Psycho-Cybernetics Part 14 of 30: S.U.C.C.E.S.S.
May 27, 2009 by dr. lam · 7 Comments
Maltz admits that most people out there when ask to envision a goal and to allow their servo-mechanism to go into action cannot conceive of a goal or what a successful type person is. Accordingly, he has come up with a an acronym for success, which is s.u.c.c.e.s.s. to help you envision what a successful person looks like. Here goes:
Sense of direction- Maltz looks at humans as needing goals and striving for goals (as mentioned in the previous blogs). He envisions us like bicycles. When a bicycle is in motion, it moves forward. When it stops, it topples over. When moving with a sense of purpose and goal, we move ourselves forward. When we stop, we lose balance.
Understanding- Understanding begins with good communication — both communication to ourselves and from others. Communication of the truth allows us to attain proper understanding. He likens some leaders to Hitler’s bunker mentality when any messenger that would give him bad news would be shot dead. If we surround ourselves with yes men, we will never know the truth. Our lack of understanding of the truth will lead to our own demise. However, we must first begin with telling ourselves our own truth. We can try by telling ourselves the truth about our own limitation so that we can admit to this fault and move beyond it. This does not mean that we are that fault but we accept the action of making such a fault not by reliving it or accepting the condition of the fault. Rigorous honesty with ourselves and allowing others to be honest with us allows us to attain a measure of success that the person who lies to himself and only wants to hear flattering lies from others will never achieve.
Courage- Understanding should only be the first step. Understanding by itself is not enough. We must act, and that act is being courageous. Courageous to fail because we know that we are not the summation of our past failures, that we can fail in order to succeed. We can fail and remain not a failure. By taking risks and moving forward, we can achieve success. But we must first have a strong self image that allows us to fail without abjectly seeing ourselves as failures. Lee Iacocca said that decisiveness was the number one attribute he looked for in key people. We talked about that in a previous blog.
Charity (Compassion)- When we respect others, we can respect ourselves. Have you ever dealt with people who treat others as mere pawns in their own righteous game? Those individuals are living far from a real world view because people are worthy of respect and love as people. When we help other people with their problems and give them respect as humans then we can look inward at our ourselves with the same dignity and respect.
Esteem- Put the inner critic away. When we have a healthy self-image we don’t worry what others think. When Maltz was asked why a 65-year-old plastic surgeon in the twilight of his career would be updating an edition of his book that probably would not garner much reception, he simply replied he did not even think about what another person thought of him or the reception his book would have. He simply wrote it because he wanted and needed to do so. We need to chastise and chase out our inner demons that limit our own sense of self and not worry what others think of us (again more of that in a coming blog).
Self-Confidence- Success breeds success. We triumph by having even a small success that builds us in our self confidence. We forget past failures but focus on the successes that we have made to arrive at where we are today. However, the mind of the unsuccessful person focuses on all the bad decisions and past failures and fails to see the glory of past accomplishments. He is mired in his own lack of self confidence by reliving past failures.
Self-Acceptance- This means that we accept ourselves warts and all. It does not mean that we create a contrived self image that does not reflect who we are. Conversely, it also does not mean that we live in the squalor of our imperfections. As humans, we make mistakes, but we are not our mistakes. We can fail but we are not failures. Understanding the difference between the act and the condition can help us attain self-acceptance. The individual who focuses on his own imperfections to a fault typically does not have a good self image and lives in a state of self rejection. With a good self image, we can divorce the act from the condition and thereby live to take risks and live to live.
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Speaking of success…I’m really proud of my high-school mentoree, Kristine Nwosu, who shadowed me for the past few months and did a presentation on her experience with me. She also did an anti-drug campaign based on her learning about a reconstructive rhinoplasty case that i did for a cocaine saddled nose. At 16 years of age, she already knows she wants to be a surgeon. She is top of her class, an overachiever, and very intelligent. She came in twice during her spring break week! Here are the highlights from her talk last night for those who are interested:
Psycho-Cybernetics Part 13 of 30: Happiness is not Conditional
May 26, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
In our pursuit of happiness, we oftentimes are pushed by external circumstances to define that level of happiness. Maltz uses the example of a game show host when the “Applause” sign goes on, we applaud. When the “laughter” sign goes on, we are asked to laugh. We are like sheep that must respond to the external circumstances that dictate to us how to behave. True happiness falls outside of external circumstances.
In his book, a woman of a drunkard asks Maltz, “How can I be happy?” Maltz responded, “I don’t know but you can be happier by resolving not to add resentment and self-pity to your misfortune.” The sage Epictetus said, “Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.” Don’t add your opinion to unhappy events. Don’t make the situation any worse. Instead, when we try our best to liberate our mind from unhappy events and live in a state of happiness, we can be in a much better place.
Maltz also envisions human beings as goal-striving. When we are moving in a certain direction, we are happy. When we are not, we are not. Obviously, this striving can be read as a stark contrast to the idea of contentment espoused in previous blogs extracted from the Far East. I would say that we can put this paradox to rest by seeing that “goal striving” is a product of what I would like to call purpose or meaning. If our goals are superficial, e.g., just to be rich, then perhaps we will not arrive at happiness. But when we have more meaningful goals in our life, we can perhaps have something to move toward, which can be a source of happiness. Put another way, when the anxiety over that goal makes our current state unhappy, then we have failed to grasp Maltz’s true meaning of being happy today with that happiness amplified by seeing a direction in our life that we are moving toward. All of my faithful blog readers know that I use the word “journey” to describe the process that we are all on in self growth and self actualization. Accordingly, we can fully grasp the apparent paradox of current happiness and goal striving. I think Lao-Tzu would be proud of how we can resolve an apparent paradox. Namaste.
