How to Use Autosuggestion Effectively, The Definitive Guide

Between your ears is the most powerful machine on the planet.

It has started wars, built cities, and pushed mankind out of the Stone Age.

The best part of it all? It can be programmed by autosuggestion.

This article compiles the knowledge of the leading minds in psychology and personal development along with my own personal experience to provide a full working basis of how to use this incredibly powerful technique.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• What is autosuggestion
• Why it’s essential in changing your thought patterns
• Massively powerful techniques

First thing’s first: let me tell you a story…

What is Autosuggestion?

The psychological use of spoken words often in a repetitious nature, to influence the subconscious mind, the main influencer of human behavior.

I came across autosuggestion by accident.

I was reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill when the term “autosuggestion” was mentioned as a way to influence the subconscious mind.

It’s so important that he dedicated an entire chapter to it.

AUTO-SUGGESTION is a term which applies to all suggestions and all self-administered stimuli which reach one’s mind through the five senses. Stated in another way, auto-suggestion is self-suggestion. It is the agency of communication between that part of the mind where conscious thought takes place, and that which serves as the seat of action for the subconscious mind.” – Napoleon Hill, Think & Grow Rich

At first, I thought this was balderdash.

Think and Grow Rich was a good book, but you couldn’t possibly influence behavior just through words…

Right?

I started to read other books that mentioned this mysterious “autosuggestion”…and it turns out they were all saying the same thing.

So it wasn’t farfetched.

Here’s why:

Repetition is how humans learn. Basketball moves, song lyrics, riding a bike… they’re all repeated actions over a period of time.

Repetition is also an essential part of propaganda, something Hitler mastered during his tenure as chancellor of Germany.

We all know what happened afterwards.

So that’s the first key – repetition.

But here’s the more important part:

Why You Should Learn (and Practice) Autosuggestion

The power of thought, of idea, is incommensurable, is immeasurable. The world is dominated by thought. – Emile Coué

Learning how to control your thoughts as a man is essential.

But let’s revisit the notion of the brain as a machine. A supercomputer, rather.

Your brain runs millions of programs a second, can adapt to any circumstance you can think of and gets better with time and deliberate practice.

Like a computer, you run on a default program.

Your master program is your personality, your disposition, and your predominant state of mind.

This is known as a paradigm and it can be changed.

Your master program contains many genetic quirks but these are negligible. Every child comes into this world more or less as a blank slate (even though they might have certain inclinations due to genetics).

But genetics are a blueprint, not a destination. And from an early and impressionable age, this blueprint was “modified”.

Your parents taught you what to eat, what to wear, what to do.

So did your teachers and to some extent – your peers.

How to Reprogram the Subconscious Mind

“About 95 percent of who we are by midlife is a series of subconscious programs that have become automatic – driving a car, brushing our teeth, overeating when we’re stressed, worrying about our future, judging our friends, complaining about our lives, blaming our parents, not believing in ourselves, and insisting on being chronically unhappy to name a few.” – Dr. Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

Your brain has five brainwave states:

• Gamma – high processing tasks
• Beta – predominant awake state
• Alpha – highly relaxed state
• Theta – very relaxed state, near sleep but still awake
• Delta – sleep

The average adult has a high level of beta wave neural activity, which is characteristic of a fully formed prefrontal cortex.

The prefrontal cortex doesn’t really start to develop until age 11 or 12. It isn’t fully formed until 25. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision-making, concentration, self-discipline, and other aspects that we associate with a functional human being.

Because this prefrontal cortex (and the brain in general) is not fully developed, children have mostly theta brain waves. Infants have solely delta wave activity. In fact, an infant may appear to be awake when he/she is actually asleep.

Since children need to learn a great deal about their environment, they are operating on a subconscious theta wave state most of the time.

This is why children are easily influenced. They hear and see everything that’s going on all the time because they are operating on a subconscious level.

This means that many people were programmed with:

• Self-limiting beliefs
• Outdated or false information

As a result, you have a “master program” that probably doesn’t serve who you are or what your life situation is right now. It has a lot of junk in it that must be “deleted”.

