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Chapter ELEVEN

How to Unlock Your Real Personality

Personality, that magnetic and mysterious something that is easy to recognize but difficult to define, is not so much something that is acquired from without, as something that is released from within.

What we call “personality” is the outward evidence of that unique and individual creative self, made in the image of God—that spark of divinity within us—or what might be called the free and full expression of your real self.

This real self within every person is attractive. It is magnetic. It does have a powerful impact and influence on other people. We have the feeling that we are in touch with something real—and basic—and it does something to us. On the other hand, a phony is universally disliked and detested.

Why does everyone love a baby? Certainly not for what the baby can do, or what he knows, or what he has, but simply because of what he is. Every infant has “personality plus.” There is no superficiality, no phoniness, no hypocrisy. In his own language, which consists mostly of either crying or cooing, the baby expresses his real feelings. He “says what he means.” There is no guile. The baby is emotionally honest. He exemplifies to the nth degree the psychological dictum “Be yourself.” He has no qualms about expressing himself. He is not in the least inhibited.

Everyone Has Personality Locked Up Within Him

Every human being has the mysterious something we call personality.

When we say that a person “has a good personality,” what we really mean is that he has freed and released the creative potential within him and is able to express his real self.

“Poor personality” and “inhibited personality” are one and the same. The person with a “poor personality” does not express the creative self within. He has restrained it, handcuffed it, locked it up and thrown away the key. The word “inhibit” literally means to stop, prevent, prohibit, restrain. The inhibited personality has imposed a restraint on the expression of the real self. For one reason or another he is afraid to express himself, afraid to be himself, and has locked up his real self within an inner prison.

The symptoms of inhibition are many and varied: shyness, timidity, self-consciousness, hostility, feelings of excessive guilt, insomnia, nervousness, irritability, inability to get along with others.

Frustration is characteristic of practically every area and activity of the inhibited personality. His real and basic frustration is his failure to “be himself’ and his failure to adequately express himself. But this basic frustration is likely to color and overflow into all that he does.

Excessive Negative Feedback Is the Key to Inhibition

The science of cybernetics gives us a new insight into the inhibited personality, and shows us the way toward disinhibition, freedom, and how to release our spirits from self-imposed prisons.

Negative feedback in a servo-mechanism is equivalent to criticism. Negative feedback says in effect, “You are wrong—you are off course—you need to take corrective action to get back on the beam.” The purpose of negative feedback, however, is to modify response, and change the course of forward action, not to stop it altogether.

If negative feedback is working properly, a missile or a torpedo reacts to “criticism” just enough to correct course, and keeps going forward toward the target. This course will be, as we have previously explained, a series of zigzags.

However, if the mechanism is too sensitive to negative feedback, the servo-mechanism overcorrects. Instead of progressing toward the target, it will perform exaggerated lateral zigzags, or stop forward progress altogether.

Our own built-in servo-mechanism works in the same way. We must have negative feedback in order to operate purposefully, in order to steer our way, or be guided to a goal.

Excessive Negative Feedback Equals Inhibition

Negative feedback always says in effect, “Stop what you’re doing, or the way you’re doing it—and do something else.” Its purpose is to modify response, or change the degree of forward action—not to stop all action. Negative feedback does not say, “Stop—period!” It says, “What you are doing is wrong,” but it does not say, “It is wrong to do anything.” Yet, where negative feedback is excessive, or where our own mechanism is too sensitive to negative feedback, the result is not modification of response—but total inhibition of response.

Inhibition and excessive negative feedback are one and the same. When we overreact to negative feedback or criticism, we are likely to conclude that not only is our present course slightly off beam, or wrong, but that it is wrong for us to even want to go forward.

A woodsman, or a hunter, often guides himself back to his automobile by picking out some prominent landmark near his car—such as an extra-tall tree that can be seen for miles. When he is ready to return to his car, he looks for his tree (or target) and starts walking toward it. From time to time the tree may be lost from his view, but as soon as he is able he “checks course” by comparing his direction with the location of the tree. If he finds that his present course is taking him 15 degrees to the left of the tree, he must recognize that what he is doing is “wrong.” He immediately corrects his course and again walks directly toward the tree. He does not, however, conclude that it is wrong for him to walk.

Yet many of us are guilty of just so foolish a conclusion. When it comes to our attention that our manner of expression is off course, missing the mark, or “wrong”—we conclude that self-expression itself is wrong, or that success for us (reaching our particular tree) is wrong.

