Explains the theory and practice of the "Coué Method" of autosuggestion developed by Emile Coué. This crisp 119-page book (published back in 1922!) gives you all the necessary tools to practice autosuggestion on yourself.
It's deeply unfortunate in the modern era to see the Coué method either ripped off (see for example The Secret) or mocked (see the lisping, affirmation-spouting Stuart Smalley from Saturday Night Live). And yet there is self-evident therapeutic value in actively choosing your belief sets and then acting and speaking in accordance with those beliefs.
Read with:
Dr. John Sarno: The Divided Mind
Michael Murphy and Rhea A. White: The Psychic Side of Sports
David R. Hawkins: Power vs Force
Notes:
* "To all In conflict with their own imperfections this little book is dedicated"
* "Induced autosuggestion does not involve, as several hasty critics have assumed, an attack upon the will. It simply teaches that during the actual formulation of suggestions, that is for a few minutes daily, the will should be quiescent."
* This book is "designed to present to the layman in non-technical form the information necessary to enable him to practice Autosuggestion for himself."
* The original idea from Emile Coué, also slightly iterated in some minor ways by Charles Baudouin.
* Bombes de vérité d'Emile Coué:
+ "You have been sowing bad seed in your unconscious; now you will sow good seed. The power by which you have produced these ill effects will in future produce equally good ones."
+ "Madam, you think too much about your ailments, and in thinking of them you create fresh ones."
+ "If you say 'I want to do something,' your imagination replies 'Oh but you can't.' You must say 'I am going to do it,' and if it is in the region of the possible you will succeed."
+ "Monsieur, you have been making efforts. You must put your trust in the imagination, not in the will. Think you are better and you will become so."
* The central theory:
1) every idea which exclusively occupies the mind is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
2) the efforts we make to conquer an idea by exerting the will only serve to make that idea more powerful.
* c.f.: the blacksmith who believed he could move his arm, and then after doing so Coué said "hit me on the shoulder." "I can, I can."
* Coué's psychological techniques: sometimes he was firm, sometimes gently bantering. He "tactfully teased some of his patients, giving them an idea that their ailment was absurd, and a little unworthy" or something they should quickly get rid of. Disease as something "gently ridiculed" where "its victims end by laughing at it."
* "Say to yourself that all the words I'm about to utter will be fixed, imprinted and engraven in your minds; that they will remain fixed, imprinted and engraven there, so that without your will and knowledge, without your being in any way aware of what is taking place, you yourself and your whole organism will obey them."
* Repeat three times a day every day: morning, noon and evening,
* "If in the past you have been subject to depression, gloom and melancholy forebodings, you will henceforth be free from such troubles. Instead of being moody, anxious and depressed, you will be cheerful and happy. You'll be happy even if you have no particular reason for being so, just as in the past you were, without good reason, unhappy."
* "If you have been impatient or ill-tempered, you will no longer be anything of the kind; on the contrary you will always be patient and self-controlled. The happenings which used to irritate you will leave you entirely calm and unmoved."
* "When you have any task to perform you will always think that it is easy. Such words as "difficult," "impossible," "I cannot" will disappear from your vocabulary. Their place will be taken by this phrase: "It is easy and I can." So, considering your work easy, even if it is difficult to others, it will become easy to you. You will do it easily, without effort and without fatigue."
* Thus we arrive at the phrase that his patients are requested to repeat: "Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better."
* A modern ear can only hear this with an underlying tone of self-parody, unfortunately. Thus it is probably more useful and productive to an American audience to use the phrase from the original French: [Chaque jour, on peut se répéter cette phrase universelle : "Tous les jours, à tous points de vue: je vais de mieux en mieux". Quels que soient vos petits tracas, gros soucis ou problèmes qui ne dépendent pas forcément de vous, vous répéter cette phrase quotidiennement va donner un autre ton à vos journées.]
* Coué working with three other patients who were unable to walk, he now invited them to run: "they had but to believe in their own power, and their thought would be manifested in action."
* Testimonial letters from cured patients; the children's clinic in Nancy.
* "Elaborate instructions would only introduce hindersome complications." The affirmations should be simple.
* With young (even very young) children: incorporating the mother, she sets an example of cheerfulness and confidence, a powerful ally.
* "Induced Autosuggestion is not dependent upon the mediation of another person. We can practice it for ourselves without others being even aware of what we are doing, and without devoting to it more than a few minutes of each day."
* Thought is a force. (Or as I've seen in phrased persuasively: thoughts are things.)
