The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind

The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind is a spiritual self-help classic, which teaches you how to use visualization and other suggestion techniques to adapt your unconscious behavior in positive ways.

The central point of the book is that you can use your imagination to suggest ideas to your subconscious to get what you want. If repeated often enough, your mind will then steer your behavior more towards making those ideas a reality, unbeknownst to you. There are many ways you can do this, but most of them can be summarized under the concept of visualization – picturing yourself achieving a certain goal or outcome.

The scientific idea this plays on is called the placebo effect. In medicine, a placebo is a pill without a real, chemical or biological consequence, usually made of sugar. But if patients believe they’re getting strong medication, they might still observe some of the benefits, solely based on this belief. While the effect has been observed in many studies, I wouldn’t call this hard science, because how well it works is very subjective and depends on the individual.

Murphy describes many examples in the book, like an opera singer, who used this technique to overcome his stage fright. Another one is a surgeon in the 1900s, who lowered the mortality rate of his patients by telling them they wouldn’t get an infection. There are also many modern-day examples, like actor Jim Carry, who used visualization to succeed as an actor.

Another way you can make use of your subconscious is to simply sleep on things when you have a tough time deciding.

Murphy’s example is a woman, who was offered a job at the opposite coast of the country. It paid twice her current salary, but she was unsure whether to move across the nation for it. As she meditated in the evening, she fell asleep. In the morning, her gut confirmed her initial doubts and she decided not to take the offer. A few months later, she found out the company had gone bankrupt.

Now, hindsight is 20/20 and it’s impossible to know how things might’ve changed if she’d taken the job, but the basic premise is valid. Your subconscious can process information quicker and in different ways than your conscious self. Therefore, letting it do its thing while you sleep can lead to clearer thoughts and a more confident opinion the next day.

While your subconscious can be very useful if steered in the right direction, it can also make you get in your own way. Murphy shares the story of a salesman, who never seemed to receive any recognition at work. Despite outperforming all of his colleagues, he didn’t rise in the ranks.…