Background, on the commute this morning my kids noticed that Spotify changed their logo and the color is slightly different. I commented how it is now slightly harder for me to find the sea of greenish apps, and my son noticed that it looks like "that old app you used to use that had the elephant". I said, "Oh Evernote? Boy I sure don't miss that."

He said "Yeah, that app was basically the Temu Obsidian", and my daughter chimed in with SHEIN Obsidian, lol.

I thought it was a hilariously awesome and fitting slam. I know they're mostly humoring me on my obsession, but they also think it's cool and have created a few notes in their own vaults.

(adding help flair, and this will probably get deleted seeing that there's no category, but I hope it brings a smile to a few before it gets nuked)

I want to recommend a book that genuinely changed how I think about self-improvement, and I want to do it properly, not just "read this book, trust me bro."

I've been into personal development for over a decade. I've read the big names, the obscure ones, the ones Reddit loves, and the ones that show up on every "top 10" list (I swear I'll punch someone if I hear atomic habits again...). A lot of them deliver the same basic playbook repackaged in different language: set goals, build habits, wake up earlier, think positive, journal more. Some of that works, but a lot of it doesn't stick, and I think the reason it doesn't stick is because those books are treating symptoms while ignoring the thing that's actually running the show underneath.

Psycho-Cybernetics is the book that made that click for me.

It was written in 1960 by a plastic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz, and it lays out a single idea that basically every modern self-help concept traces back to... whether the authors credit him or not. Every self help guru of the past decade and beyonod, Instagram mindset coach charging $2,000 for a course...

In my opinion, most, if not all of them are riffing off the same core ideas in this book. Except Psycho Cybernetics itself explains it better and more honestly than any of them.

The reason I keep coming back to it - and the reason I'm writing this instead of just upvoting someone else's recommendation - is that it doesn't just tell you to "visualize success" and leave it there. It explains why visualization works, why it fails when done wrong, and gives you an actual framework for rewiring the self-image that's been deciding what you're capable of your entire life. It's the only self-help book I've read where the ideas actually compound over time instead of fading after a week.

I wrote a full review of this on my blog (I'll link it at the end if you want the deep dive), but I wanted to share the core of it here because I think the ideas deserve to be discussed, not just linked to. So here's the substance of what makes this book different and why I think it deserves a spot at the top of anyone's reading list.

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Psycho-Cybernetics Review: Could This Be The Best Self-Help Book Ever Written?

Could Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz be one of the best self help books ever written? In this review, I’ll explain why I think this is one of the BEST self help books of all time.

That is not a throwaway compliment. I’ve read a lot of personal development books over the years, including plenty that promise transformation and deliver little more than recycled motivation, goal-setting advice, or another version of “wake up earlier and work harder.”

Psycho-Cybernetics gets underneath the problems most men keep trying to fix directly: confidence, discipline, dating, attraction, self-belief, and social presence. The book explains how a man moves through life according to the “internal picture” he carries of himself, almost like a private “theater of the mind”, and that picture decides what feels natural, possible, or completely out of reach.

That last part is where the book becomes extremely powerful…

Maxwell Maltz understood something most self-help books only dance around:

A man does not consistently rise above the image he holds of himself. You can force new habits for a while. You can hype yourself up, set bigger goals, and stack productivity systems on top of your life. But if your “self-image” stays the same, you usually snap back to the same patterns, the same doubts, the same ceiling.

That is why Psycho-Cybernetics has lasted. It is not just another book about “thinking positive”.

It is a framework – or even an operating-system – for changing the internal identity that shapes how you act, what you attempt, what you tolerate, and what kind of life feels “realistic” to you.

Why a plastic surgeon wrote one of the greatest self-help books of the 20th century

Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon in the 1940s and 50s. He’d spend his days giving women new noses, men new jaws, and burn-survivors faces they could finally look at in the mirror.

The surgeries went well, and Dr. Maltz was a successful surgeon.

But over time, he kept noticing a recurring pattern in his patients: half of them walked out of the clinic genuinely different people. New face, new energy, and basically brand-new people living happily ever after.