Keep in mind that excessive negative feedback has the effect of interfering with, or stopping completely, the appropriate response.

Stuttering as a Symptom of Inhibition

Stuttering offers a good illustration of how excessive negative feedback brings on inhibition, and interferes with appropriate response.

While most of us are not consciously aware of the fact, when we talk we receive negative feedback data through our ears by listening to or “monitoring” our own voice. This is the reason that totally deaf individuals seldom speak well. They have no way of knowing whether their voice is coming out as a shriek, a scream, or an unintelligible mumble. This is also the reason that persons born deaf do not learn to talk at all, except with special tutoring. If you sing, perhaps you have been surprised to find that you could not sing on key or in harmony with others while suffering temporary deafness or partial deafness because of a cold.

Thus, negative feedback itself is no bar or handicap to speech. On the contrary, it enables us to speak and speak correctly. Voice teachers advise that we record our own voices and listen back to them as a method of improving tone, enunciation, etc. By doing this we become aware of errors in speech that we had not noticed before. We are able to see clearly what it is we are doing “wrong”—and we can make correction.

However, if negative feedback is to be effective in helping us to talk better, it should (1) be more or less automatic or subconscious, (2) it should occur spontaneously, or while we’re talking, and (3) response to feedback should not be so sensitive as to result in inhibition.

If we are consciously overcritical of our speech, or if we are too careful in trying to avoid errors in advance, rather than reacting spontaneously, stuttering is likely to result.

If the stutterer’s excessive feedback can be toned down, or if it can be made spontaneous rather than anticipatory, improvement in speech will be immediate.

Conscious Self-Criticism Makes You Do Worse

Writing in the British scientific journal Nature, Dr. E. Colin Cherry stated his belief that stuttering was caused by excessive monitoring. To test his theory he equipped 25 severe stutterers with earphones through which a loud tone drowned out the sound of their own voices. When they were asked to read aloud from a prepared text under these conditions, which eliminated self-criticism, the improvement was “remarkable.” Another group of severe stutterers was trained in “shadow-talk”—to follow as closely as possible, an attempt to “talk with” a person reading from a text, or a voice on radio or TV. After brief practice the stutterers learned to “shadow-talk” easily—and most of them were able to speak normally and correctly under these conditions, which obviated “advance criticism” and literally forced them to speak spontaneously or to synchronize speaking and “correcting.” Additional practice in “shadow-talk” enabled the stutterers to learn how to speak correctly at all times.

When excessive negative feedback, or self-criticism, was eliminated, inhibition disappeared and performance improved. When there was no time for worry, or too much “carefulness” in advance, expression immediately improved. This gives us a valuable clue as to how we may disinhibit or release a locked up personality, and improve performance in other areas.

Excessive Carefulness Leads to Inhibition and Anxiety

Have you ever tried to thread a needle?

If so, and if you are inexperienced at it, you may have noticed that you could hold the thread steady as a rock until you approached the eye of the needle and attempted to insert it into the very small opening. Each time you tried to place the thread through the small opening, your hand unaccountably shook and the thread missed the mark.

Attempting to pour a liquid into the mouth of a very small-necked bottle often results in the same kind of behavior. You can hold your hand perfectly steady, until you try to accomplish your purpose, then for some strange reason you quiver and shake.

In medical circles, we call this “purpose tremor.”

It occurs, as above, in normal people when they try too hard, or are “too careful” not to make an error in accomplishing some purpose. In certain pathological conditions, such as injury to certain areas of the brain, this “purpose tremor” can become very pronounced. A patient, for example, may be able to hold his hand steady as long as he is not trying to accomplish anything. But let him try to insert his door key into the lock on his front door, and his hand may zigzag back and forth as much as six to ten inches. He may be able to hold a pen steady enough until he attempts to sign his name. Then his hand tremors uncontrollably. If he is ashamed of this, and becomes even more careful not to make an error in the presence of strangers, he may not be able to sign his name at all.

These people can be helped, and often remarkably, by training in relaxation techniques where they learn to relax from excessive effort and “purposing” and not to be overly careful in trying to avoid errors or “failures.” Excessive carefulness, or being too anxious not to make an error, is a form of excessive negative feedback. As in the case of the stutterer, who attempts to anticipate possible errors and be overly careful not to make them—the result is inhibition and deterioration of performance. Excessive carefulness and anxiety are close kin. Both have to do with too much concern for possible failure, or doing the “wrong thing,” and making too much of a conscious effort to do right.

