achievement

Book Summary of Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz

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Psycho-Cybernetics teaches us to view our mind as a machine, which can be programmed for success and happiness. By adopting this mindset, we can significantly enhance our self-image and boost our capacity to achieve our goals.

Part 1: What Is Psycho-Cybernetics?

In the initial section, we delve into why plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz turned to psychology and cybernetic theory to decipher the root causes of success and failure. Subsequently, we elucidate Maltz’s theory on how the human brain functions in achieving goals based on cybernetic principles.

Why a Plastic Surgeon Turned to Psychology

During his stint as a plastic surgeon, Maltz noticed a distinction in how patients reacted to “physical flaws” being corrected. Post-surgery, certain patients experienced an immediate upswing in self-esteem and confidence, leading to increased goal attainment.

Conversely, some patients’ personalities remained unaltered post-surgery; their thoughts, emotions, and actions stayed the same as if the “flaw” was still there. Despite their transformed external appearance, their self-perception and success rate remained unimproved.

Your Physical Appearance Doesn’t Define Your Self-Perception

Maltz’s observation of the variance in patient response to physical correction prompted his pursuit of the mind-body connection and its impact on confidence and success. He ultimately concluded that self-perception holds greater significance than physical appearance.

One’s thoughts about themselves shape their approach to life, success, and happiness, not their physical features. Maltz realized that to achieve self-improvement and success, it was crucial to eliminate negative thought patterns that hindered patients’ self-perception and success.

Cybernetics: Your Mind Works Like a Machine to Reach Goals

To understand why people perceive themselves the way they do, Maltz analyzed the reverse process of successful goal achievement and linked it back to self-perception. This led to his interest in cybernetic theory, which revealed that the human brain operates based on similar principles as machines. Both rely on positive and negative feedback to guide them towards goals.

For example, a missile uses sensors to hit a target, while the brain uses feedback to learn how to eat. Once a successful process is recorded, the brain discards negative feedback, allowing for repeated action without conscious thought.

Part 2: Your Self-Image Defines Your Experience

Maltz believed that our brains work like a cybernetic machine, using feedback to reach goals. However, it’s not always easy to achieve our conscious goals if our internal programming doesn’t align with them. For instance, you may want to make friends but subconsciously push people away. This conflict arises due to a discrepancy between your conscious goals and your self-image, according to Maltz.

What Is Your Self-Image?

Your brain has recorded all your experiences, shaping your self-image which defines who you are, how you express yourself, and how you act. For example, falling over can be perceived as a fact or lead to an identification like “I’m a klutz,” influencing your behavior and self-image.

What Influences Your Self-Image?

Maltz believes your self-image is a product of thoughts you’ve chosen to believe about your past experiences, even if they’re inaccurate. Your nervous system reacts to your thoughts as if they’re true, regardless of their accuracy. Maltz illustrates this by comparing it to being hypnotized into thinking you’re in a snowstorm, causing your body to physically react to the suggestion.

Your self-image is shaped by the opinions and beliefs of those around you and your own imagination. Mental images and strong impressions become beliefs that define your self-image. Your nervous system reacts to these beliefs, creating emotional and physical responses.

Your Self-Image Impacts Your Behavior

Maltz believes humans and machines interpret feedback differently to achieve their goals. Humans rely on their self-image to interpret feedback, which can lead to failure or success. To achieve success, you need to align your self-image with your goals and interpret feedback that moves you towards them.

Part 3: Use Your Imagination to Create Success

Maltz suggests that by using your imagination, you can improve your self-image and reprogram yourself. The first step is to become aware of whether you’re using your imagination positively or negatively.

If you’re using it negatively, you need to make a conscious effort to create a mental picture of yourself as successful and practice feeling successful. By regularly creating positive feelings, you can replace negative beliefs with new successful beliefs and improve your self-image.

Five Self-Image Alignment Methods

Maltz presents five methods for using imagination to improve self-image and achieve success:

  1. Change a daily habit to prove that change is possible and affirm that you can choose to think differently.
  2. Practice physical relaxation to make your mind more receptive to positive suggestions and create space for positive thoughts.
  3. Use imagination to recall successful memories and create successful feelings to imprint on your self-image.
  4. Focus on a clear goal to find the motivation to change your self-image and develop the habit of success.
  5. Cultivate happiness to improve overall wellbeing and increase resilience to physical setbacks. Maltz argues that negative attitudes are bad for health and happiness.

Part 4: Release Your Limitations

Maltz suggests that breaking free from negative thoughts and developing a happy, successful mindset is possible by creating positive feedback loops. He recommends three methods to replace negative thoughts with positive ones and redirect yourself towards success.