The other half walked out with new faces and the exact same negative thought patterns they came in with. He’d give two men the same nose… one became a handsome giga chad. The other still avoided eye contact at the deli counter.

Why did some patients never seem “satisfied”, no matter how beautiful or successful they become?

This sent Maltz on a journey of psychology, philosophy, the early work on cybernetics and feedback systems coming out of MIT, the whole package. And eventually he started writing his own theory of what was actually happening to his patients.

The conclusion: Surgery may have physically fixed their ailments. But without changing their internal self-image, they still received the results they were accustomed to.

They went home, looked in the mirror, and the old self-image overruled the new physical one. The old self came back to the forefront… eventually, the patient acted out of old expectations, and the world responded out of old patterns, and the cycle closed back up around him.

The face changed… but the person underneath didn’t.

This was the late 1950s, and it was the first time anyone in mainstream Western thinking had laid out the idea this clearly. Psycho-Cybernetics came out in 1960. Since then, it has sold over 30 million copies, and remains a timeless classic to this day.

The core idea: self-image is the master variable (and why you may be stuck)

Here’s the central claim of the book, in one sentence:

You will act, feel, and perform consistently with the image you hold of yourself, regardless of what you say, what you wish, or what you tell yourself in the mirror.

If what’s already in there is a man who doesn’t believe he gets to win, then his actions, thoughts, and results will begin to reflect that. This is the man who “worries”… and in turn, attracts those very results to him. This is the automatic “goal striving mechanism” Maltz describes in the book in action (I’ll briefly explain it below).

But for now – just imagine if someone dwelt on a successful result, rather than worried about it. It takes the same amount of energy. But most people automatically default to the negative instead! Imagine you began to visualize yourself as the person you wanted to be, consistently. And instead of fear, you felt relief, success, confidence, health!

“See” the end result in your mind, with the same intensity and visual clarity you imagine negative outcomes…

You essentially program your mind for success, simply by “flipping” something we’ve all done – worry.

When you catch yourself worrying, immediately try to stop it, and then “feel” how it would be if you succeeded at whatever it is instead. The more often you do this, the stronger the image in your mind and feeling becomes, bringing the ideal “visualized result” ever closer to reality.

Whether you want to become wealthier, happier, more successful at your sport – whatever it is – it begins at your self image.

Why positive thinking and affirmations mostly fail

Affirmations, vision boards, manifestation, goal-setting systems – they have their place and can provide results. But they are like treating a symptom, rather than fixing the root cause of the problem.

You can stand in front of the mirror at 2am repeating “I am confident, I am attractive, I am magnetic” until the cows come home… but if the underlying image says I am awkward, unwanted, never quite enough, the deeper image always wins.

Maltz provides a powerful solution: “Experience yourself doing the thing, in detail, repeatedly, until the image of yourself shifts to include that new experience as a real memory.”

In the book, this is referred to as the “theater of the mind” – a detailed mental rehearsal of the new self in action. Sensory texture, emotion, the works. Targeted feedback into the nervous system. You give the system enough rehearsed experience of the “new self” that it stops flagging it as foreign.

When your thoughts and feelings align, and you truly believe something is possible – or a probability – the chances of it actually happening are dramatically increased.

There’s a reason the modern visualization/manifestation industry exists. The Secret, Power of Now, half of Tony Robbins, most of Brian Tracy, every Instagram coach with a $2,000 mindset course… they all trace back to a mechanism Maltz published in 1960, often repackaged in the author’s own concepts and terminology.

And in a roundabout way, some of it does work – when visualization and feeling are combined, things start to shift. Opportunities you didn’t notice before begin showing up. You feel more confident, more positive, and as a result, you actually become more successful. It can almost feel like things are “manifesting” right in front of you.

But Psycho-Cybernetics gives you the full framework – goal-striving, the self-image, and a flexible system your entire life can operate around.

Not just the cherry-picked parts that are easy to market.

The success mechanism: how to actually visualize, plan, and create

Psycho-Cybernetics sounds more complicated than it is, which may be one of the reasons it doesn’t regularly get cited on every other Reddit self-improvement thread. It simply means using visualization and cognitive techniques to train your brain’s “internal guidance system” to achieve goals and build a healthy self-image.

