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.

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

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.

The un-happiest of mortals is that man who insists upon reliving the past, over and over in imagination - continually criticizing himself for past mistakes - continually condemning himself for past sins.

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.

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

Visualizing, creative mental picturing, is no more difficult than what you do when you remember some scene out of the past, or worry about the future. Acting out new action patterns is no more difficult than deciding, then following through on tying your shoes in a new and different manner each morning, instead of continuing to tie them in your old habitual way, without thought or decision.