WE’VE ALL BEEN there. Sunday afternoon, phone in hand, dopamine depleted, when the algorithm serves up something that stops the doom scroll. For me, it was a young woman in her mother’s basement holding up a book called Psycho-Cybernetics – telling me it would change my life.
I bought it that day.
Written in 1960 by plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz, this wasn’t your typical self-help book. Maltz had noticed something fascinating: patients would leave his office with perfect new faces but still carry themselves like broken men. Others (no surgery at all) would transform simply by changing how they saw themselves.
His insight? “The brain and nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real experience and one that is vividly imagined.”
That hit differently. I realised that lately, I’d been unconsciously rehearsing failure, telling myself stories about my limitations that my mind was accepting as reality.
Why this matters for men
As men, we’re often taught to push through, stay strong, and ignore the internal dialogue. But that inner voice; the one commenting on our performance, our appearance, our worth – is constantly shaping our reality. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re already using mental rehearsal. The question is: are we rehearsing success or failure?
Maltz called it mental priming. Your subconscious follows whatever blueprint you give it. You can train it like muscle memory, imagining yourself not as you are, but as who you’re becoming.
Most importantly, this isn’t positive thinking. It’s rewiring.
The 3-Step daily reset
After three weeks of testing Maltz’s approach, here’s what’s working:
Morning: prime your day (5 minutes)
Right after your morning routine; coffee, shower, whatever. Take five minutes with eyes closed. Don’t just plan what you need to do; rehearse how you want to feel doing it. Confident in that presentation or calm during a difficult conversation. Present with your kids. Make it vivid, make it real and most importantly notice how your body feels.
Midday: catch and redirect (30 seconds)
Around lunch, pause and listen to your internal commentary, aka your inner critic. If it’s harsh
“I’m screwing this up”, “I’m not good enough”, don’t fight it. Just gently reframe it: “I’m figuring this out.” “Let’s try again.” I think of it as updating our mental software in real-time.
Evening: Find Your Win (2 minutes)
Before sleep, identify one thing you did well that day. Even if everything felt scattered, find that moment. Maybe you helped a colleague, made your kid laugh or simply showed up when it mattered. Let that feeling expand in your body. Remember, this isn’t about ego. It’s about training your brain to notice capacity instead of just problems.
Why it works
Your brain is both a prediction machine and a storytelling organ. Feed it images of doubt, and it looks for evidence everywhere. Feed it glimpses of capability and it starts operating from that place instead. Small mental acts create feedback loops that slowly become who you are.
The reality check
Let’s be honest, life doesn’t magically get easier just because we think positive thoughts. People still leave. Plans still fall apart. Bodies still break down. But we can change how we meet these moments. We can show up as men who believe in their capacity to handle whatever comes.
Personally, after three weeks, something is shifting. I’m catching my negative self-talk faster. I’m approaching challenges with more curiosity than dread. I’m remembering what the Buddha once taught: we are not fixed. We are always becoming.
In a world that trains us to react constantly and scroll endlessly, consciously tending to your inner landscape feels revolutionary. All it takes is a few minutes a day to shape the mirror you see yourself through.
And from there? We begin again.
