Psycho Cybernetics (a video book) – 38 chapter 12 – build a quiet room
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
This is a wonderful lesson on relaxing! Just think, now you’re armed with a place that is only yours, that’s completely under your control. Ahhhhhh…
Here’s the text for this video:
Build Yourself a Quiet Room in Your Mind
“Men seek retreats for themselves: houses in the country, sea-shores and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much,” said Marcus Aurelius, “But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble, does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.
Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself … ”
(Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated by George Long, Mount Vernon, N:Y., Peter Pauper Press)During the last days of World War II someone commented to
President Harry Truman that he appeared to bear up under the stress and strain of the presidency better than any previous president, that the job did not appear to have “aged” him or sapped his vitality, and that this was rather remarkable, especially in view of the many problems that confronted him as a wartime president. His answer was, “I have a foxhole in my mind.” He went on to say that just as a soldier retreated into his foxhole for protection, rest, and recuperation, he periodically retired into his own mental foxhole, where he allowed
nothing to bother him.I cannot urge you strongly enough to invest time and utilize your
imagination to build your own “foxhole in your mind.”Your Own Decompression Chamber
Some people attempt to obtain this benefit by physical relocation. I know one corporate CEO here in New York who has the habit of suddenly disappearing from the office and going to the Bronx Zoo. He leaves behind his cell phone. He is not anywhere someone can come and disturb him. He is lost in the crowds, walking about the zoo, intentionally distracted and inaccessible. This strategy apparently works well for him, as he has risen up the corporate ranks, and become a multimillionaire thanks to .his stock options and success at growing companies’ profits. However, doesn’t it seem a bit inconvenient to have to depart the office and take a cab across the city to walk around the zoo in order to decompress?
It is a much shorter, convenient commute to a readily accessible
decompression chamber, constructed within your own imagination. The harried mother, besieged all day by two young children-if one is quiet for a moment, the other is not!-needs only a brief opportunity, possibly their nap time, to step into the decompression chamber she has built in her imagination for recovery. The stressed-out salesperson can stop the car in a parking lot between appointments for a quick visit to his or her decompression chamber.Each of us needs a quiet room inside the mind, a quiet center
within, like the deep of the ocean that is never disturbed, no matter how rough the surface waves may become.This quiet room within, which is built in imagination, works as a
mental and emotional decompression chamber. It depressurizes you from tensions, worry, pressures, stresses, and strains, refreshes you and enables you to return to your work-a-day world better prepared to cope with it.It is my belief that each personality already has a quiet center
within, which is never disturbed and is unmoved, like the mathematical point in the very center of a wheel or axle that remains stationary.What we need to do is to find this quiet center within us and retreat into it periodically for rest, recuperation, and renewed vigor. One of the most beneficial prescriptions that I have ever given patients is the advice to learn to return to this quiet tranquil center.
And one of the best ways that I have found for entering this quiet center is to build for yourself, in imagination, a little mental room.
Furnish this room with whatever is most restful and refreshing to you: perhaps beautiful landscapes, if you like paintings; a volume of your favorite verse, if you like poetry. The colors of the walls are your own favorite “pleasant” colors, but should be chosen from the restful hues of blue, light green, yellow, gold. The room is plainly and simply furnished; there are no distracting elements. It is very neat and everything is in order. Simplicity, quietness, beauty are the keynotes. It contains your favorite easy chair.From one small window you can look out and see a beautiful beach. The waves roll in on the beach and retreat, but you cannot hear them, for your room is very, very quiet. Take as much care in building this room in your imagination as you would in building an actual room. Be thoroughly familiar with every detail. Do not permit the thought that this is childish stop you in your tracks. The power of this technique lies in its careful and thorough construction, its vivid detail, its “realness” as a place of retreat rather than just a vague idea.
A Little Vacation Every Day
Whenever you have a few spare moments during the day between
appointments, perhaps riding the bus, retire into your quiet room.
