By believing oneself to be the master of one’s thoughts, one becomes so.
“Before you treat someone, ask if they are willing to give up the things that make them sick,” advised Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BC).
Since age-old times, philosophers and medical savants have researched to demystify the creative power of human thought. The maxims “Man is what he thinks” and “I think, therefore I exist” have long been common in universal language. As an ancient sage said :
Be careful of your thoughts, for they become your words, words become your actions, your actions become your habits, habits become your character and your character becomes your destiny.
Research today asserts that our minds are flooded with countless thoughts each minute, of which about 90 % is repetitive and negative. All that mental noise flowing like a strong current through our conscious and unconscious mind can significantly impact our physical and mental health.
Humanity has always tried to eliminate the malfunctions or disruptions that occur during character formation. Human thought has been the fundamental tool and remedy in treatment methods ranging from hypnosis, healing, psychosomatics, and even Shamanism. A hundred years ago, Émile Coué (1857-1926) traced the cause of some mental and physical dysfunctions back to human thought.
He believed that our unconscious is the source of many of our ills, therefore it can also bring the cure for our physical and mental ailments. It can not only repair the ill it has done, but cure real illnesses, so strong is its action upon our organism.
His treatment is based on Auto-suggestion, which he uses as an efficient method to master one’s thoughts. It is simply the power of man to direct his thoughts and process useful thoughts. Coué proves that this is possible within the limits of logic on hundreds of cases he has worked with.
Among the unnoticed unconscious thoughts, many cast shadows, trigger anxiety, sadness, illness or can even bring on harm to the environment. Yet they can be transformed into good by instilling different thoughts in oneself.
In his best-selling book, Mastery Through Conscious Auto-Suggestion, he explains how this method has been successful on many patients who have come to him for kidney problems, diabetes, memory loss, migraine cases, eczema, stuttering, asthma, etc., and some mental illnesses.
A person becomes this way by believing that he is the master of his own thoughts. Conscious auto-suggestion, done with confidence, faith and determination, will fulfill itself.
Each of our thoughts, good or bad, becomes concrete, materialized, and in short, becomes a reality. We are what we make of our selves. Auto-suggestion is an instrument that we possess at birth, and with which we play unconsciously all our life, as a baby plays with its rattle. It is however a dangerous instrument; it can wound or even kill you if you handle it imprudently and unconsciously. It can on the contrary save your life when you know how to employ it consciously. It is a tool that you must learn to use, just like any other tool. In inexperienced hands, a perfect gun is a dangerous tool; if handled carelessly and unconsciously, it can injure or even kill you. But the more skillful the same hands, the easier it is to place the bullets on target.
When you know how to use autosuggestion consciously, it can save your life. As Aesop said of language : Language can be both the best and the worst thing in the world.
When patients apply auto-suggestion with faith and regular repetition, the results were 93 % successful.
He distinguishes two classes of persons in whom it is difficult to arouse conscious autosuggestion :
1. The mentally underdeveloped, who are not capable of understanding what you say to them
2. Those who are unwilling to understand.
His method is simple. It reminds us of the saying that most of us know, “If you say something forty times, it will happen ! ” He recommends his patients to repeat the following sentence at least twenty times in the morning and evening:
EVERY DAY, IN EVERY RESPECT, I AM GETTING BETTER AND BETTER.
One should emphasize the words “in every respect” in his mind, which applies to every need, psychological, spiritual or physical. This general suggestion, as he states, is more effective than specific ones.
The tools used by healers and hypnotists are all based on auto-suggestion, whatever their method, words, incantations, facial expressions, gestures, staging, all produce the healing auto-suggestion in the patient.
On the reliability of the method he quotes his colleague and friend, Dr Louis Rénon (1863-1922), lecturing professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris, and doctor at the Necker Hospital said :
…Moral influence has a considerable value as a help in healing. It is a factor of the first order which it would be very wrong to neglect, since in medicine as in every branch of human activity, it is the spiritual forces which lead the world.
At the end of his book, Coué writes:
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 and allows us not only to escape and to aid others to escape, from physical and mental ills, but also to live in relative happiness, whatever the conditions in which we may find ourselves. Lastly, and above all, it should be applied to the moral regeneration of those who have wandered from the right path.
Suggestion backed by faith is a formidable force… Never lose sight of the principle of autosuggestion : Optimism, always and in spite of everything, even when events do not seem to justify it.
Duygu Bruce
