“Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations and talents (and not the symbols which the ‘Joneses’ expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function. Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is ‘built that way’ he is not happy unless he is functioning the way he was made to function—as a goal-striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other.”
~ Maxwell Maltz from Psycho-Cybernetics
Psycho-Cybernetics. Funny name. Great book!
Maxwell Maltz was a world-renowned plastic surgeon who discovered that, while some people’s lives changed dramatically after he altered their appearance through plastic surgery, some people’s lives *didn’t*. He deduced that the primary factor that differentiated these groups was their self-image—not what they saw in the mirror but the images they had of themselves in their MINDS. Cool stuff.
He spent the second half of his career merging this self-image psychology with the then-popular science of “cybernetics”—which studies how things like guided missiles or “servo-mechanisms” hit their targets through a clear goal and constant adjustment of their course.
This book is *packed* with Big Ideas. If you’re feelin’ it, I definitely recommend you check it out along with the audio stuff you can find on Amazon.
For now, let’s start by defining Cybernetics and learning what we have in common with a guided missile. :)
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