Psycho-Cybernetics, Updated and Expanded

1. All your actions, feelings, behaviors—even your abilities—are always consistent with this self-image. In short, you will “act like” the sort of person you conceive yourself to be.

Understanding the psychology of the self can mean the difference between success and failure, love and hate, bitterness and happiness. The discovery of the real self can rescue a crumbling marriage, recreate a faltering career, and transform victims of “personality failure.”
On another plane, discovering your real self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity.

“Nothing succeeds like success.” We learn to function successfully by experiencing success. Memories of past successes act as built-in “stored information,”

His plight is somewhat comparable to the young man who cannot secure a job because he has no experience, and cannot acquire experience because he cannot get a job.

In short, you will “act like” the sort of person you conceive yourself to be.

You intend to “go through” the crisis experience to achieve your goal.

I told him first of all to practice a number of imaginary interviews—actually walking in, introducing himself to a prospect, making his sales pitch—then imagine every possible objection, no matter how screwballish, and answer it out loud. Next, he was to practice “with his bat on his shoulder” on an actual live client. He was to go in with an “empty gun” as far as intents and purposes were concerned. The purpose of the sales interview would not be to sell—he had to resign himself to being satisfied with no order. The purpose of the call would be strictly practice—bat-on-the-shoulder, empty-gun practice.

In shadowboxing you practice self-expression with no inhibiting factors present. You learn the correct moves. You form a “mental map” that is retained in memory. You create a broad, general, flexible map. Then, when you face a crisis where an actual menace or inhibiting factor is present, you have learned to act calmly and correctly. There is a “carry-over” in your muscles, nerves, and brain from practice to the actual situation. Moreover, because your learning has been relaxed and pressure-free, you will be able to rise to the occasion, extemporize, improvise, act spontaneously. At the same time, your shadowboxing is building a mental image of yourself—acting correctly and successfully. The memory of this successful self-image also enables you to perform better.

Although we may learn fast, we do not learn well under crisis conditions. Throw a man who can’t swim into water over his head, and the crisis itself may give him the power to swim to safety. He learns fast, and manages to swim somehow. But he will never learn to become a championship swimmer.

Dr. Edward C. Tolman, psychologist and founder of the concept known as “latent learning,” said that both animals and men form “brain maps” or “cognitive maps” of the environment while they are learning. If the motivation is not too intense, if there is not too much of a crisis present in the learning situation, these maps are broad and general. If the animal is over-motivated, the cognitive map is narrow and restricted. He learns just one way of solving his problem. In the
future, if this one way happens to be blocked, the animal becomes frustrated, and fails to discern alternative routes or detours.