DISCOVERING YOUR SUCCESS MECHANISM 27

Still half dreaming, in perfect darkness, he traced these

characters on the sheet of paper at the bedside.
"In the morning he was surprised to see in his nocturnal
sketch features which he thought it impossible the fossil
itself would reveal. He hastened to the Jardin des Plantes
and, with his drawing as a guide, succeeded in chiseling
away the surface of the stone under which portions of the
fish proved to be hidden. When wholly exposed, the fossil
corresponded with his dream and his drawing, and he suc-
ceeded in classifying it with ease."

PRACTICE EXERCISE NO. 1

Get a New Mental Picture of Yourself

The unhappy, failure-type personality cannot develop a

new self-image by pure will power, or by arbitrarily decid-
ing to. There must be some grounds, some justification,
some reason for deciding that the old picture of self is in
error, and that a new picture is appropriate. You cannot
merely imagine a new self-image; unless you feel that it is
based upon truth. Experience has shown that when a per-
son does change his self-image, he has the feeling that for
one reason or another, he "sees," or realizes the truth
about himself.
The truth in this chapter can set you free of an old in-
adequate self-image, if you read it often, think intently \
about the implications, and "hammer home" its truths to
yourself.
Science has now confirmed what philosophers, mystics,
and other intuitive people have long declared: every
human being has been literally "engineered for success" by
his Creator. Every human being has access to a power
greater than himself.
This means "YOU."
As Emerson has said, "There are no great and no
small."
28 PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS
If you were engineered for success and happiness, then
the old picture of yourself as unworthy of happiness, of a
person who was "meant" to fail, must be in error.
Read this chapter through at least three times per week
for the first 21 days. Study it and digest it Look for ex-
amples in your experiences, and the experiences of your
friends, which illustrate the creative mechanism in action.
Memorize the following basic principles by which your
success mechanism operates. You do not need to be an
electronic engineer, or a physicist, to operate your own
servo-mechanism, any more than you have to be able to
engineer an automobile in order to drive one, or become
an electrical engineer in order to turn on the light in your
room. You do need to be familiar with the following,
however, because having memorized them, they will throw
"new light" on what is to follow:
1. Your built-in success mechanism must have a goal or
"target." This goal, or target, must be conceived of as
"already in existence—now" either in actual or poten-
tial form. It operates by either (1) steering you to a
goal already in existence or by (2) "discovering" some-
thing already in existence.
2. The automatic mechanism is teleological, that is, oper-
ates, or must be oriented to "end results," goals. Do
not be discouraged because the "means whereby" may
not be apparent. It is the function of the automatic
mechanism to supply the "means whereby" when you
supply the goal. Think in terms of the end result, and
the means whereby will often take care of themselves.
3. Do not be afraid of making mistakes, or of temporary
failures. All servo-mechanisms achieve a goal by nega-
tive feedback, or by going forward, making mistakes,
and immediately correcting course.
4. Skill learning of any kind is accomplished by trial and
error, mentally correcting aim after an error, until a
"successful" motion, movement or performance has
been achieved. After that, further learning, and con-'
tinued success, is accomplished by forgetting the past