Title Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion

Author Emile Coue

Year Published 1922

Kind of Book Mindset, Self-Help  Psychology

How strongly I recommend it 7/10 

My Impressions This is one of the classic texts on visualization and creative realization. It is very interesting from a historical perspective and from a Scientific perspective. Coue was a celebrity in his day for his radical ideas about the mind and our ability to influence our unconscious. Phrases like "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better" have stuck and are now part of the American vernacular (even if nowadays it is mostly said in an ironic manner). Some of Coue's claims about the power of the mind to heal even the sickest people seemed a bit far fetched, but then again I was able to "glue" a friends hands together using one of the techniques in this book, so you can be the judge.

Date Read Feb 2019

Practical Takeaways

  • Every morning before getting up and every evening as soon as you are in bed, shut your eyes, repeat twenty times in succession "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better."

  • Never imagine that you cannot do something

  • Focus on what you do want, not on what you do not want

  • Always think "this is easy" and make the words difficult, hard, and impossible disappear from your vocabulary

  • Try Easy

  • If your doctor doesn’t believe you can heal, get a new Dr.

  • Never give a child a negative limiting belief of him/herself eg."you are lazy"

  • Remember that health is the normal state of the body. Homeostasis

  • Always think "this is easy" and make the words difficult, hard, and impossible disappear from your vocabulary

How to Practice Autosuggestion

  • Every morning before getting up and every evening as soon as you are in bed, shut your eyes, repeat twenty times in succession "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better."

  • Do it effortlessly

  • Do it every morning and before bed

  • Say it confidently with conviction and emotion

  • Shut your eyes

  • Say it out loud. Move your lips

  • Repeat it 20 times

  • Do not think of any one thing in particular

 How to “glue” someone's hands together

  • Keep your eyes fixed on the root of the subjects nose and have the look into your eyes without ever moving their gaze

  • Use a normal, but commanding tone of voice, stressing every syllable

  • Have the person push their hands as tightly together as possible

  • Put your hands around theirs and push them together

  • Tell them "you can not pull your hands apart and the more you try to pull them apart the more tightly they will become bound"

  • Have them repeat the phrase "I can not do it"

  • Tell them you will count to three and when you get to three they will not be able to do it

  • Count to three and release your hands from theirs

  • After a while say "I will count to 3 and your hands will become unclasped."

Big Ideas

  • It is impossible to think of two things at once

  • We possess within us a force of incalculable power, which, when we handle it unconsciously is often prejudicial to us. If on the contrary we direct it in a conscious and wise manner, it gives us the mastery of ourselves

  • “When the will and the imagination are antagonistic it is always the imagination which wins…"

  • In order for suggestion to work the subject must believe it to be true (autosuggestion)

  • "God helps those who help themselves." -Algernon Sidney

 Unknown Terms

Somnambulism: scientific word for sleepwalking

Suggestion: "The act of imposing an idea on the brain of another"-Emile Coue

Autosuggestion: "The implanting of an idea in oneself by oneself."-Emile Coue