“I don’t like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything,” said Henry Ward Beecher.

The Value of Indifference

“Who are the scholars who get ‘rattled’ in the recitation room?” asked William James. “Those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are most indifferent. Their ideas reel themselves out of their memories of their own accord. Why do we hear the complaint so often that the social life in New England is either less rich and expressive or more fatiguing than it is in some other parts of the world? To what is the fact, if fact it be, due unless to the overactive conscience of the people, afraid of either saying something too trivial and obvious, or something insincere, or something unworthy of one’s interlocutor, or something in some way or other not adequate to the occasion? How can conversation possibly steer itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as this? On the other hand, conversation does flourish and society is refreshing, and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from its effort on the other, wherever people forget their scruples and take the brakes off their hearts, and let their tongues wag as automatically and irresponsibly as they will.

“They talk much in pedagogic circles today about the duty of the teacher to prepare for every lesson in advance. To some extent this is useful. But we Yankees are assuredly not those to whom such a general doctrine should be preached. We are only too careful as it is. The advice I should give to most teachers would be in the words of one who is himself an admirable teacher. Prepare yourself in the subject so well that it shall always be on tap; then in the classroom trust your spontaneity and fling away all further care.

“My advice to students, especially to girl students, would be somewhat similar. Just as a bicycle chain may be too tight, so may one’s carefulness and conscientiousness be so tense as to hinder the running of one’s mind. Take, for example, periods when there are many successive days of examination impending. One ounce of good nervous tone in an examination is worth many pounds of anxious study for it in advance. If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, ‘I won’t waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don’t care an iota whether I succeed or not.’ Say this sincerely, and feel it, and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently.” Self-Consciousness Is Really Others’ Consciousness

The cause-and-effect relationship between excessive negative feedback and what we call “self-consciousness” can be readily seen.

In any sort of social relationship we constantly receive negative feedback data from other people. A smile, a frown, a hundred different subtle clues of approval or disapproval, interest or lack of interest, continually advise us of “how we’re doing,” whether we’re getting across, whether we’re hitting or missing the mark, so to speak. In any sort of social situation there is a constant interaction going on between speaker and listener, actor and observer. And without this constant communication, back and forth, human relations and social activities would be virtually impossible. And if not impossible, certainly dull, boring, non-inspiring, and dead, without “sparks.” Good actors and actresses and public speakers can sense this communication from the audience, and it helps them to perform better. Persons with “good personalities,” who are popular and magnetic in social situations, can sense this communication from other people and they automatically and spontaneously react and respond to it in a creative way. The communication from other people is used as negative feedback, and enables the person to perform better socially. If a person can’t respond to this communication from other people, he is a “cold fish” type—the “reserved” personality who does not warm up to other people. Without this communication you become a social dud—the hard-to-get-to-know type who interests no one.

However, this type of negative feedback, to be effective, should be creative. That is, it should be more or less subconscious and automatic and spontaneous, rather than consciously contrived or thought about.

What Others Think Creates Inhibition

When you become too consciously concerned about “what others think”; when you become too careful to consciously try to please other people; when you become too sensitive to the real or fancied disapproval of other people—then you have excessive negative feedback, inhibition, and poor performance.

Whenever you constantly and consciously monitor your every act, word, or mannerism, again you become inhibited and self-conscious.

You become too careful to make a good impression, and in so doing choke off, restrain, inhibit your creative self and end up making a rather poor impression.

The way to make a good impression on other people is: Never consciously “try” to make a good impression on them. Never act, or fail to act, purely for consciously contrived effect. Never “wonder” consciously what the other person is thinking of you, how he is judging you.

How a Salesman Cured Self-Consciousness

James T. Mangan, the famous salesman, bestselling author, and lecturer, said that when he first left home he was painfully self-conscious, especially when eating in the dining room of a ritzy or high-class hotel. As he walked through the dining room he felt that every eye was upon him, judging him, critical of him. He was painfully conscious of his every movement, motion, and act—the way he walked, the way he sat down, his table manners, and the way he ate his food. And all these actions seemed stiff and awkward. Why was he so ill at ease? He knew he had good table manners and knew enough social etiquette to get by. Why had he never felt self-conscious and ill at ease when eating in the kitchen with Ma and Pa?

He decided it was because when he was eating with Ma and Pa, he did not think or bother to wonder how he was acting. He was neither careful nor self-critical. He was not concerned about producing an effect. He felt composed, relaxed, and did all right.

