THE automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results according to Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend on 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.’ If your muscles need to perform some motion to bring about the end result, your automatic mechanism will guide them more accurately and delicately than you could by ‘taking thought.’ If you need ideas, your automatic mechanism will supply them.
Think in terms of possibilities
But to accomplish this – YOU must supply the goal; and to supply a goal capable of activating your creative mechanism, you must think of the result in terms of a present possibility. The possibility of the goal must be seen so clearly that it becomes ‘REAL’ to your brain and nervous system. So real, in fact, that the same feelings are evoked as would be present if the goal were already achieved.
Our brain and nervous system cannot tell the difference between a ‘real’ experience, and one which is vividly imagined. Our automatic creative mechanism always acts and reacts appropriately to the environment, circumstance or situation. The only information concerning the environment, circumstance, or situation available to it is what you believe to be true concerning them.
Failure feeling
First of all, it is important to understand that failure feelings – fear, anxiety, lack of self-confidence – do not spring from heavenly oracle. Dr Maltz cautions, “They are not writhen 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 and are indicative only of your attitudes of mind within you – not of external facts which are rigged against you. They mean only that you are underestimating your own abilities, overestimating and exaggerating the nature of the difficulty before you, and that you are reactivating memories of past failures rather than memories of past successes. That is all that they mean and all that they signify. They do not pertain to or represent the TRUTH concerning future events, but only your mental attitude about the future event.
Set your machinery for success
If there is one simple secret to the operation of your unconscious creative mechanism, it is this: “Call up, capture, evoke the feeling of success.” When you feel successful and self-confident, you will act successfully. When the feeling is strong, Dr. Maltz believes, you can literally do no wrong.
Too much effort to consciously bring about spontaneity is likely to destroy spontaneous action. It is much easier and more effective to simply define your goal or end result. Picture it to yourself clearly and vividly. Then simply capture the FEELING you will experience if the desirable were already an accomplished fact. Then you are acting spontaneously and creatively. Then you are using the powers of your subconscious mind. Then your internal machinery is geared for success. “To guide you in making the correct muscular motions and adjustments; to supply you with creative ideas, and to do whatever else is necessary in order to make the goal an accomplished fact.
Winning feeling the scientific explanation
The science of cybernetics throws new light on just how the winning feeling operates. Skill learning is largely a matter of trial-and-error practice until the number of ‘hits’ or successful actions have registered in memory.
The objective of practice is to make repeated trials, constantly correct errors, until a ‘hit’ is scored. When a successful pattern of action is performed, the entire action pattern from beginning to end is not only stored in what we call conscious memory, but in our nerves and tissues: “we can feel it in our bones.” When Dr Carry Middlecoff says “There was something about the way I felt that gave me a line to the cup just as clearly as it has been tattooed on my brains,” he is, perhaps unknowingly, very aptly describing the scientific concept of just what happens in the human mind when we learn, remember, or imagine.
A former President of Harvard once made a speech on what he called “The Habit of Success.” Many failures in elementary school, he said, were due to the fact that students were not given, at the very beginning, a sufficient amount to work at which they could succeed, and thus never had an opportunity to develop the ‘atmosphere of success’, or what Dr. Maltz and his colleagues call ‘the winning feeling.’ The student, President Eliot reiterated, who had never experienced success early in his school life, had no chance to develop the ‘habit of success’ – the habitual feeling of faith and confidence in undertaking new work. He urged that teachers arrange work in the early grades so as to insure that the student experienced success. The work should be well within the ability of the student, yet interesting enough to arouse enthusiasm and motivation. “These small successes would give the student the ‘feel of success’ which would be a valuable ally in future undertakings.”
We can acquire the ‘habit of success’; we can build into our gray matter patterns and feelings of success at any time and at any age by following the profound advice to teachers.
If we are habitually frustrated by failure, we are apt to acquire habitual ‘feelings of failure’ which color all our undertakings. But by arranging things so that we can succeed in little things, we can build an atmosphere of success which will carry over into larger undertakings. We can gradually undertake more difficult tasks, and after succeeding in them, be in a position to undertake something even more challenging.
Success is literally built upon success and there is much truth in the saying “Nothing succeeds like success.”
Weight-lifters start with weights they can lift and gradually increase the weights over a period of time. Good fight managers start a new boxer off with easy opponents and gradually pit him against more experienced fighters. We can apply the same general principles in almost any field of endeavour. The principle is merely to start with an ‘opponent’ over which you can succeed, and gradually take on more and more difficult tasks.
Even in those areas where we have already developed a high degree of skill, it sometimes helps to ‘drop back,’ lower our sights a bit, and practice with a feeling of ease. This is especially true when one reaches a ‘sticking point’ in progress, where effort for additional progress in unavailing.
Remember what you succeed in is not as important as the feeling of success which attended it. All that is needed is some experience where you succeeded in doing what you wanted to do, in achieving what you set out to achieve, and something that brought you some feeling of satisfaction.
Dr Maltz virtually pontificates that the new concept of ‘the winning feeling’ does carry a responsibility. “No longer can you derive sickly comfort from blaming your parents, society, your early experiences, or injustices of others for your present predicament. These things may and should help you understand how you got where you are in the first place. Blaming them, or even yourself for the past mistakes, however, will not solve your problem, or improve your present or future. There is no merit in blaming yourself. The past explains how you got here; but where you go from here is your responsibility. The choice is yours.”
BY CAPT SAM ADDAIH (RTD)