“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.”

Few days back, when I read this quote which is by the way written by a very successful US plastic surgeon, motivational author, and creator of the Psycho-Cybernetics self-help book, Maxwell Maltz, I thought it must be so easy for him to churn out such motivational lines. Obviously, for a guy who has tasted success in multiple roles as a plastic surgeon and then as an author with a bestseller self help book, quoting on success and the power of self-image must be easy. But, isn’t this quote profoundly inspiring? You bet it is.

Have you ever come across a situation when it becomes difficult to keep your bicycle steady due to some problems in the tire? You are trying hard to keep the bicycle steady, but it continues to veer to the left or right. The same thing happens when we try to attain a goal without aligning our self image to the goal. No matter how hard you push, you would not achieve the goal unless you readjust the tire.

This is what Psycho-Cybernetics, a classic self-help book, talks about. According to the author of the book, most of us fail to succeed in our goals due to the mental picture we have of ourselves.  Each of us has a mental image of ourselves that defines our perception of what we think we are. These perceptions are based on our belief that we have developed through our past experiences. May be in your childhood you developed a belief on others reaction to some particular situation. These beliefs of what sort of person we are stays with us forever and we don’t bother to question much on these.

Escaping your self-image is not possible. If you believe that you hate public speaking, you won’t be able to enjoy it and if you think exercising is beyond your capabilities, you will not be able to lose weight and keep yourself fit. Likewise, if you nurture a self-image of being a failure, you would unconsciously find an approach to turn an opportunity into a failure. To achieve your goals, there is no other way but to modify your self- image. According to Maltz,

• Self-image determines your personality and behavior
• It controls your action
• It defines the boundaries of what you can do and cannot do
• Modifying and expanding your self-image means expanding your limits of capability

Once you are able to get rid of your negative self-image, you will be able to hold up an image of the intended target. Your behavior and personality will automatically adjust in a course of time to attain the target.  It is obvious that change of our self-image cannot be done overnight, as stated earlier, experiences has the power to mould your self-image. That means if you consciously picture yourself as a success, your brain as well as nervous system will guide you to the process automatically for all events in the future.

Therefore, if you want to achieve success in your goals, visualize the right self-image.