Have you ever noticed how many of the early hypnotists were European? James Braid (June 1795 – March 1860—Scottish), Anton Mesmer (May 1734 – March 1815—German), Jean-Martin Charcot (November 1825 – August 1893—French), Emile Coué (February 1857 – July 1926;—French)—Emile Coué? Hypnotist? Yes, one of the best….
Coué is, of course, best known as the “Father of Affirmations.” He came up with the concept of repeating the saying, “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.” At the time, the common belief was that a strong conscious will constituted the best path to success: “I think, therefore I am in control….” Coué, however, maintained that eliminating some of our troubles required a change in unconscious thought, which required using our imagination. He called his form of hypnosis autosuggestion.
His well-known and artfully-vague affirmation, “Every day in every way, I am getting better and better,” sounds like something Milton Erickson should have said. It would, however, have driven Korzybski, the grandfather of the Metamodel, nuts with its lack of specificity. Although Coué and Erickson had many differences in the way they thought about changing behavior, they both trusted what is usually called “the unconscious” to make sense of “artfully vague” terms often used in hypnotic languages. Korzybski would have been asking, “Bark like a dog? What kind of dog specifically?” Whether Coué fully understood that the unconscious mind would “fill in the blanks” as necessary isn’t clear. Erickson definitely knew that the unconscious mind would find appropriate specifics from the individual’s experience.
Coué most certainly understood that affirmations that contradict readily observable reality will not influence the unconscious mind. If a person is morbidly obese, for example, when he or she affirms, “I am my ideal weight,” the unconscious accepts it as literally true: being morbidly obese becomes the person’s ideal weight. If the individual wants to move in the direction of a healthier weight, however, an affirmation based on Coué’s general principle: “Every day in every way I am becoming increasingly healthy,” or “Every day I am moving closer to my ideal weight”
Affirmations work to the degree that they are aligned with what we know about hypnosis and the workings of the unconscious mind. Simply saying something—no matter how often you repeat it—won’t make it true. One of the things we know about the unconscious mind (unconscious minds in general) is that it accepts suggestions for direction more readily than it accepts absolutes that contradict reality. Moving in the direction of a healthy weight is more believable than saying you are a healthy weight when your conscious mind looks in the mirror and says, “I look fat.” It’s easy, however, for the unconscious mind to accept the idea of moving in a desired direction.
As Richard Bandler likes to say, it’s competence that produces confidence rather than the other way around. In some areas of life, such a public speaking, an increase in confidence will eventually lead to competence, especially when you build in feedback that encourages learning from mistakes. In many areas of life (brain surgery comes to mind), you want your confidence to be based on your competence. The self-hypnosis of your affirmations would do well to keep the learning curve in mind, supporting your ability to learn. The most important thing about using affirmations is taking advantage of their power to set direction and letting hypnosis take you there automatically.
Try on some of the following:
- Every day in every way I am getting better and better at NLP.
- I am increasingly comfortable when conversing with strangers.
- I am becoming more intuitive every day.
- My ability to use affirmations to set directions is improving daily.
What direction would you enjoy setting for yourself now?