Whenever you begin to feel tension mounting or feel hurried or harried, retire into your quiet room for a few moments. Just a very few minutes taken from a very busy day in this manner will more than pay for themselves. It is not time wasted, but time invested. Say to yourself, ”I am going to rest a bit in my quiet room.”Then, in imagination, see yourself ,climbing the stairs to your
room. Say to yourself, “I am now climbing the stairs. Now I am opening the door. Now I am inside.” In imagination notice all the quiet, restful details. See yourself sitting down in your favorite chair, utterly relaxed and at peace with the world. Your room is secure. Nothing can touch you here. There is nothing to worry about. You left your worries at the foot of the stairs. There are no decisions to be made here, no hurry, no bother.You Need a Certain Amount of Escapism
Yes, this is escapism. Sleep is “escapism” too. Carrying an umbrella in the rain is escapism. Building yourself an actual house where you can retreat from the weather and the elements is escapism. And taking a vacation is escapism. Our nervous system needs a certain amount of escapism. It needs some freedom and protection from the continual bombardment of external stimuli. Your soul and your nervous system need a room for rest, recuperation, and protection every bit as much as your physical body needs a physical house, and for the saflle reasons;
Your mental quiet room gives your nervous system a little vacation every day. For the moment, you mentally “vacate” your work-a-day world of duties, responsibilities, decisions, pressures, and “get away from it all” by mentally retiririg into your no-pressure chamber.Pictures are more impressive to your automatic mechanism than
words. Particularly so, if the picture happens to have a strong symbolic meaning. One mental picture that I have found very effective is the following:On a visit to Yellowstone National Park, I was waiting patiently
for the geyser “Old Faithful,” which goes off approximately every
hour. Suddenly the geyser erupted in a great mass of hissing steam, like a gigantic boiler whose safety plug had blown out. A small boy standing near me, asked his father, “What makes it do that?” ”Well,” said his father, “I guess old Mother Earth is like the rest of us. She builds up a certain amount of pressure, and every once in a while just has to blow off steam to stay healthy.”Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought to myself, if we humans could blow off steam harmlessly like that when emotional pressures build up inside us?
I didn’t have a geyser or a steam valve in the top of my bead, but
I did have an imagination. So I began to use this mental picture when I would retire into my mental quiet room. I would remember Old Faithful, and form a mental picture of emotional steam and pressure coming out the top of my head and evaporating harmlessly. Try this mental picture on yourself when you’re wrought up or tense. The ideas of blowing off steam and blowing your top have powerful associations built into your mental machinery.Incidentally, many psychologists and performance coaches now
talk about these same ideas and techniques in the context of recovery. In The New Psycho-Cybernetics audio program, you will find this discussion continued under that topic.“Clear” Your Mechanism Before Undertaking a New Problem
If you are using an adding machine or an electronic computer, you must clear the machine of previous problems before undertaking a new one. Otherwise, parts of the old problem or the old situation carry over into the new one-and give you a wrong answer. This exercise of retiring for a few moments into your quiet room in your mind can accomplish the same sort of clearing of your success mechanism. For that reason, it is very helpful to practice it between tasks, situations, or environments that require different moods, mental adjustments, or mental sets.
A common example of carry-over, or failure to clear your mental
machinery, is the following: A business executive carries his work-a-day worries and his work-a-day mood home with him. All day he has been harried, hurried, aggressive, and “set to go.” Perhaps he has felt a bit of frustration, which tends to make him irritable. He stops working physically when he goes home. But he carries with him a residue of his aggressiveness, frustration, hurry, and worry.He is still set to go and cannot relax. He is irritable with his wife and family. He keeps thinking about problems at the office, although there is nothing he can do about them.
Insomnia, Rudeness Are Often Emotional Carry-Overs
Many people carry their troubles to bed with them when they should be resting. Mentally and emotionally, they are still trying to do something about a situation, at a time when doing something is not in order. All during the day we need many different types of emotional and mental organizations. You need a different mood and mental organization for talking with your boss and talking with a customer. And if you have just talked with an irate and irritable customer, you need a change in mind set before talking with a second customer. Otherwise emotional carry-over from the one situation will he inappropriate in dealing with the other.
