New Thought Movement · 1920 to Present · The Deliberate Programming of the Mind
Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.Émile Coué — Self-Mastery Through Autosuggestion, 1920
Autosuggestion is the deliberate use of repeated thought and self-directed statement to influence the subconscious mind. The principle, popularized by the French pharmacist Émile Coué in the early twentieth century and developed extensively by Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich, is that the subconscious does not distinguish strongly between vividly imagined experience and actual experience — and that this feature of the mind can be used intentionally. What you repeatedly tell yourself, especially in states of relaxed concentration, tends to become what you believe, and what you believe shapes what you do.
Hill devoted an entire chapter of Think and Grow Rich to autosuggestion, calling it the medium through which the conscious mind communicates with the subconscious, and describing it as the only method by which the emotion of faith can be deliberately cultivated. His instructions were specific: read your written statement of purpose aloud, twice daily, in a state of concentrated attention, until the words carry emotional weight. The repetition is not magical — it is the mechanism by which new neural pathways are reinforced and old ones weakened.
The modern science of cognitive behavioral therapy operates on a closely related principle: automatic thoughts — the habitual, largely unconscious self-talk that runs beneath deliberate reasoning — powerfully shape mood, motivation, and behavior. Changing automatic thoughts through deliberate substitution is the core of CBT's most effective techniques. What Coué and Hill described in the language of New Thought, contemporary psychology has mapped in the language of cognitive science.
Émile Coué opened a free clinic in Nancy, France, in the early 1900s where he treated patients not with medicine but with a simple daily practice: repeating the phrase "every day, in every way, I am getting better and better" twenty times each morning and evening, using a knotted cord to count. The results were remarkable enough to attract international attention, and Coué's 1920 book became a bestseller across Europe and America. His method was criticized as naive and celebrated as revolutionary — the debate itself was evidence that he had identified something real.
The lineage from Coué to Hill to the modern positive psychology movement is direct. Hill interviewed Coué's work in developing the autosuggestion chapter of Think and Grow Rich, and his account of the technique — combining repetition with emotional intensity and specific desired outcomes — remains the most practical statement of the method. Hill's innovation was to pair autosuggestion with a written definite major purpose, giving the subconscious a specific target rather than a general improvement direction.
Contemporary neuroscience has provided a partial mechanism. Repeated activation of neural pathways strengthens them through a process called long-term potentiation. The thoughts we return to most often — whether deliberately or habitually — carve the deepest channels in our cognitive landscape. Autosuggestion is the deliberate version of a process that happens to everyone, intentionally or not.
Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.Napoleon Hill — Think and Grow Rich, 1937