The Power of Your Subconscious MindThe Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Joseph Murphy wrote this in the sixties, and it's exactly what the title promises. His claim is that your subconscious mind accepts whatever you repeatedly tell it, and then works in the background to make it true. Repeat a belief, picture it clearly before you sleep, and your life starts bending toward it. He backs this up with story after story of people cured, rescued or made rich by believing hard enough.

Most of the book is technique. Get relaxed and a bit drowsy, then repeat a short, simple statement of what you want as if it's already true. He says the moments just before sleep are when the subconscious is most open, so that's the time to do it. He's also firm that you shouldn't wrestle with a problem in your head, because concentrating on the thing you fear only feeds it.

I read it when I was young enough to take all of that at face value. I wasn't asking where the evidence was. I was just impressed that anyone was saying it so confidently.

Reading about it now, I can see how much of it doesn't hold up. The miracle cures, the idea that thinking about money makes money appear. I wouldn't hand this book to someone and tell them it's how the world works.

But one small part of it stayed, and I think it's the part that's true. What you say to yourself over and over matters. If the sentence in your head every morning is "I can't do this", that sentence does some damage. I read it too early to argue with it, and that's probably why the useful bit got in.