Mangan cured his self-consciousness by remembering how he had felt, and how he had acted, when he “was eating in the kitchen with Ma and Pa.” Then, when he walked into a high-class dining room, he would imagine or pretend that he “was going to eat with Ma and Pa”—and act that way.

Mangan also found that he could overcome his stage fright and self-consciousness when calling on big shots, or in any other social situation, by saying to himself, “I’m going to eat with Ma and Pa,” conjuring up in his imagination how he had felt and how he had acted—and then acting that way. In his book The Knack of Selling Yourself, Mangan advised salesmen to use the “I’m going home to eat supper with my ma and pa! I’ve been through this a thousand times—nothing new can happen here” attitude in all sorts of new and strange situations.

“This attitude of being immune to strangers or strange situations, this total disregard for all the unknown or unexpected has a name. It is called poise. Poise is the deliberate shunting aside of all fears arising from new and uncontrollable circumstances.” Mangan was able to use the memory of the ease he felt eating in his parents’ kitchen for anything else he wanted to do in a more relaxed way, even activities that were supposedly “unrelated.” Logically, it makes sense that he would take a memory of eating with his parents and use that to eat with poise anywhere he went. But using the same memory of eating to trigger positive emotions in selling, speaking in public, in playing sports, or in other endeavors seems like a stretch. With Psycho-Cybernetics, any positive memory of poise from any situation will do the trick for any other situation, no matter how different it may be.

You Need to Be More Self-Conscious

Dr. Albert Edward Wiggam, psychologist, lecturer, and author of several books on the mind, said that in his early years he was so painfully self-conscious he found it all but impossible to recite in school. He avoided other people, and could not talk to them without hanging his head. He constantly fought his self-consciousness and tried hard to overcome it, all to no avail. Then one day he got a new idea. His trouble was not “self-consciousness” at all. It was really excessive “others’ consciousness.” He was too painfully sensitive to what others might think of everything he said or did, every move he made. This tied him up in knots—he could not think clearly, and he could think of nothing to say. He did not feel this way when alone with himself. When alone, he was perfectly calm and relaxed, at ease, poised, and he could think of lots of interesting ideas and things to say. And he was also perfectly aware of and at home with his self.

Then he stopped fighting and trying to conquer his self-consciousness, and instead concentrated on developing more self-consciousness: feeling, acting, behaving, thinking as he did when he was alone, without any regard to how some other person might feel about or judge him. This total disregard for the opinion and judgment of other people did not result in his becoming callous, arrogant, or entirely insensitive to others. There is no danger of entirely eradicating negative feedback, no matter how hard you may try. But this effort in the opposite direction did tone down his overly sensitive feedback mechanism. He got along better with other people, and went on to make his living counseling people and making public speeches to large groups, “without the slightest degree of self-consciousness.” “Conscience Doth Make Cowards of Us All”

Shakespeare’s observation that conscience makes us cowards is echoed by many modern-day psychiatrists and enlightened ministers.

Conscience itself is a learned negative feedback mechanism having to do with morals and ethics. If the learned and stored data is correct (concerning what is “right” and what is “wrong”) and if the feedback mechanism is not overly sensitive, but realistic, the result is (just as with any other goal-striving situation) that we are relieved from the burden of having to “decide” constantly as to what is right and wrong. Conscience steers us, or guides us, down the “straight and narrow” to the goal of correct, appropriate, and realistic behavior insofar as ethics and morals are concerned. Conscience works automatically and subconsciously, as does any other feedback system.

Your conscience can fool you.

—Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick

Your conscience itself can be wrong. Your conscience depends on your own basic beliefs concerning right and wrong. If your basic beliefs are true, realistic, and sensible, conscience becomes a valuable ally in dealing with the real world and in sailing upon the ethical sea. It acts as a compass that keeps you out of trouble just as a mariner’s compass keeps him off the reefs. But if your basic beliefs are themselves wrong, untrue, unrealistic, or non-sensible, these get your compass off true north, just as magnetic bits of metal can disturb the compass of the mariner, and guide him into trouble rather than away from it.

Conscience can mean many things to many people. For instance, if you are brought up to believe, as some people are, that it is sinful to wear buttons on your clothes, your conscience will bother you when you do. If you are brought up to believe that cutting off another human’s head, shrinking it, and hanging it on your wall is right, proper, and a sign of manhood—then you will feel guilty, unworthy, and undeserving if you haven’t managed to shrink a head.