In Maltz’s framing, the human mind and nervous system function like a goal-seeking missile. Give the system a clear target. Feed it accurate information about where it currently is. The system will continuously correct course toward the target, automatically, without you needing to micromanage every step.

This is the “success mechanism” Maltz spends about a third of the book unpacking.

The idea is borrowed straight from the early cybernetic engineers (Norbert Wiener and crew) who were designing the first feedback-loop systems for missiles, autopilots, and thermostats. Maltz looked at those systems and realised the human brain had been running the same architecture for hundreds of thousands of years. The engineers were just reverse-engineering what biology had already perfected.

The practical takeaway:

Most people never give their internal system a clear target. They feed it vague, anxious, contradictory inputs. “I want to be successful.” “Don’t fail.” “I should probably try harder.” “Why isn’t this working.” The system can’t lock onto a target that fuzzy. It just spins.

A few of the ideas explored:

• Pick a specific outcome you actually want. “I want to make more money” won’t do it. Picture the actual scene… the figure in the bank, the apartment you live in, the way you carry yourself in the meeting where you closed the deal. Concrete. Sensory. Located in time and place.
• Rehearse it in mental imagery, with full sensory texture. Sights, sounds, the weight of the chair, the temperature of the coffee in your hand. The nervous system can’t fully distinguish between a vividly rehearsed experience and a real one. Both lay down what feels like memory. Both feed the self-image.
• Direct your worry toward positive outcomes. This is one of Maltz’s sharpest moves. Most men’s “worry” engine is set to imagine all the ways this could fail. He flips it. Set the engine to imagine all the ways it could go right, in the same vivid detail. The engine doesn’t care which direction it spins. You’re the one who chose the direction.
• Give the new pattern at least 21 days to take. The 21-day rule comes from Maltz watching his surgery patients. That was roughly how long it took for them to stop expecting to see the old face in the mirror and start expecting the new one. He extended the same window to identity-level changes generally. (Note: pop-psychology has stretched the 21-day idea into all kinds of unsupported corners. Maltz’s original use of it was specific and modest. Treat it as a minimum, never as a magic number.)

Done this way, visualization starts to feel almost inevitable.

Most men already visualize. They just run the wrong movie. Vivid, full-sensory rehearsals of the conversation going sideways, the rejection, the night that didn’t happen the way they pictured.

The imagination engine is already at full power, but it’s pointed the wrong direction.

Maltz’s move is to take that same engine and reverse it.

Run the win in the same “texture”, and depth the worry already runs in. Combine the rehearsed image with real desire and real action, and the cybernetic loop closes around the new direction. The system corrects toward the new target the way it had been correcting toward the old one.

There’s a companion move he describes that’s easy to miss. Grapple with a problem intensely. Then deliberately set it down and let the back of the mind keep working. The solution often arrives unbidden, in the shower, on a walk, in the half-second before sleep. The system is built for this.

You need both. The filter, and the mechanism. Maltz gives you both, in order, in one book.

Why the Matt Furey edition is the one to buy

There are several editions, and they are all probably pretty good – packed with the wisdom straight from Maltz brain. However, the version I’d recommend (if you can get it), is the Updated & Expanded version with commentary from Matt Furey.

While there are useful anecdotes and comments from Matt throughout the book, the real value is at the end of every chapter, there are blank pages – lined, and with prompts.

The prompts ask you to list times in your own life when what you just read actually happened… when you experienced the pattern, the mechanism, the failure mode Maltz just walked you through. Just begin, and it comes to you.

Then there are more lined pages asking you to hand-write a short summary of the parts of the chapter that stuck. Yes, with a real pen.

Most self-help books, you read them, you nod along, you close the cover, and you retain maybe 5%. Then you move to the next book, repeat the cycle, and eventually you have a shelf of books that taught you almost nothing because you never let any single one absorb properly into your subconscious.

And here’s the thing about doing the exercises even when you think they’re pointless: they’re not. Most feel obvious as you sit down with them. “List times when your behavior was driven by self-image rather than reality.” You think “I’ve got nothing.”

