The NEW You!
by Ed Hirsch
If you want to change or improve anything in your life, you must begin by changing the inner aspects of your mind.
Most people think that the problems in their lives are caused by other people and external circumstances. They are shocked and angered to be told that they are the primary architects of everything that happens to them. They want others to change. They want the world to change. But they do not want to change themselves.
I will share with you the key to personal freedom and happiness ... the high road to great success and fulfillment:
You can control only one thing in the world, and that is the way you think. However, when you take complete control over your thinking, you take control over all the other aspects of your life. By thinking and talking only about what you want, and by refusing to think or talk about what you don't want, you become the architect of your own destiny.
In the 1960 classic book Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr. Maxwell Maltz (a plastic surgeon) stated that Anyone could start a new and self-fulfilling life by changing his self-image.
"The significance of the self-image has been around for more than a decade. Yet there has been little written about it. Curiously enough, this is not because *self-image psychology* has not worked, but because it has worked so amazingly well. As one of my colleagues expressed it, "I am reluctant to publish my findings...because if I presented some of my case histories and described the rather amazing and spectacular improvements in personality, I would be accused of exaggerating, or trying to start a cult, or both."
Maltz presented this idea in a clear and personally reassuring way. His simple, step-by-step *how-to* model for creating and maintaining a new self-image went something like this:
1. Understand the role imagination plays in self-perception.
2. Use your imagination to create images of success.
3. Identify, confront and cast off false beliefs that provide negative targets for your internal guidance system.
4. Decondition yourself from stressful emotional responses that prevent your internal guidance system from working effectively.
5. Set specific goals of success for your internal guidance system.
6. Cultivate specific aspects of personality that lead to success.
7. Use your negative experiences as feedback to correct your course toward your goal.
8. Remove the emotional scars that inhibit your personality.
9. Deflect assaults on your self-esteem by responding appropriately and creatively to emotional pressures.
10. Build feelings of success into your personality.
In 1986, the state of California appointed a committee of psychologists, medical doctors, educators, child-development specialists, and other professionals-- "the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility"-- to create a new approach to problem solving, "a work plan and a call to action."
Building an adequate self-image is recognized today as a necessary strategy in the empowerment of individuals and a promising step toward the correction of social ills.
The definition of self-esteem that the Task Force had adopted as the basis of their report was "Appreciating my own worth and importance and having the character to be accountable for myself and to act responsibly toward others" -- essentially the same as the one Maltz had proposed 30 years before.
If you change the quality of your thinking, you change the quality of your life. The only way to improve the quality of your life is to transform the quality of your perceptions. Are you (no)where or are you (now)here?
Since there is no limit to how much better you can think, there is no real limit to how much better your life can be. It's totally up to you.
Musical artist Todd Rundgren wrote *Change Myself* on his 1991 2nd Wind Album ... "I want to change the world, I want to make it well, How can I change the world when I can't change myself? Try again tomorrow. Try again, Try again, Try again ...
Best regards,
Ed Hirsch
mailto:ed@dreamstyles.com ICQ# 55939361 650-872-1024 So. San Francisco, California
This Way to FREEDOM!
http://WealthLessons.com/id/ed
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