The Job of Your Conscience Is to Make You Happy—Not Miserable

The purpose of conscience is to help make us happy and productive—not the other way around. But if we are to “let our conscience be our guide,” our conscience must be based on truth—it must point to true north. Otherwise, blindly obeying conscience can only get us into trouble, rather than out of it, and make us unhappy and unproductive into the bargain.

Self-Expression Is Not a Moral Issue

Much mischief results from our taking a moral position on matters that are not basically moral matters at all.

For example, self-expression, or lack of it, is not basically an ethical question, aside from the fact that it is our duty to use the talents that our Creator gave us.

Yet self-expression may become morally “wrong” as far as your conscience is concerned, if you were squelched, shut-up, shamed, humiliated, or perhaps punished as a child for speaking up, expressing your ideas, “showing off.” Such a child “learns” that it is “wrong” to express himself, to hold himself out as having any worthwhile ideas, or perhaps to speak at all.

If a child is punished for showing anger, or shamed too much for showing fear, or perhaps made fun of for showing love, he learns that expressing his real feelings is “wrong.” Some children learn that it is sinful or wrong only to express the “bad emotions”—anger and fear. But, when you inhibit bad emotions, you also inhibit the expression of good emotions. And the yardstick for judging emotions is not “goodness” or “badness,” as such, but appropriateness and inappropriateness. It is appropriate for the man who meets with the bear on the trail to experience fear. It is appropriate to experience anger if there is a legitimate need to destroy an obstacle by sheer force and destructiveness. Properly directed and controlled, anger is an important element of courage.

If every time a child comes up with an opinion, he is squelched and put in his place, he learns that it is “right” for him to be a nobody, and wrong to want to be a somebody.

Such a distorted and unrealistic conscience does indeed make cowards of us all. We can become overly sensitive, and become too carefully concerned with whether we “have a right” to succeed in even a worthwhile endeavor. We become too carefully concerned about whether or not “I deserve this.” Many people, inhibited by the wrong kind of conscience, “hold back” or “take a backseat” in any kind of endeavor, even in church activities. They secretly feel it would not be “right” for them to “hold themselves out” as a leader, or “presume to be somebody,” or they are overly concerned with whether other people might think they were “showing off.” Stage fright is a common and universal phenomenon. It becomes understandable when seen as excessive negative feedback coming from a “misguided conscience.” Stage fright is the fear that we will be punished for speaking up, expressing our own opinion, presuming to “be somebody,” or “showing off”—things that most of us learned were “wrong” and punishable as children. Stage fright illustrates how universal is the suppression and inhibition of self-expression.

Disinhibition: A Long Step in the Opposite Direction

If you are among the millions who suffer unhappiness and failure because of inhibition—you need to deliberately practice disinhibition. You need to practice being less careful, less concerned, less conscientious. You need to practice speaking before you think instead of thinking before you speak—acting without thinking, instead of thinking or “considering carefully” before you act.

Commonly, when I advise a patient to practice disinhibition (and the most inhibited patients object the most), I am likely to hear something like this: “But surely you do not think that we need to exercise no care at all, no concern, no worry about results. It seems to me that the world needs a certain amount of inhibition, otherwise we would live like savages and civilized society would collapse. If we express ourselves without any restraint, freely expressing our feelings, we would go around punching people in the nose who disagreed with us.” “Yes,” I say, “you are correct. The world does need a certain amount of inhibition. But not you. The key words are ‘a certain amount.’ You have such an excessive amount of inhibition, you are like a patient running a temperature of 108 degrees, who says, ‘But surely body heat is necessary for health. Man is a warm-blooded animal and could not live without a certain amount of temperature—we all need temperature—yet you are telling me that I should concentrate completely and entirely on reducing my temperature, and ignore completely the danger of not having any temperature.’” The stutterer, who is already so tied up with “moral tensions,” excessive negative feedback, self-critical analysis, and inhibition that he cannot talk at all, is prone to argue in the same way, when told to totally ignore negative feedback and self-criticism. He can cite you numerous proverbs, apothegms, and the like to prove that one should think before he speaks, that an idle and careless tongue gets you into trouble, and that one should be very careful of what he says and how he says it because “good speech is important” and “a word spoken cannot be recalled.” All that he is saying in effect is that negative feedback is a useful and beneficial thing. But not for him. When he totally ignores negative feedback by either being deafened by a loud tone or doing “shadow talk,” he speaks correctly.