Then you start writing, and 10 minutes later you’ve filled the pages and you’ve surfaced things you may not have thought about for years. Uncomfortable. But once you’ve dragged out those thoughts and feelings, and “know” how to deal with them, they hold so much less power over you.

And exactly the leverage point Maltz is trying to put in your hand.

So my recommendation: buy the Furey edition. Keep it on your desk where you’ll see it.

The first copy should get dirty – highlight it, dog-ear it, write in it.

Do the exercises. Especially the ones that feel pointless. Once you understand how you actually arrived at the beliefs you hold about yourself… you start being able to change them. That’s the whole game.

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If you get anything out of this review, or want to add your opinion about this absolute gem of a book,, then let me know... =)

Note: This is the vast majority of the review and bulk of the content. But the rest is on my site, I don't want to trigger any bots for self-promo. Its just a book review -.- easy to find if interested though.

I am a corporate professional in my early 30s and for the past couple of years I have noticed something that I cannot shake off.

Every Monday feels like a reset button that nobody asked for. The week flies by in meetings, commutes, and deadlines. By Friday I am exhausted but somehow relieved. Saturday I have a hundred things I want to do — exercise, cook properly, spend real time with family, maybe read — and I end up doing almost none of them. Sunday afternoon the dread creeps back in. And then it starts all over again.

I have tried fixing this. Gym membership — gone after three weeks. Diet — lasted maybe ten days. Meditation app — opened it four times. Each time I tell myself this time will be different. It never is. And I genuinely do not understand why.

I do not think I am lazy. I think something more fundamental is broken — in my routine, in my foundation, in the order I am trying to fix things.

Has anyone else felt this way? Did you figure out what was actually going wrong — not the surface stuff like needing more discipline, but the real reason?

Would love to hear honest experiences from people who have been through this. What broke the cycle for you — or are you still in it?

I don’t even know where to start. Lately, it feels like every single thing I try to do ends in failure. Could be small stuff (replying to a text, finishing a simple chore) or bigger things (work projects, personal goals). I just keep messing up or abandoning things halfway.

And instead of fixing it, I spend the entire day just… dooming. Lying in bed, scrolling through my phone, feeling this heavy weight in my chest. Thinking about all my past failures, all the time I’ve wasted, how far behind I am compared to everyone else. It’s like my brain is stuck in a loop of “see failure → feel shame → shut down → fail more.”

I want to ask for help but I don’t even know what kind. Therapy? Self-discipline? A routine? I can barely get myself to brush my teeth regularly right now.

Has anyone climbed out of this hole? What actually worked for you? Brutal honesty welcome, but please don’t just say “just start doing stuff” — I need baby steps.

Thanks for reading.

These are my goals I'm currently in a phase , not motivation but desperation ,

I'm Shree, 18. My parents were conservative growing up — couldn't learn dance, missed out on flute lessons due to fees. Things are different now and I'm finally chasing what I want.

Here are my goals:

Be physically healthy, strong, and flexible

Maintain a 3.5–3.8 GPA

Learn neuroscience + the art of learning

Learn dance

Learn flute

Play chess regularly for cognitive growth

Wake up at 5:15 AM for spiritual practices

Learn manifestation — both the brain-rewiring science side AND the spiritual side

Here's my problem: I think I have ADHD. I genuinely struggle to concentrate and stay consistent.

I believe being guided is better than figuring everything out alone. How do I actually make all this happen?

Because I wanna do this z I have to , I've finnally come out of my anxiety i have to take the action no matter what

Whoever it is it'll be helpful if u help me with this ,♥️guide me 🙏🏻

I’ve used Notion, Trello, ClickUp, Jira, etc. and they’re powerful, but after a while everything starts feeling emotionally flat. You organize work perfectly… then still procrastinate opening the app.

So I started experimenting with a different idea:

What if a workspace felt more like a game world than a dashboard?

Not in a cringe “add XP points everywhere” way, but using actual game design ideas:

• visible progression
• momentum loops
• rewarding completion
• team presence
• AI agents as active operators instead of static assistants

Right now I’m building an early prototype where tasks feel more like quests/missions and the environment feels alive instead of corporate.