Method 1: Turn Challenges into Opportunities to Improve Your Self-Image

Maltz believes challenges are opportunities for growth and success, but those with negative self-image often see them as crises. Planning ahead is crucial in overcoming fears and moving past your comfort zone. By identifying fears and using imagination to visualize confident responses, one can better prepare themselves for challenges.

Method 2: Practice Reflecting Only on the Facts

Maltz argues that negative feelings are a result of your habitual thought process, and not an indication of reality. Negative thoughts can lead to false conclusions that keep you stuck in a negative feedback loop. To break this cycle, choose to replace negative thoughts with rational ones that encourage positive beliefs.

Method 3: Forgive and Forget

Maltz argues that holding onto past mistakes and traumas prevents people from experiencing success in their lives. Emotional scars created from these experiences may seem protective, but they actually keep people trapped in a negative state.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, allows individuals to heal emotional scars and move forward. Accepting that everyone makes mistakes and forgiving yourself and others liberates you and enables you to focus on your goals.

Book Summary of Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

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Unconscious beliefs can greatly impact our desires and accomplishments. In her book Mindset, Stanford University psychology professor Carol S. Dweck argues that our attitudes towards our abilities and intelligence shape the trajectory of our lives, starting in early childhood. Dweck, a Yale Ph.D. holder, is a decorated researcher in social and developmental psychology.

Her book is rooted in the nature vs. nurture debate, which suggests that a nurturing environment can be more influential than innate abilities and behaviors. Dweck contends that fostering growth is the key to ongoing improvement, regardless of natural talents.

 

The Two Mindsets

Your mindset plays a significant role in your personality and your ability to reach your potential, according to Dweck. It influences how you perceive success, failure, effort, and how you handle various aspects of life, including school, sports, work, and relationships. Dweck explains that you adopt either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset based on the influences of your parents, teachers, and media consumption.

1-) A fixed mindset operates under the belief that personal traits such as intelligence and personality are innate and unalterable. This mindset is often instilled in us from an early age, with phrases like “I was never good at math” or “some people are just naturally athletic” reinforcing the idea. Those with a fixed mindset feel the need to constantly prove themselves because they believe that innate abilities determine success. They may worry that they have been given a limited amount of ability and thus strive to overcompensate.

2-) A growth mindset holds that people can develop and enhance their abilities. It posits that innate talent is merely a starting point, and hard work, persistence, and effective learning strategies can lead to continuous improvement. Those with a growth mindset possess a love for learning and view mistakes as opportunities to learn. They embrace challenges to challenge themselves and grow further.

Learn How to Learn

Jim Kwik, a brain and memory coach, has built his career around the idea that anyone can learn and improve in any area. In his book Limitless, Kwik outlines three key components of learning:

Mindframe: You must believe that learning is possible (i.e., a growth mindset).

Drive: You must have the motivation to learn, whether it comes from personal interest or external factors like career aspirations.

Techniques: You must use effective methods to absorb and retain information.

By mastering these three aspects, Kwik asserts that you can learn about any topic faster and more easily than you ever imagined. He credits his own success to this system of learning.

Success and Failure

Dweck explains that in the fixed mindset, success is proving your intelligence and talent, and setbacks are failures that imply you’re not good enough. This mindset leads to quitting when faced with challenges. In contrast, the growth mindset sees success as learning and improving, while failure is an opportunity to learn and reach your potential.

Review Your Definition of Success

Success is a subjective concept that is rooted in personal ideology. According to fixed mindsets, success is achieving wealth, fame, or respect regardless of the effort. This rigid definition can make people feel like failures if they fall short. However, if success is defined by personal ideals, then individuals can determine their own success.

They can review their actions and ideals to decide where they are falling short and redefine success accordingly. If the definition of success is based on a fixed-mindset, redefining success may be necessary for a fulfilling life.

Perfection Versus Learning

Dweck explains that those with fixed mindsets strive for perfection to prove their innate abilities, while viewing effort as a weakness. In contrast, those with growth mindsets see effort as a positive and feel accomplished through progress and improvement.

Ironically, the perfectionism that comes with a fixed mindset can be detrimental to self-esteem, as it’s based on unrealistic expectations. Bestselling author Brené Brown notes that perfectionism is dangerous and can lead to shame and self-criticism. Instead, it’s important to recognize and revise unrealistic goals.

How the Mindsets Affect Children

Dweck warns that children can develop mindsets as young as three years old, influenced by the behavior of adults around them. Fixed mindsets hinder learning and can cause fear of failure, while growth mindsets embrace challenges and promote lifelong learning. Stephen Covey considers learning one of four essential human needs for happiness and fulfillment. Dweck discusses two behaviors that can promote a fixed mindset in children: praise and bullying.

