Chapter 12 - Do-it-Yourself Tranquilizer

Chapter 12 of Psycho-Cybernetics is about developing mental tranquilizers so you will not react to negative stimuli that will steer you off course.

Here is an analogy of how tranquilizers work. Let's suppose you are sitting quietly in your den. Suddenly, the telephone rings. From habit and experience, this is a "signal" or stimulus which you have learned to obey. Instantly you get up from your seat and head towards the phone. When the phone is ringing, this is a stimulus that has changed the course of your action.

However, Dr. Maltz is saying that even though the phone is ringing, you do not need to pay heed to it. You can, if you choose to remain quietly sitting in your den. You are aware of the ringing of the phone, but you no longer choose to react to it. The phone ringing has no actual power over you. Only what you give it. In the past, you have picked up the phone when it was ringing out of habit. You can then form a new habit of not responding to the phone ringing. Just like the way people are conditioned to stop everything they are doing to pick up a ringing phone, people are also conditioned to respond in a certain way to the stimuli in their environment.

One way of extinguising responses is delaying it. Counting backward from 10 when stimulated to be angry can effectively extinguish the autoamtic reflex.

You should realize that you are an "actor" not a "reactor". As a goal-striving being, you have goals that you should strive towards to. If responding and reaction to negative feedback does not take you closer towards the goal, then no response is neccessary. Responding to such stimuli will get you off course.

Relaxation plays an important role as a tranquilzer because relaxation is "non-response". The more relaxed you are, the less you would react to external stimuli.

PRACTICE EXERCISE:

Whenever you come across a stimuli that will get you off-course from your goal, remember the telephone analogy and say "I am letting the telephone ring." Then imagine yourself in other situation when you would normally react in a way that will get you off-course and see yourself unmoved by this stimuli.



Just as the human body has a built-in thermostat that maintains its temperature at 98.6 degrees regardless of the weather, Dr Maltz says that human beings also have a "spiritual thermostat". The spiritual tehrmostat helps you to maintain an emotional climate regardless of the emotional weather around you.