Top 121 Quotes & Sayings by Maxwell Maltz

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American scientist Maxwell Maltz.
Last updated on December 22, 2024.
Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics (1960), which was a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one's self-image leading to a more successful and fulfilling life. He wrote several books, among which Psycho-Cybernetics was a long-time bestseller — influencing many subsequent self-help teachers. His orientation towards a system of ideas that would provide self-help is considered the forerunner of the now popular self-help books.

Close scrutiny will show that most 'crisis situations' are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.
We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut. — © Maxwell Maltz
You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.
Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.
The 'self-image' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.
You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you.
We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.
Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.
Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.
Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on.
To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.
Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.
Your most important sale in life is to sell yourself to yourself. — © Maxwell Maltz
Your most important sale in life is to sell yourself to yourself.
Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person's feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel.
If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.
To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
You can always find the sun within yourself if you will only search.
Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent.
For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow - after you have done your best to achieve success today.
Realizing that our actions, feelings and behaviour are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.
If you wait until circumstances justify your thinking pleasant thoughts, you are likely to wait forever.
Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively.
Adopt the motto: It doesn't matter who's right, but what's right.
It is the job of conscious rational thought to decide what you want, select the goals you wish to achieve-and concentrate upon these rather than upon what you do not want. To spend time and effort concentrating upon what you do not want is not rational.
Change your mental imagery, and the feelings will take care of themselves.
What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live - with your self-respect alive and growing.
When you believe you can... you can!
A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.
Mental pictures offer us an opportunity to practice new traits and attitudes, which otherwise we could not do. This is possible because again - your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and one that is vividly imagined.
Self-esteem is as necessary to the spirit as food is to the body.
True success and true happiness not only go together but each other enhances the other.
I am a firm believer in 'negative thinking' when used correctly. We need to be AWARE of negatives so that we can steer clear of them. A golfer needs to know where the bunkers and sand traps are - but he doesn't think continuously about the bunker - where he doesn't want to go. His mind glances at the bunker, but he DWELLS upon the green.
Do not say to yourself, 'I am going to act this way tomorrow.' Just say to yourself - 'I am going to imagine myself acting this way NOW - for 30 minutes - today.'
We, whoever we are, must have a daily goal in our lives, no matter how small or great, to make that day mean something.
The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognise your own worth.
Successful people are able to rise above crises by relaxing no matter what the external situation. Their belief in themselves, the strength of their self-image is impenetrable armor, which protects them against shattering events.
Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. — © Maxwell Maltz
Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible.
Another cause of confusion, and the resulting feelings of nervousness, hurry, and anxiety, is the absurd habit of trying to do many things at one time.
Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project.
Every day you must try to make your own self-image grow; this you can do.
You will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be.
Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.
We simply must get it through our heads that holding a low opinion of ourselves is not a virtue, but a vice.
See yourself reacting to threats, not by running away or evading them, but by meeting them, dealing with them, grappling with them in an aggressive intelligent manner.
This is where you will win the battle - in the playhouse of your mind.
Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than "you" ever could by conscious thought. "You" supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby.
Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience. — © Maxwell Maltz
Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.
A step in the wrong direction is better than staying on the spot all our life. Once you're moving forward you can correct your course as you go. Your automatic guidance system cannot guide you when you're standing still.
Our self image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other.
The minute that we change our minds, and stop giving power to the past, the past with its mistakes loses power over us.
Happiness is native to the human mind and its physical machine. We think better, perform better, feel better, and are healthier when we are happy.
Forgiveness is a scalpel that removes emotional scars.
Science has now confirmed what philosophers, mystics, and other intuitive people have long declared: every human being has been literally "engineered for success" by his Creator. Every human being has access to a power greater than himself.
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk — and to act.
Times will change for the better when you change.
Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a 'real' experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information which you give to it from your forebrain. Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you THINK or IMAGINE to be 'true.
The biggest secret of self-esteem is this: Begin to appreciate other people more; show respect for any human being merely because he is a child of God and therefore a thing of value.
Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and ‘natural’ as opposed to self-conscious and studied.
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