Praise

Dweck cautions against praising children’s performance as it reinforces a fixed mindset. Instead, she recommends applying a growth mindset by praising children for their efforts, persistence, and improvement. Parents can help their children build confidence by teaching them to welcome challenges, learn from mistakes, and try new learning strategies. Positive reinforcement, in combination with ignoring unwanted behavior, is the best way to change a person’s behavior.

Bullying

Dweck says bullying can create fixed mindsets in victims who see themselves as inferior and deserving of mistreatment. Fixed mindset victims may seek revenge on the bully, while growth mindset victims are more likely to want to understand and help the aggressor.

Dweck also notes that bullying is often caused by fixed mindset thinking, where bullies view vulnerable kids as inferior. Some psychologists suggest a growth mindset approach to rehabilitating bullies by teaching them social and self-regulatory skills.

How the Mindsets Affect Your Life

Dweck believes that mindset shapes every aspect of life, including sports. In fixed-mindset thinking, “naturals” are expected to achieve, and talent becomes a drawback as these athletes don’t push themselves and prioritize individual performance over teamwork.

Athletes with growth mindsets find defeat motivating, define success as learning and improving, and understand the importance of working with their teammates. While some people are more naturally talented than others, practice widens talent gaps, and early bloomers who receive special attention and training can become self-fulfilling prophecies of their perceived talent.

The Mindsets in Business

Dweck asserts that a company’s success or failure is largely determined by the mindset of its leader. Fixed-mindset leaders consider themselves geniuses who don’t need a strong team, resulting in their self-serving behavior that can lead to belittling employees and ignoring mistakes.

Conversely, growth-oriented leaders believe in the ability of everyone to learn and develop, leading to positive and energized work environments. Dweck highlights that industry-leading companies, regardless of the industry, operate with growth mindsets and prioritize improving the company and employees over self-promotion.

Incorporate a Growth Mindset Into Meetings

Lafley’s “advocacy” and “inquiry” meeting styles reflect Dweck’s two mindsets. The advocacy-fixed mindset is about defending one’s idea and proving that it’s “good,” while the inquiry-growth mindset is about open inquiry, asking for feedback, and recognizing that every employee has the potential to contribute to the best strategy for the company. This approach recognizes that even talented and experienced individuals can overlook something and that every idea has the potential to be improved upon.

The Mindsets in Relationships

Dweck suggests that a fixed mindset can lead to negative beliefs about relationships, such as the idea that relationships are predetermined and unchangeable. In contrast, people with a growth mindset believe that relationships can be improved through effort and communication, and that challenges can actually bring partners closer together.

By adopting a growth mindset, individuals can become more resilient in the face of relationship challenges and more willing to put in the work required to maintain a healthy relationship.

Growth Begins With Acceptance

To develop a growth mindset in relationships, you can practice Radical Acceptance by accepting each moment as it is without judgment or trying to change it. This allows you to stay in control, approach situations calmly, and determine the best course of action.

In relationships, Radical Acceptance involves recognizing and approaching problems with compassion, understanding your partner’s perspective, and respecting it even if you don’t agree. This approach is applicable to all types of relationships, not just romantic ones, according to Brach.

How to Develop a Growth Mindset

Dweck says that understanding the two mindsets can inspire change, but changing your thought patterns takes time and effort. The fixed mindset can compete with growth-oriented thinking, especially if your self-esteem is based on fixed beliefs about your abilities.

Dweck warns that changing your mindset may feel like losing your sense of self, but ultimately the growth mindset allows you to be authentic and reach your full potential without constant self-judgment.

Mindset Begins With Values

To change your mindset, examine if your values support a growth mindset. In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson emphasizes that our thoughts and actions stem from our values. Healthy values have three criteria, two of which align with a growth mindset.

Firstly, they’re fact-based, rooted in concrete and provable facts. Secondly, they’re constructive, benefiting both you and those around you. A growth mindset is constructive by pushing you to improve yourself. Lastly, they’re within your control, not relying on external factors. Negative values include power, fame, and fixed-mindset values such as talent and intelligence, which rely on being born with them.

Begin Adjusting Your Mindset

To achieve a growth mindset, Dweck suggests following these steps:

  1. Acknowledge that you have fixed-mindset beliefs and do not accept the negatives that come with it.
  2. Create a fixed-mindset persona, identify its triggers, and give it a name to remind you that this is not who you want to be.
  3. Confront your fixed mindset when it appears and remind yourself that mistakes and failures are opportunities to learn and grow.

To counter your fixed-mindset thoughts, you can meet your fixed-mindset persona with compassion and acceptance, similar to how Buddha dealt with Mara in the parable of Radical Acceptance. Greet its arguments about your limitations with respect and conviction, and eventually, your personal “Mara” will exhaust itself and leave you in peace.