Better and Better

Does this mild form of self-hypnosis have the power to change our lives? Let’s find out.

Autosuggestion - seeing things in your mind's eye - can be a powerful tool for achieving success. (Fei Meng)

Years ago, when asked “How’s it going?” a woman I knew always responded, “I’m getting better and better every day in every way.” This response sounded a bit contrived and hokey, but I assumed this mantra was just part of her personality.

Recently, while I was thumbing through Joseph Epstein’s “Wind Sprints,” a collection of short essays, a version of those same words snagged my attention: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” As Epstein notes, French psychologist Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (1857–1926) employed that very formula as part of the foundation for his positive thinking philosophy.

Coué is the father of optimistic autosuggestion and the author of “Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion,” which was published in the United States in 1922 and remains in print today. He believed that positive thoughts, constantly repeated, could in turn influence our mental and physical health.

“If you persuade yourself that you can do a certain thing,” he wrote, “provided this thing be possible, you will do it however difficult it may be.”

Others of that time were walking the same trail. In 1902, for instance, American James Allen brought out “As a Man Thinketh,” which begins with a poem:

Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes, And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills, Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills:— He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass: Environment is but his looking-glass.

Fifty years later, Norman Vincent Peale published “The Power of Positive Thinking,” a huge best-seller that’s still popular today. Upbeat thinking has guides abounding in the self-help sections of bookstores, podcasters, and career coaches tout its benefits, and athletes use autosuggestion to run a marathon or improve their game in golf, tennis, and other sports.

Accompanying autosuggestion is its cousin, visualization. Here, we fire up our imagination to scout out some future event—a job interview, a marriage proposal, skydiving—in the hopes of bolstering our chances for success. A friend of mine found her teenager lying in bed just hours before a dance recital.

“Shouldn’t you be practicing?” Mom asked. “I am practicing,” the girl replied. “In my head.” She’d never heard of visualization, but she was doing that very thing, critiquing herself in her mind’s eye as she went through her routine.

Does Coué’s autosuggestion theory have flaws? The jury is out as to whether Americans are self-obsessed—but carried too far, autosuggestion could certainly stoke the ego to the detriment of our relationships with others. It’s hard to imagine Mother Teresa walking the poverty-stricken streets of Calcutta chanting to herself, “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

Does conscious autosuggestion work? Ask that question online, and the answer is a resounding affirmative. Article after article describe this technique for self-improvement as a powerful tool that can boost self-confidence and benefit our health. Here, we might note that money spent on media advertising of all kinds in the United States in 2022 was well in excess of $250 billion, so clearly companies and ad agencies believe in the power of suggestion.

In most cases, we have little to lose and much to gain by heading out the door buoyed by a bit of bright cheer, if for no other purpose than to keep us afloat in the rough seas of our battered world.

“Try this for a week and you will be surprised,” wrote Peale in “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

Game on. How about it?