Curious what Notion users think:
What’s the biggest thing current productivity tools are missing emotionally?

So, in my Google calendar, out-of-the-box each email looks to be assigned 4 calendars: my name, Birthdays, Family, Tasks. These are stock and can't be renamed or removed.

I have my friends and family's birthdays, and you wanna guess which calendar its in? I'll give you a hint, its not "Birthdays", its in my name. Ok, fine, I'll just move them.... nope. I can copy it to Family, that's it. Birthday calendar, at this point I might as well just delete it since it doesn't have any birthdays in it.

Sure... I could remake all of them manually, but there has to be an easier way, right?

Would you use a security or audit tool for Obsidian community plugins? I am thinking about building something local-first for people who use a lot of Obsidian plugins and want more visibility before blindly trusting random JavaScript in their vault. It would scan installed plugins, flag things like network calls, shell or process usage, eval, unusual file access, show what changed before updating a plugin, and maybe let you snapshot or rollback plugin versions. Is this a real concern for you, or overkill? Do you avoid plugins because of trust or security concerns? Would something like this make more sense as an Obsidian plugin, a desktop companion app, or both? Not selling anything, just trying to figure out if this is worth building.

For about 2 years , I've been doing this exercise every morning: I pick a random, mundane word — "bridge," "water," "key," "shadow" — and I try to write down 10 specific memories from my life that the word triggers.

The first 3 come easy. The next 3 are harder. Memories 7 through 10 are where it gets strange — I start surfacing things I genuinely hadn't thought about in 20 years. A specific smell from my grandmother's kitchen. A conversation I had at 14 that I'd completely buried. A face I hadn't seen in my mind since the 90s.

It's not journaling exactly. Journaling is about today. This is about retrieval — using one word as an anchor to fish things out of long-term memory that would otherwise stay buried forever.

The compounding part is what got me. After a few months I had hundreds of memories logged, and patterns started emerging — the same people showing up across unrelated words, the same places, the same eras. It started feeling like I was slowly mapping my own life.

I'm considering building an app around this — daily anchor word, space for 10 memories, and over time it would visualize the connections between them (which people, places, eras keep recurring across different words). Privacy-first, on-device, no ads, no AI training on your data — because frankly I wouldn't trust any other model with something this personal.

Before I build anything: does this resonate with anyone else, or is this just my weird private habit? Genuinely curious what you'd want from something like this, or whether it sounds like a tool you'd actually use.

The Problem:

I've been reading many posts all saying similar things in different ways:

• I'm stuck
• I can't start
• I'm so lazy
• Stuck in a loop
• No progress

I would categorise all of these under a:

Pattern of being stuck

I really, truly believe this is a problem we all face in different forms. The problem is it shows up in so many different ways and one way we can overcome it is to find a clear and powerful alternative.

My method:

I like to first start by defining what I mean when I say "i'm stuck" because its not clear. Also, you're not literally stuck unless you've glued yourself to the table.

Here is an example from my own life:

"I'm so stuck with this work"

"Alright, what do I mean by I'm stuck?"

"I just can't do it"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I don't know which topic I should start with to study"

Bam, there it is. I didn't know what topic to start with, so I should probably pick one... problem solved. I was never stuck, I just hadn't actually identified what was holding me back.

Why it works:

So the reson this works is because it allows you to get past a generalisation of "I'm stuck" and actually define your problem in solvable terms.

Further help:

I kept this example super general so it could be related to by most people.

But, I can help each of you with specific examples. Coment down below and I'd love to help.

Also, check out other things I've written as I go into specifics of certain topics.

Finally, I can write another post with a specific example if you would like?

I’m curious how Obsidian users think about this.

One thing I keep noticing with note apps in general is that they’re good at storage, but not always great at helping you actually remember or resurface what you saved later.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about two ideas:

• automatic connections between related notes
• turning notes into review prompts / spaced repetition

But I can’t tell if that’s genuinely useful or if it just sounds smart on paper.

For people here who use Obsidian seriously:

1. Do linked notes actually improve your thinking over time, or mostly help with organization?
2. Does the graph / connection layer become practically useful for you, or mostly aesthetic?
3. If your notes could automatically suggest review questions, would that be interesting or annoying?
4. What feels more missing in note tools: better structure, better retrieval, or better memory support?

