Chapter 3 - Imagination

In Chapter 3 of Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr. Maltz opens the chapter by telling about a patient of his who considered himself to be "ugly" and "funny looking" because he he was uncomfortable with his nose and big ears. The patient kept on having pictures in his mind of people making fun of him and talking behind his back. The patient even imagined that his family was ashamed of his appearance because of his looks. When Dr. Maltz first met the patient in person, he saw that his patient's facial deficiencies were not as serious. Dr. Matlz describes the patient's nose as "classical Roman" and his ears were very similiar to thousands of ears from other people. Dr. Maltz realized that the man did not need surgery, and that he had a poor self-image of himself. He was not ugly as he thought himself to be. It was his imagination alone and poor self-image that was the cause of his misery. His poor-self image set up an automatic self-depricating mechanism to his misfortune. After a couple of sessions of Psycho-Cybernetics with Dr. Maltz, the patient realized the power of his imagination and that his imagination was the cause of his poor-self image. Soon the patient succeeded in building a positive self-image of himself and achieved his much-needed confidence by applying his Creative Imagination to do so.

Dr. Maltz says the Creative Imagination enters into all our actions. What the Creative Imagionation does is that it sets a "goal picture" which our automatic mechanism works on. Human beings act or fail to act not because of "will" but because of imagination. Human beings always act and feel and perform in line with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their enviroment.

The nervous system cannot tel the difference between a vividly imagined experience and a real experience. In both imagined and real experience, the nervous system reacts automatically to the information given to the forebrain. To further illustrate this point, Dr Maltz talks about people under hypnosis. In his research he found that when hypnotic subjects are hypnotized, they are convinced of the words of the hypnotist are reality and act as if things are true while being hypnotized.

Our ideas or beliefs, not emotions are the true causative agent of how we act of react in the environment. For example, a man on a hiking trail that meets a grizzly bear will react to what he thinks or believes or imagines what the environment is to him. The messages or information of what the environment is, is received by the nerve impulses of the senses (touch, taste, feel, sound, smell). These nerve impulses are then transmitted to the brain where they are decoded, and interpreted and then become ideas or mental images. It is these mental iamges that we react to or act upon. We act not according to what things are, but rather what we conceive things to be. We have mental images for our self image, our environment, the people around us etc. We behave and act as though our mental images of everything are the truth and reality.

Once we realize this, then we can say that mental images is our oppurtunity to practice positive attitudes and self-empowering habits. If we can picture ourselves being in a certain manner, it is almost the same as actually being that same way in reality. The reason for this is that the nervous system cannot differentiate between happening actually and vividly imagined. The more we mentally practice ourselves to be a certain way, we become closer and closer to it.

Role-playing, is a very good form of mental rehearsal. You can rehearse situations mentally in your mind, if you are in sales or if you have a job interview. You can mentally rehearse the sales process, the objections, the job interview, the interview questions, etc to make yourself more mentally prepared. You can mentally rehearse anything and it is just as good as you doing the actual thing the more vividly your mental rehearsal is.

The reason why imaging, visualization and mental rehearsal works so well is because that is the natural and normal function of our brain. Psycho-Cybernetics explains that the brain and nervous system and muscular system as a servo-mechanism (an automatic goal-striving machine which streets its way to a target or a goal by the use of feedback data and stored information, automatically correcting the course when necessary.) The ONLY WAY for the automatic creative mechanism to work is that it must have a clear and definite goal to strive for. When you have a clear goal in mind, your creative "success mechanism" takes over and does that job for you. This success mechanism works better than your "will" or conscious effort.

The same mechanism that can help you reach your goals can also help you achieve your "best self". You can do this by forming a picture of the self you want to be in your mind and "seeing yourself" in the new role. Before you can change anything about yourself, you must "see" that in yourself before it can happen.

PRACTICE EXERCISE

Set aside 30 minutes a day where you can have peace and quiet to exercise your imagination. Many people have good results imagining themselves sitting in front of a large motion-picture screen of themselves. It is of utmost importance that you make you make your pictures very vivid, detailed and as real as possible. Pay attention to the smallest of details and all the sights, sounds, feeling, smells, tastes in the theater of your mind. Visualize the ideal person you want to be.

This 30 minute mental exercise will create new memories that will be stored in your mid-brain and central nervous system. It will help you create a new self-image. The more you practice visualizing your ideal self, the more you will become your ideal self. Our current inadequacies seems natural to us because we have mentally rehearsed real and imagined memories and we have put them into our automatic mechanism. So if we start putting in empowering thoughts and feelings and memories into our automatic mechanism 30 minutes a day, we can develop a more powerful personality and a healthy self-image.