* "Autosuggestion is not a pseudo-religion like Christian Science or 'New Thought.'" Interesting that the author felt a need to distance the Coué Method from these other movements/philosophies. Today, the "New Thought" movement holds no negative connotations like perhaps it may have in the early 20th Century.
* A discussion of the unconscious: "Derived from the Unconscious during the process of evolution, the conscious [mind] is, as it were, the antechamber where the crude energies of the Unconscious are selected and adapted for action on the world outside us."
* "In the past we have unduly exaggerated the importance of the conscious intellect. To claim for it the discoveries of civilization is to confuse the instrument with the agent, to attribute sight to the field-glass instead of to the eye behind it." [Interesting conceit here. It strikes me as a type of midwit problem to ascribe exaggerated or exclusive importance to the various forms of conscious thinking: declarative knowledge, school/academic learning, ludic thinking, etc.]
* Examples of the unconscious mind working on our conscious emotions, as well as on our physiological state: "catching" a contagious mood from a happy friend, psychosomatic phenomena like stage fright or neurosis, etc.
* "This brings us to a point which is of great practical importance in the performance of curative autosuggestion. No idea presented to the mind can realize itself unless the mind accepts it."
* The basic law of autosuggestion: "Every idea which enters the conscious mind, if it is accepted by the Unconscious, is transformed by it into a reality and forms henceforth a permanent element in our life."
* "The reader will see from the example cited and from others which he will constantly meet that the thoughts we think determine not only our mental states, are sentiments and emotions, but the delicate actions and adjustments of our physical bodies."
* The process of autosuggestion consists of two steps:
1) the accepting of an idea
2) its transformation into reality
* It doesn't matter whether it's from ourself (autosuggestion) or from the agency of another person (heterosuggestion), the distinction is meaningless: "In essentials all suggestion is Autosuggestion. The only distinction we need make is between Spontaneous Autosuggestion which takes place independently of our will and choice, and Induced Autosuggestion, in which we consciously select the ideas we wish to realize and purposely convey them to the Unconscious."
* The problem of ensuring acceptance [of the autosuggestion idea/belief]: It depends on the emotions with which it is connected--is it reinforced by a like emotional association, or overwhelmed by a contrary association? See the example of asking a sailor if he's seasick (he'll be irritated and not "contaminated" by the idea) versus asking a timid-looking boat passenger if he's seasick (which will likely induce seasickness in him).
* Most suggestible times of the day: just before we fall asleep and just after we wake. Baudouin's "outcropping of the subconscious"
* Doing this effortlessly or through force of will--the latter doesn't work. "When the will is in conflict with an idea, the idea invariably gains the day." "Success is not gained by effort but by right thinking." Likewise the will is useless in breaking addiction or craving. "...the will cannot be more than the servant of thought."
* The law of reversed effort:
"When the imagination and the will are in conflict the imagination invariably gains the day. In the conflict between the will and the imagination, the force of the imagination is in direct ratio to the square of the will."
* "Thus the Will turns out to be, not the commanding monarch of life, as many people would have it, but a blind Samson, capable either of turning the mill or of pulling down the pillars."
* "Autosuggestion succeeds by avoiding conflict. It replaces wrong thought by right, literally applying in the sphere of science the principle enunciated in the New Testament: 'Resist not evil, but overcome evil with good.'"
* Exercising care over our thoughts, cultivating thoughts/ideas of health, success and goodness [or borrowing the idea from Buddhism: avoiding bad nutriments, etc.]
* Awareness of our thoughts and adjustment of them to brighter thoughts when necessary; Avoiding fear, the most dangerous of suggestions; Avoid dwelling on faults and frailties of our neighbors, also gossiping creates those petty faults in you.
* "Infection" from others of unhealthy ideas; Contagion of gloomy and despondent men and women, "damaging all with whom they come in contact."
* On awareness of the vibe you give off: "Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see the virtue and vice emit a breath every moment." (Emerson)
* "We have regarded our feelings far too much as effects and not sufficiently as causes. ... Auto suggestion lays weight upon this ladder view. Happiness must come first."
* "Whatever thought we continually think, provided it is reasonable, tends to become an actual condition of our life."
* On relying too much on the conscious mind, the intellectual mind: these are examples of using "efforts of the will" which is what we want to avoid. With induced autosuggestion it's far easier: just think of the end that you wish (a head free from pain, a good memory, a mode of life in which a certain bad habit has no role, etc.), rather than beating on them with efforts of the will.
