“Jesus warned us about the folly of putting a patch of new material upon an old garment, or putting new wine into old bottles.”

<aside> 💡 “positive thinking” cannot be used effectively as a patch or a crutch to the same self image. In fact, it is literally impossible to really think about a particular situation, as long as you hold a negative concept of self.

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“the secret is this: to really ‘live,’ that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self image that you can live with. you must find yourself acceptable to ‘you.’ you must have a wholesome self-esteem. you must have a self that you can trust and believe in. you must have a self that you are not ashamed to ‘be,’ and one that you can feel free to express creatively, rather than to hide or cover up. You must have a self that corresponds to reality so that you can function effectively in a real world. You must know your- self—both your strengths and your weaknesses and be honest with yourself concerning both. Your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of "you," being neither more than you are, nor less than you are.”

<aside> 💡 When this self-image is intact and secure, you feel "good." When it is threatened, you feel anxious and in- secure. When it is adequate and one that you can be wholesomely proud of, you feel self-confident. You feel free to "be yourself" and to express yourself. You function at your optimum. When it is an object of shame, you attempt to hide it rather than express it. Creative expression is blocked. You become hostile and hard to get along with.

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“Today, I am more convinced than ever that what each of us really wants, deep down, is more LIFE.”

<aside> 💡 Happiness, success, peace of mind, or whatever your own conception of supreme good may be, is experienced in its essence as-more life.

When we experience expansive emotions of happiness, self-confidence, and success, we enjoy more life. And to the degree that we inhibit our abilities, frustrate our God-given talents, and allow ourselves to suffer anxiety, fear, self-condemnation and self-hate, we literally choke off the life force available to us and turn our back upon the gift which our Creator has made. To the degree that we deny the gift of life, we embrace death.

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“There is within each one of us a "life instinct," which is forever working toward health, happiness, and all that makes for more life for the individual. This "life instinct" works for you through what I call the Creative Mechanism, or when used correctly the "Success Mechanism" built into each human being.”

“This Creative Mechanism within you is impersonal.”

<aside> 💡 It will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending upon the goals which you yourself set for it. Present it with "success goals" and it functions as a "Success Mechanism." Present it with negative goals, and it operates just as impersonally, and just as faithfully as a "Failure Mechanism.”

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<aside> 💡 Like any other servo-mechanism, it must have a clear- cut goal, objective, or "problem" to work upon.

The goals that our own Creative Mechanism seeks to achieve are MENTAL IMAGES, or mental pictures, which we create by the use of IMAGINATION.

The key goal-image is our Self-image.

Our Self-Image prescribes the limits for the accomplishment of any particular goals. It prescribes the "area of the possible."

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• need to fill our creative mechanism with our thoughts, data, beliefs, and interpretations but need to feed it with the good stuff and not the bad stuff in the world and on social media

"If you can remember, worry, or tie your shoe, you will have no trouble applying this method.”

<aside> 💡 The method itself consists in learning, practicing, and experiencing, new habits of thinking, imagining, remembering, and acting in order to (1) develop an adequate and realistic Self-image, and (2) use your Creative Mechanism to bring success and happiness in achieving particular goals.

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