Not trying to shill anything here — I’m genuinely trying to understand where Obsidian users think the line is between useful knowledge tooling and feature theater.

Would love honest takes, especially from people with larger vaults.

Since yesterday, when I open the Notion Calendar app in MacOS it redirects me to the website, and for some reason to the https://www.notion.so/unsupported-browser.html, even though I'm using the latest Chrome version.

Two things I tried without success:
- Making sure I'm properly logged in in the website
- Uninstalling and installing it again

Any ideas?

Hello people. I hope you're okay.

I'm feeling pretty much pathetic writing this, but I seriously don't know how to force myself to work.

I love my life, I have a nice department, I have family and friends that I love and care about and they care about me too and I do things that I enjoy like working out, playing guitar and I recently started to learn coding.

But... I can't force myself to get a fucking work. The very idea of having to work makes me feel so fucking tired and heavy and lazy and depressed and I can't fight it. I send CVs and shit internally hoping not getting anything, and I'm feeling fucking bad and guilty about it.

So I come for advice about how can I force myself to get my shit together about it and not wanting to fucking die while having to work, because I find no joy in it at all, time passes me fucking slowly and my mood is so bad when I'm at it. I have no ambitions in that aspect, I just want to be relaxed doing what I love, I don't want money nor reputation nor growing in a job, I just want to have time for me and my passions, but I have to do this and I don't know how, seriously I don't.

I'm pretty much unhappy when I'm having work... And I feel so damn pathetic about this and about myself for this specific shit.

Thank you for reading this.

I've just turned 20. I recently graduated from college. Now, I'm working as a copywriter for a startup and also preparing for the CAT exams. From the outside, I'm sure my life looks pretty average and full of efforts for growth.

But inside, I feel like I am juggling several versions of my future in my mind.

Sometimes, it seems like the whole day is just a chase with time.

My goals include ensuring our financial condition is steady before my father's retirement in December, among other things. Also, I dream of cracking CAT, sculpting a great body, emerging as a creatively exceptional performer, doing stand-up comedy, writing excellently, healing emotionally and feeling stable in the process. The high expectations I have from life make my daily expectations from myself also unrealistically high. As a result, even the average days tend to feel like a failure to me.

My mind turns every aspiration into a crisis. I have a fear of leading an ordinary life.

It's like I want my life to have a purpose. I constantly find myself comparing to an ideal version of me who apparently has every aspect of life figured out: confident, disciplined, hilarious, respected and successful. Then I look at the reality of my life and see confusion, criticism, emotional baggage and uncertainty. That difference is what always makes me upset.

Work has turned into quite a stressful factor as well. When we receive constant feedback, it gradually stops sounding like "you need to do better" and begins to feel like "you are not good enough". Nowadays, I find myself getting mentally defensive even before entering the office.

The condition of my relationship also doesn't provide any respite. We are in a long-distance relationship and there has been betrayal from both sides in the past. Despite staying together

To be honest, going to the gym is the only thing in my schedule that currently feels very 'pure' because there, exertion directly leads to success.

Besides that, I believe a huge part of this pressure is due to my upbringing, chaotic family environment, heaps of criticism, bullying, and several years during which I felt I had to prove myself.

Currently, I am attempting to become not only mentally stable, professionally successful, creatively fulfilled and emotionally healed but also all at once. Therefore, I never give my mind a rest.

I can hardly even watch tv or videos. Why is this?

I struggle to wake up in the morning (most people fo tbh) . I wont wake up even after sleeping early . I just can't get out of bed. (Even if I keep my alarm far away) I wake up turn it off and go back to sleep (even if im not that sleepy) -- i have noticed during this phase of going to switch off my alarm , my mind is racing with completely random unrelated thoughts from my subconscious. Because of these flow of thoughts, im not able to think logically.

Could this be because i lack basic mindfulness, constant overstimulstion of today's society, social media?

Could having better awareness overall reduce my sleep groggyness.

Thoughts and advice please 🙏