The article below builds upon Maltz, Maxwell (2015). Psycho-Cybernetics: updated and expanded. Penguin and expands upon a book summary by performance coach Dean Bokhari. Image by rawpixel.
Forgiveness
An important part of dealing with negative images concerns the big mistakes you made in life, whether real or imagined. This means you must learn to forgive yourself.
Mistakes don’t make “You”
You’ve made mistakes, but you are not defined by your mistakes. They are only a part of you and often a part of figuring out life, and, by extension, improving your success mechanism. As explained before, paying too much attention to your mistakes will corrupt your success mechanism. You will become inhibited, anxious and worrisome, leading to nervous and clumsy behavior (e.g. when you must present or are in a business meeting). In particular problematic are mistakes which are incongruent with the whole of your personality. For example, you have always been a person with feelings of high responsibility and have acted that way for a long time. Forgetting one important meeting or task doesn’t suddenly change your personality, unless you let the mistake overrule all the other times you were successful. Therefore it is important to accurately assess the mistake for what it really is. For example, look at yourself as you would look at a friend. Would you still judge that harshly or should you be a little bit more forgiving of your mistakes, as you would do with a friend?
Practice relaxation, positive images and disinhibition
Self-consciousness can also lead to inhibition. You can begin to deal with self-consciousness by (again) relaxing. Remember a time and place when you were with people who made you feel comfortable and supported. Recreate this positive self-image from the past when you are with others, and your self-consciousness will begin to fade. Or mentally create a quiet room – a place of total relaxation in your mind. Go to this mental place to rest, have a break from the stimuli, and renew yourself by going through your ‘database’ of positive goals and self-images.
The goal of these exercises is to slowly but surely replace negative images with positive images. Or use the negative images as triggers to think of more positive images. If after such exercises some negative images remain, it could be helpful to ‘throw away’ these ‘left-over’ negative images in your mind. Pile them up and shove them into a ravine, or use a bulldozer on a junk yard, whatever image works for you.
Practice disinhibition – being less careful, less concerned, less conscientious. Don’t think too much but start talking and improvise along the way. Or, don’t think too much but start doing. For example, you decide to start studying for just 10 minutes. Before you know it you get into the flow and hours pass by!
Let the phone ring
Often your responses to stimuli are conditioned – things you have learned to do, and now do automatically. An example is picking up your phone whenever you hear a notification. You can undo this condition in case of events that trigger unwanted behavior (e.g. feeling the emotional and bodily need to give in to social pressure). If you can’t ignore the stimulus, start by delaying your response to it. Instead of sending an answer immediately, sleep on it and respond the next day. As you learn to not respond, you are actually practicing relaxation.
Focus on your goals
Another calming practice is to refuse to respond to all of the negative possibilities you might think of during the day. Instead, focus on your goals, and dismiss ‘what ifs’ as unreasonable and not worthy of a response. This again emphasizes the need to be clear on ones self-image and life goals, whether big or small. We are all goal-striving machines and when the success mechanism work properly we are not easily shaken by our mistakes.
Live for today
Try to limit worrying about negative images from yesterday or tomorrow (e.g. you are nervous about an upcoming presentation). Focus on the images you can influence today. Practice positive images related to your future life goals. For example practice a relaxed composure or remember that time when you successfully communicated your ideas to someone else (this could even be in an informal setting). Or practice what person you would like to be when you make a mistake (e.g. stay relaxed, apologize sincerely, and move on). Remember that it takes approximately 21 days before a change in you self-image can be noticed.
At the end of the day assign a timeslot where you will prepare for the next day and then mentally ‘close off’ that day and enjoy the relaxed ‘neutral space’ between yesterday and tomorrow. Part of this exercise is also that you recognize that your success mechanism works unconsciously. This means that it will work on solving problems without you knowing it. For example, remember that you often have the most insightful solutions to problems when you are in a relaxed state and not actively thinking about it (e.g. when you let out the dog or do the dishes). This means also that it is useless to overthink situations. Think about possible solutions but also let the problem rest and trust your servo-mechanism to come up with a solution. This is why it is important put an end to worrying at the end of day and let the servo-mechanism work its way out during relaxation or sleep.
Go to part 5.