the Future.

Research & Anecdotes In Psycho-Cybernetics

• Enhanced Sensory Perception: Maltz references Kekcheyev’s research, highlighting that pleasant thoughts can sharpen sensory perceptions like sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch.
• Positive Thoughts and Eyesight: He cites Dr. William Bates’ experiments, which demonstrate an improvement in eyesight when individuals engage in pleasant thoughts or observe enjoyable scenes.
• Memory and Positive Thinking: Maltz discusses Margaret Corbett’s findings that memory significantly improves when subjects entertain pleasant thoughts.
• Unhappiness and Criminality Link: He notes Harvard psychologists’ discovery of a correlation between unhappiness, criminal behavior, and unhappy backgrounds.
• Frustration Study at Yale: A ten-year Yale study, as Maltz mentions, suggests a strong connection between our own unhappiness, immorality, and hostility towards others.
• Psychosomatic Illnesses: Maltz quotes Dr. John A. Schindler: “Unhappiness is the sole cause of all psychosomatic illnesses, and the only cure is happiness.”
• William James on Unhappiness: Maltz includes William James’ perspective: “The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, pulling, mumping mood, no matter what outward ills it may have been engendered?”
• Blaise Pascal on Living in the Present: Finally, he references Blaise Pascal’s observation: “We are never living, but only hoping to live; and, looking forward always to being happy, it is inevitable that we are never so.”

Learned Helplessness: Self-Image of A Failure

Martin Seligman, the Father of Positive Psychology, found out that dogs learn to feel helpless in certain situations.

• First, dogs were put in a box and given electric shocks, from which they could escape by jumping over a low partition.
• Then, they were given shocks and not allowed to escape. Gradually, as the dogs found they could not escape the shocks, they lay down whimpering, feeling helpless.
• Later, when these “helpless” dogs were put into boxes with a low partition that they could jump over, and given shocks, they did not try to escape and instead lay whimpering. These dogs had learned helplessness.

Seligman said this may be similar in humans too, where people experiencing uncontrollable negative events become passive and give up trying to improve their situation.

Seligman’s idea was similar to Maltz’s. Maltz had earlier suggested that our self-limiting beliefs are at the root of our failures.

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Final Words

“The “self-image”, the individual’s mental and spiritual concept or “picture” of himself, was the real key to personality and behavior.”

— Maxwell Maltz, “Psycho-Cybernetics”

• Your self-image, molded by your experiences, shapes your life.
• You can create a positive self-image to improve your chances of success.
• Your more successful version also raises your self-worth, happiness, and social value.

√ Also Read:

• Selected Quotes From Psycho-Cybernetics To Set Your Motivation Afire
• How To Overcome ‘Negative Self-Talk’ With Psycho-Cybernetics

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