“In the journey toward the goal of ideal self-expression, we must use negative feedback data to correct course, as in any other goal-striving situation.

This requires admitting to ourselves–and accepting the fact–that our personality, our expressed self, or what some psychologists call our ‘actual self,’ is always imperfect and short of the mark.

No one ever succeeds during a lifetime in fully expressing or bringing into the actuality all the potentialities of the real self. In our actual, expressed self, we never exhaust all the possibilities and powers of the real self. We can always learn more, perform better, behave better. The actual self is necessarily imperfect. Throughout life it is always moving toward an ideal goal, but never arriving. The actual self is not a static but a dynamic thing. It is never completed and final, but always in a state of growth.

It is important that we learn to accept this actual self, with all its imperfections, because it is the only vehicle we have.”

-Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics