Best 112 quotes of Maxwell Maltz on MyQuotes

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.

Adopt the motto: It doesn't matter who's right, but what's right.

A healthy strong ego, with plenty of self-esteem, does not feel itself threatened by every innocent remark.

A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment.

An idea accepted as true from any source can be every bit as powerful as hypnosis.

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.

As soon as the error has been recognized and corrections made, it's equally important that the error be forgotten and the successful attempt remembered and dwelt upon.

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.

Begin to imagine what the desirable outcome would be like. Go over these mental pictures and delineate details and refinements. Play them over and over to yourself.

Close scrutiny will show that most of these everyday socalled “crisis situations” are not life-or-death matters at all, but opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.

Conscious effort inhibits and ‘jams’ the automatic creative mechanism.

Develop an enthusiasm for life, create a need for more life, and you will receive more life.

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.'

Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively.

Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively. You either have not goal that is important enough to you, or you are not using your talents and efforts in a striving toward an important goal.

Failure feelings - fear, anxiety, lack of self-confidence - do not spring from some heavenly oracle. They are not written in the stars. They are not holy gospel. Nor are they intimations of a set and decided fate which means that failure is decreed and decided. They originate from your own mind.

Faith, courage, optimism, looking forward, bring us new life and more life. Futility, frustration, living in the past are not only characteristic of 'old age'; they contribute to it.

Forgiveness is a scalpel that removes emotional scars.

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.

Fully 95 percent of our behavior, feeling, and response is habitual.

Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle. A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it's moving forward towards something.

Get into the habit of laughing; too many of us have forgotten how to laugh. As people grow older, they sometimes forget that they ever laughed. It is a part of their childhood that they can no longer remember.

Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project.

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.

Happiness isn't something that happens to you. It is what you yourself do and determine upon.

Happiness is simply a state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant a good share of the time.

Happiness is the art of relaxation.

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.

If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.

If you wait until circumstances justify your thinking pleasant thoughts, you are likely to wait forever.

Ignore past failures and forge ahead.

I may be a mistake maker, but I'm also a mistake breaker.

It doesn't matter how many times you have failed.... What matters is the successful attempt.

It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear.

It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true. These negative ideas have exactly the same effect upon our behavior as the negative ideas implanted into the mind of a hypnotized subject by a professional hypnotist.

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.

It is well known that when Thomas A. Eddison was stymied by a problem, he would lie down and take a short nap.

It was as if personality itself had a 'face'. This non-physical face of personality seemed to be the real key to personality change. It remained scarred, distorted, 'ugly' or inferior the person himself acted out this role in his behaviour regardless of the changes in physical appearance. If this 'face of personality' could be reconstructed, if old emotional scars could be removed, then the person himself changed, even without facial plastic surgery.

Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown - but the present is real, and your opportunities are now.

Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown -- but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. The catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable Traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. I don't mean some vague moment in the present -- next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute.

Loneliness is caused by an alienation from life. It is a loneliness from your real self.

Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.

Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.

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.

Of all the traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome: for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands, summed up in the phrase, 'It's no use - I can't do it.'

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.

Our self image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other.

Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.

People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Prescription: Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Decide what you want out of a situation. Always have something ahead of you to “look forward to” — to work for and hope for.

Plan all you want for the future. Prepare for it. But don't worry about how you will react tomorrow, or even five minutes from now. Your creative mechanism will react appropriately in the 'now' if you pay attention to what is happening now.