Psycho-Cybernetics Part 12 of 30: Happiness is a Habit
May 22, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
If we can achieve a profound level of happiness, we can then let go of the cloud of anxiety, fear, and other thoughts that plague our mind. At that point, we can allow our unconscious to move us forward in a positive direction. When we are unhappy, we are constantly pervaded by negativity, judgment (of self and of others), and poverty/scarcity. When we are happy, we can live with great joy and open the chance for success and to fulfill our goals.
How do we achieve happiness? The first thing we need to do is see happiness as a habit not as a future earning. Many of us live life as a deferred payment plan. We will be happy when we are in the right relationship, perfect marriage, obtain the perfect job, get better grades, have a thinner waistline, etc. Whatever we then achieve, we will then be daunted by another problem to distract us. Only by practicing happiness as a present emotion/condition, can we be truly happy individuals.
Happiness should not be viewed as selfishness. We have talked about this before when we discussed the Art of Happiness a few months ago. When we are happy, we radiate that joy to others. When we are sad and miserable, we remain in a completely selfish state that will hurt ourselves and directly/indirectly hurt others. We need to remove any moral appendages to happiness as a right, a virtue, as a merit. It simply is. We all should live in unmitigated happiness and when we do we can establish the underlying foundation and premise for our unconscious mind to flourish and for us to exercise a great degree of liberation in the practice of Psycho-Cybernetics.
Psycho-Cybernetics Part 11 of 30: Don’t Worry After the Bet is Placed
May 21, 2009 by dr. lam · 7 Comments
Maltz observed that when gamblers played roulette they would haphazardly put their bets down but once the wheel started to turn a look of anxiety and consternation would prevail. His gambler friend advised: ”Do your worrying before you place your bet, not after the wheel starts turning.” Sage advice. Oftentimes we make a decision then start to second guess it rather than support it. We worry constantly, “Did I make the right decision? What will now happen?” Instead, we should consciously support that decision and allow it to go forward to fruition.
Kennedy, Maltz’s protégé and editor for the current edition of Psycho-Cybernetics entitled The New Psycho-Cybernetics, uses Al Gore’s famous line (whatever your political persuasion is, this reference is not meant to be political) of a “lock box”. He argues that once we have made a decision that we should put the fear and anxiety away in a lock box, i.e., to lock it away. We should think before we make a decision whether it is a good one but once it is made to let that decision go.
In his lectures to business leaders, Maltz quotes a few cogent remarks from his attendees:
“Dr. Maltz, the truth is that there are few inherently right decisions or wrong decisions. Instead, we make decisions, then make them right. That’s what leadership is all about.”
“You can always correct a poor decision, but if you do nothing, you can never get the time back.”
We will explore these ideas more in depth in coming blogs. You might want to reread some of these blogs at the conclusion of reading all of them because you will probably see more synthetically how everything fits together. Right now you are only getting pieces of a larger jigsaw puzzle.
Maltz contends that to allow our Creative Mechanism to flourish we need to live in the present moment (sound familiar?- Power of Now). If we constantly worry about a decision we made in the past or that we will have to make, we do not allow our unconscious mind to take action. Instead we cloud it. Obviously, at times we need to think and think hard of a decision but once it is made to let it go. We should practice the art of decisiveness and letting go…at a restaurant, at the shopping mall, wherever.
Psycho-Cybernetics Part 10 of 30: Moving Away from Conscious Will
May 20, 2009 by dr. lam · 7 Comments
Maltz tries to get us to let go of forceful action and forceful will. Of course, all things begin in the conscious mind but once we have the right target in our mind, we should relax and let our automatic servo-mechanism (unconscious) guide us forward to success. The reason that many people in social situations are awkward is that they try too hard to behave in a certain prescribed and conforming way. They must think consciously of every action. There is a level of fatigue and unnaturalness with this behavior. If we are constantly a product of our conscious will, we will awkwardly grope forward in painstaking steps. When our unconscious mind reigns, we can have unlimited potential based on its power.
He talks about when Napoleon Hill wrote his seminal classic, Think and Grow Rich (a great book if you haven’t read it by the way), was under a 24 hour deadline to come up with a title he was panicked. His publisher suggested the title Use Your Noodle to Get the Boodle, which Hill rightly balked at for its sensational tabloid appeal. He fell asleep and woke up with his title, Think and Grow Rich, simply by letting his unconscious do the thinking. In actuality, Think and Grow Rich is pretty much a translation of the publisher’s title think for noodle and rich for boodle.
Maltz talks about the sequence of mastery of almost any action from 1. unconscious incompetence, 2. conscious incompetence, 3. conscious competence, to 4. unconscious competence. We move from first not knowing that we are incompetent to then painfully knowing how incompetent we are. We then progress to becoming competent but needing to make every action and step at a very conscious level to finally being competent without even trying. The goal in Psycho-Cybernetics is to move us fully into the final stage in which we do not need to forcibly move our will forward but allowing an automatic mechanism to guide us forward, which is much more powerful and has unlimited potential. Tomorrow we will discuss ways to do this more explicitly.