Emotional Carry-Over Causes Accidents
Insurance companies and other agencies that do research on the cause of accidents have found that emotional carry-over causes many automobile accidents. If the driver has just had a spat with her spouse or boss, if she has just experienced frustration, or if she has just left a situation that called for aggressive behavior, she is much more likely to have an accident. She carries over inappropriate attitudes and emotions into her driving. She is really not angry at the other drivers. She is somewhat like someone who wakes up in the morning from a dream in
which she experienced extreme anger. She realizes that the injustice heaped on her happened only in a dream. But she is still angry-period! Fear can carryover in the same manner.Carry-Over Is the Opposite of Concentration
The popular television detective Lt. Columbo, played brilliantly by
actor Peter Falk, once said, “Sometimes my thoughts-it gets like a
traffic jam up here.”Successful performers in all fields know that they cannot function
well with a traffic jam going on in their head! In fact, peak performers virtually worship at the altar of “focus” and “concentration,” working tirelessly to achieye it, for very good reason: concentration is a major key to minute-by-minute success in any endeavor. John Lyons, one of the world’s most celebrated trainers of horses and riders, as well as editor of The Peifect Horse newsletter, states, “The hardest thing about training horses isn’t knowing what to do or having enough strength or courage to do it. It is learning to stay focused.” The same statement may be made about golf or selling or parenting or you-name-it; the
hardest thing is not the mechanics, it’s staying focused. Mr. Lyons
went on to say, “If I don’t zero in on one thing at a time, I can’t help my horse.” If you don’t zero in on one thing at a time, you cannot help yourself, help a team, or succeed!Create Your Own Quick Distractions Eraser and Use It as Often as Needed
The visualization I taught for many years, which I called “clearing the calculator,” depicted clearing or storage for later work one mathematical problem on the calculator’s little screen before you could attempt work on another. Hitting the “clear” button takes problem
1. completely off your “screen.” You must do so before addressing problem
2. Many people develop other illustrations and visualizations more useful to them. I’ve received many letters in which people describe visualizing using an eraser and wiping a chalkboard clean, a sponge to wipe a window clean, even stepping into the shower and rinsing clean.
You can call up this mental picture and use it as an eraser in as short a time as a few seconds, such as those five seconds of imposed hesitation before answering the phone.
Olympic champion high-diver Greg Louganis reportedly mentally
rehearsed each dive 40 times immediately prior to the dive! In
reality, what he was doing has:1. Stopping to “clear the calculator.”
2. Pushing all distractions aside by, in quick succession,
replaying a mini-mental movie 1,2,3,4, 5, 6, 7 … 38,
39,40 times so that there was nothing left on his
screen but the successful mental picture.3. Letting his servo-mechanism deliver the 41st as actual experience.
Most people never adopt this simple but profoundly effective
approach. Instead, they enter into a challenging activity-say, an
important meeting at the office-with· “traffic jam” (complete with
horns blaring, people shouting) going on in their thoughts. They
attempt to function without focus! With a· whole pot of thought-andemotional stew boiling over-worries about this or that, a disagreeable conversation with spouse or .friend, distraction by things that need to be addressed an hour or two down the road-they give their servo-mechanism fifty different things to do, thus dissipating its power.An athlete like Louganis must put a firm lid not only on that bub-
bling stew, but also on another pot on the next burner over, where
perhaps thoughts recognizing stiffness or soreness in a limb, tension in a muscle, worry over form all threatens to boil up aswell. All of this must first be replaced with single focus, to permit relaxed performance.You, too, need to put the lids firmly on the pots, turn down the
heat, and successfully ignore them altogether iu favor of concentration on one vivid, successful, mental picture ata time.PRESCRIPTION
Develop your own equivalent of the “clear the calculator” ritual, to erase distractions instantly on command, and practice its use. With practice, it will become more arid more effective, so that the desired “clear-headedness” occurs faster and faster, ultimately in an instant. Then, for each situation, you can immediately follow the “erasing” with an appropriate mini-mental movie or even a still or two from the movie, providing the mental picture for the servo-mechanism to concentrate all of its powers on at that moment.
And with that, we will meet again next time with chapter 12,
Click off Tension, Click on Performance
Interested in your own copy? Get it here
Start at the Beginning: Psycho Cybernetics video book
And, always keep smiling with love and light,
Nancy Holtzen
Skype: nancy.holtzen
Work With Me and the Prosperity Team – Prosperity Formula
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