Due to the tremendous successes I’ve experienced with his book, I felt a strong need to bring attention to Emile Coué’s method of auto-suggestion. It is, in my opinion, incredibly brilliant in its simplicity.
Having heard the phrase, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better,” many people have sought to improve on it. However if they had read his book, they would truly understand Coué’s method and realize why it is important to not attempt to improve it by adding specifics wants or needs.
Even Josè Sylva of the world famous Sylva Method, in his attempt to personalize the phrase, only added an extra “better” to it.
The subconscious mind, or our higher self if you prefer, knows what we need. There is no need, in fact it is inadvisable, to add specifics to our auto-suggestion. The awesome power of the subconscious mind enables it to know far better than we consciously do, exactly what our needs are. Why then should we get in its way? There may very well be needs that must first be met, before we can even begin to work on the needs that we’re aware of.
During a particularly troubling period in my life I kept a journal, faithfully entering my thoughts into it every night. I entered the bad occurrences as well as the good things. I got into the habit of every now and then, reading back into the pages of my prior week’s entries. Soon it became very evident to me that many of the “bad” events I wrote about, had triggered “good” things. In fact, many of the good things I wrote about could never have happened if the bad event hadn’t occurred first. In no time at all, I became convinced that I didn’t really know what was good for me, or what was bad for me.
What then should I meditate about – or pray for? If I don’t really know what’s good for me, what then should my goals be? Someone much smarter than me advised, “Just ask for knowledge of what is best for you, and as that knowledge becomes apparent or available, try to act accordingly.” Then they said, “Just keep doing the next right thing.”
In that light, Coué’s statement makes all the sense in the world. Even though we may not know exactly what we need most, our subconscious, or higher self knows, and we can use that knowledge by keeping the statement simple, and trusting our subconscious for the results.
Some hypnotists say that our subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between a real or an imagined experience. I don’t even begin to buy that theory. I think our subconscious mind can operate in dimensions that we haven’t yet been able to wrap our minds around. We don’t know exactly how it works, but we have begun to know a little about how to use it. Some have even said that it doesn’t respond to negative suggestions – then turn around and do “regression to cause” therapy to remove the effects of past negative impressions, in direct contradiction of themselves.
Well then, what is your subconscious mind? Smart – or dumb? I believe it’s powerful and awesome, and a long time ago Coué found a good way to use it.
Emile Coue’s book is available for free. Just click on the download link on the front page of my website. It’s a quick, fun, and easy read.
Read it, practice it, and watch your dreams begin to happen; it costs you nothing.