Maxwell Maltz Quotes

We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.

To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.

Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible.

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

Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow - after you have done your best to achieve success today.

We, whoever we are, must have a daily goal in our lives, no matter how small or great, to make that day mean something.

What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live - with your self-respect alive and growing.

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a 'real' experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information which you give to it from your forebrain. Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you THINK or IMAGINE to be 'true.

Successful people are able to rise above crises by relaxing no matter what the external situation. Their belief in themselves, the strength of their self-image is impenetrable armor, which protects them against shattering events.

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

Emptiness is a symptom that you are not living creatively.

The biggest secret of self-esteem is this: Begin to appreciate other people more; show respect for any human being merely because he is a child of God and therefore a thing of value.

We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

The 'self-image' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.

The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognise your own worth.

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

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

This is where you will win the battle - in the playhouse of your mind.

We are injured and hurt emotionally, Not so much by other people or what they say and don't say, But by our own attitude and our own response.

Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than "you" ever could by conscious thought. "You" supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby.

Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent.

Science has now confirmed what philosophers, mystics, and other intuitive people have long declared: every human being has been literally "engineered for success" by his Creator. Every human being has access to a power greater than himself.

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

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.'

Times will change for the better when you change.

You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you.

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.

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.

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

Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possilble. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs.

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

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

Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person's feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel.

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.

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.

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.

Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and ‘natural’ as opposed to self-conscious and studied.

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.

It takes 21 days to develop a habit.

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.

Self-esteem is as necessary to the spirit as food is to the body.

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.

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

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.

Realizing that our actions, feelings and behaviour are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.

Your most important sale in life is to sell yourself to yourself.

When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative "success mechanism" within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or "willpower.

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

We simply must get it through our heads that holding a low opinion of ourselves is not a virtue, but a vice.