Psycho-Cybernetics

Two of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of Psycho-Cybernetics pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.

1. Your **self-image**, the mental blueprint of "the sort of person I am", sets the outer limits of what you can accomplish. Maltz found that changing a patient's face surgically only helped if their inner picture of themselves changed too; personality and performance always rise or fall to match the self-image, never the willpower.
2. The brain and nervous system operate as an impersonal, goal-seeking **servo-mechanism**, like a self-guided torpedo that zig-zags toward its target by correcting off course errors. You supply the goal and the mechanism supplies the means, but it will just as faithfully steer you toward a negative target you keep picturing.

The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 8 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

1. The Surgeon Who Found the Real Face
2. The Success Mechanism Built Into You
3. Imagination and the Theater of the Mind
4. De-Hypnotizing Yourself from False Beliefs
5. Rational Thought as the Master Switch
6. Relax and Let the Mechanism Work
7. The Habit of Happiness and the Failure Signals
8. Emotional Scars and the Success-Type Personality