The Straight and Narrow Path Between Inhibition and Disinhibition

Someone once said that the inhibited, worry-warty, anxiously concerned personality “stutters all over.” Balance and harmony are what is needed.

When the temperature has gone too high, the doctor attempts to lower it; when it has sunk too low, he attempts to raise it. When a person cannot sleep enough, a prescription is given to make the patient sleep more; when a person sleeps too much, a stimulant is prescribed to keep him awake, etc. It is not a question of which is “best”—a hot or cold temperature, or sleepfulness or wakefulness. The “cure” lies in taking a long step in the opposite direction. Here, the principle of cybernetics enters into the picture again. Our goal is an adequate, self-fulfilling, creative personality. The path to the goal is a course between too much inhibition and too little. When there is too much, we correct course by ignoring inhibition and practicing more disinhibition.

How to Tell Whether You Need Disinhibition

The “feedback” signals that can tell you whether you are off course because of too little inhibition are numerous, and include: You continually get yourself into trouble because of overconfidence.

You habitually “rush in where angels fear to tread.”

You habitually find yourself in hot water because of impulsive, ill-considered actions.

You have projects backfire on you because you always practice “acting first and asking questions later.” You can never admit you’re wrong.

You are a loud talker or a blabbermouth.

If you have too little inhibition, you need to think more of consequences before acting. You need to stop acting like a bull in a china shop, and plan your activities more carefully.

However, the great majority of people tend to exhibit too much inhibition, and the signals of too much inhibition are also many: You are shy around strangers; you dread new and strange situations.

You feel inadequate, worry a lot, are anxious, overly concerned.

You are nervous, and feel self-conscious; you have “nervous symptoms” such as facial tics, blinking your eyes unnecessarily, tremor, difficulty in going to sleep.

You feel ill at ease in social situations.

You hold yourself back and continually take a backseat.

These symptoms show that you have too much inhibition, that you are too careful in everything, or that you plan too much. You need to follow St. Paul’s advice to the Ephesians: “Be careful in nothing.” PRACTICE EXERCISE

Don’t wonder in advance what you are going to say. Just open your mouth and say it. Improvise as you go along. (Jesus advises us to give no thought as to what we would say if delivered up to councils, but that the spirit would advise us what to say at the time.) Don’t plan (take no thought for tomorrow). Don’t think before you act. Act—and correct your actions as you go along. This advice may seem radical, yet it is actually the way all servo-mechanisms must work. A torpedo does not “think out” all its errors in advance, and attempt to correct them in advance. It must act first—start moving toward the goal—then correct any errors that may occur. “We cannot think first and act afterwards,” said A. N. Whitehead. “From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.” Stop criticizing yourself. The inhibited person indulges in self-critical analysis continually. After each action, however simple, he says to himself, “I wonder if I should have done that.” After he has gotten up courage enough to say something, he immediately says to himself, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe the other person will take it the wrong way.” Stop all this tearing yourself apart. Useful and beneficial feedback works subconsciously, spontaneously, and automatically. Conscious self-criticism, self-analysis, and introspection are good and useful if undertaken perhaps once a year. But as a continual, moment-by-moment, day-by-day sort of second-guessing yourself—or playing Monday-morning quarterback to your past actions—it is defeating. Watch for this self-criticism—pull yourself up short and stop it.

Make a habit of speaking louder than usual. Inhibited people are notoriously soft-spoken. Raise the volume of your voice. You don’t have to shout at people and use an angry tone—just consciously practice speaking louder than usual. Loud talk in itself is a powerful disinhibitor. Recent experiments have shown that you can exert up to 15 percent more strength, and lift more weight, if you will shout, grunt, or groan loudly as you make the lift. The explanation of this is that loud shouting disinhibits and allows you to exert all your strength, including that which has been blocked off and tied up by inhibition.

Let people know when you like them. The inhibited personality is as afraid of expressing “good” feelings as bad ones. If he expresses love, he is afraid it will be judged sentimentality; if he expresses friendship, he is afraid it will be considered fawning or apple-polishing. If he compliments someone, he is afraid the other will think him superficial, or suspect an ulterior motive. Totally ignore these negative feedback signals. Compliment at least three people every day. If you like what someone is doing, or wearing, or saying—let them know it. Be direct. “I like that idea, Joe.” “Mary, that’s great work you did today.” “Jim, that proves to me you are a smart person.” And if you’re married, just say to your spouse, “I love you” at least twice a day.