* Using the simple generalized verbal formula ("day by day in every way..." or "tous jours, à tous points de vue...") a as a mechanism to improvement, rather than using fifty different specific verbal suggestions to deal with the different things that you'd like changed in your life. Also the generalized verbal formula creates a form of trust in the unconscious, that it knows better than the conscious mind the feelings and weaknesses that need attention.
* Another liability of using the conscious mind to select autosuggestions it may produce pernicious traits, materialistic desires, overdeveloping certain aspects of one's personality to the detriment of others etc. "The use of the general formula guards against this."
* "Autosuggestion is above all things easy. Its greatest enemy is effort. The more simple and unforced the manner of its performance the more potentially and profoundly it works. This is shown by the fact that its most remarkable results have been secured by children and by simple French peasants." Note the implicit rejection of a standard midwit rejection of autosuggestion: it's just too simple, therefore it can't work!
* Coué's system is easier than Baudouin's system.
* 20 reps every evening as you go to bed and when you wake up, using a string tied with 20 knots, like a rosary. The word should be uttered aloud, simply and without effort, "like a child absently murmuring a nursery rhyme."
* "The sovereign rule is to make no effort, and if this is observed you will intuitively fall into the right attitude."
* Repetition, said with faith, sincerity, then "leave the unconscious to do its work undisturbed. Do not be anxious about it, continually scanning yourself for signs of improvement. The farmer does not turn over the clods every morning to see if his seed is sprouting."
*Dwelling on a "yes" idea, avoiding "I want to," "I am going to try to"-type formulations: Affirm that the change has already begun, don't speak as if the desired improvement is a thing of the future. Don't refer directly to the disorder and "not having" it: e.g., rather than "I will be deaf," better to use "from this day forth my hearing will gradually improve." Or, instead of "I won't be fearful," instead "I will be more conscious of all that is happy and positive and cheerful, and the thoughts which enter my mind will be strong and helpful ones."
* Example regarding irritability and bad temper: "Henceforth I shall daily grow more good-humored. Equanimity and cheerfulness would become my normal states of mind."
* Use specific suggestions along with using the general autosuggestion formula. The two methods are complementary.
* Another example: "The work I have to do is easy, quite easy. Moreover I shall enjoy doing it, it will give me pleasure, and the results will be even beyond my expectation."
* "A form of particular suggestion which possesses distinct advantages of its own is the quiet repetition of a single word." "Calm," for example. "Joy," "strength," etc, this also will dispel opposite/undesired mental states.
* How to deal with pain: Introducing the "no pain" idea to the conscious overwhelms it with its contrary of pain, and the patient's condition becomes worse; further, pain prevents one from getting to the "outcropping" or pre/post sleep meditative state required for autosuggestion. The thought must occupy our minds.
* Also, do not say "I have no pain" because it contains the word "pain" and thus strengthens "the very idea we are trying to dislodge." Coué uses the phrase "ça passe".. in English one could use the phrase "It's going, going, going... gone!"
* Gently stroke with your hand the affected/painful part of your body.
* "If the pain has ceased suggest that it will not return; if it has only diminished suggest that it will shortly pass away altogether."
* "The same procedure is equally effective with discussing states of mind: worry, fear, despondency." The stroking movement of the hand should be applied to the forehead.
* "But the effect is still more far-reaching; you will be delivered from the fear of pain. Regarding yourself as its master, you will be able with the mere threat of treatment to prevent it from developing."
* Coué makes no distinction between organic illness or mental illness, and illness is an illness whatever its nature.
* Another example of a midwit problem: "Like religion, autosuggestion is a thing to practice. A man may be conversant with all the creeds in Christendom and be none the better for it; while some simple soul, loving God and his fellows may combine the high principles of Christianity in his life without any acquaintance with theology. So it is with autosuggestion." The midwit wants to intellectualize and "explain" the phenomenon, and resolve for himself precisely why it works... rather than actually practice it.
* A means of self-culturing, it is "essentially an individual practice, and individual attitude of mind."
* "Below the fussy perturbed little ego, with its local habitation, its name, its habits and views and oddities is an ocean of power, as serene as the depths below the troubled surface of the sea. Whatever is of you comes eventually thence, however perverted by the prism of self-consciousness. Autosuggestion is a channel by which the tranquil powers of this ultimate being are raised to the level of our life here and now."
To Read:
Charles Baudouin: Suggestion and Autosuggestion
Emile Coué: Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion
Emile Coué: The Essential Writings of Emile Coué