Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on.
Maxwell MaltzRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our minds can shape our real experiences by influencing our nervous system through our thoughts and imaginations.
Maxwell Maltz's quote emphasizes the powerful connection between our thoughts and our bodily reactions. It suggests that whether we are experiencing something real or merely imagining it, the nervous system responds similarly, highlighting the importance of our mindset and perceptions in shaping our reality and experiences.
Themes
Nervous SystemImaginationThoughtRealityMindset
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about the power of positive thinking.
More from Maxwell Maltz
All quotes →Of all the traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome: for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands, summed up in the phrase, 'It's no use - I can't do it.'
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The 'self-image' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.
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Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.
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Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible.
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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.
Maxwell MaltzRead
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