The master program is why:

• Some people don’t improve themselves
• Some people stay in jobs that they hate
• Some people feel at ease around others
• Some people are better at managing their time
• Some people are terrible at talking to the opposite sex

Everything you have or don’t have in life is because of the way you think. The way you think is largely determined by how you’re programmed.

You may think you’re an agent of free will but you’re operating on autopilot thoughts most of the time. Your subconscious runs the show 90-95% of the time.

Your parents, your church, your social group, your teachers, the media…all of these forces acted on you on some level during your childhood.

Knowing this, it is no surprise that crime, domestic violence, and all kinds of bad shit still happens in our society!

1. The children use the behavior of adults around them as a template for what is and is not acceptable
2. They never examine it as fully grown adults
3. They end up having children of their own
4. The children repeat their behavior

The cycle of madness continues on and on and on (Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle calls this a “painbody”).

You can be the jamming mechanism in this cycle.

Reprogramming yourself and your mind to think and act in new ways is how you become a whole new person.

As a wise man once said:

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

How to Use Autosuggestion (Techniques + Practical Application)

To change the subconscious mind, autosuggestion is just one tool you can use. But if you use it right, it’s a DAMN good one.

Its effectiveness depends on the three things:

• The amount of emotion you place behind your suggestions
• The amount of repetition you use with your suggestions
• The amount of primacy you place on your suggestions

There’s many ways you can do autosuggestion, but the most efficient and fastest way is through affirmations.

I’ll go step by step on how to start this process.

First – Identify what you want to change

“Lecky conceived of the personality as a “system of ideas”, all of which must seem to be consistent with each other. Ideas which are inconsistent with the system are rejected, not believed and not acted upon. Ideas which seem to be consistent with the system are accepted.” – Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics

Your brain is an automatic “goal seeking” mechanism. If you have not programmed yourself with new goals – you will automatically strive towards the goals that are placed in your subconscious.

Guess what they are?

The ones you’ve been programmed with by others (which may be negative).

If what you’re suggesting is at cross purposes with goals that are strongly lodged in your subconscious mind, they will not work. The past “goals” plugged in your subconscious have had more time to take root. As a result, they are stronger. These need to be uprooted before positive change can take place. This can also be done through autosuggestion.

Second – Induction

Suggestions are taken more readily when your conscious mind, the guard at the gate is “off duty”. This happens most often during:

• Sleep
• Driving
• Immersive work (aka flow)
• Hypnotic trance-like states (like meditation)
• Relaxing activities (like television)

A trained hypnotist can suggest things to your subconscious and get you to readily act upon them.

Watching television is a form of hypnosis. Advertisers know this, so they take advantage. This is one reason why subliminal advertisements are banned in many countries around the world.

For the purpose of autosuggestion, meditation in an isolated environment is the most effective tool.

Meditation involves relaxing into an awake yet comfortable state. This puts you into a trance, which opens your subconscious mind to greater influence.

Third – Believe!

Your suggestions must be believable.

You have to deeply believe in the amount of change you can have on yourself and your environment as a whole.

Most of us spend all day thinking of negative thoughts and negative outcomes. Why can’t we think the opposite for once?

Fourth – Feeling Is the Secret

“Sensation precedes manifestation and is the foundation upon which all manifestation rests. Be careful of your moods and feelings, for there is an unbroken connection between your feelings and your visible world. Your body is an emotional filter and bears the unmistakable marks of your prevalent emotions.” – Neville Goddard, Feeling is the Secret

The more emotional punch you can pack behind your autosuggestion, the better your results. Your subconscious, your “master program” is influenced strongly by emotions. How much does this mean to you? Do you have a “why”?

A lot of guys are terrible with feeling emotions. This means that many guys try to produce an outcome through brute force. I’ll tell you first hand – that doesn’t work.

Remember, we don’t think in words – we think in pictures. How will you feel when you achieve your goals? Stay in that emotional state and make that your dominant feeling.

You do this through again, constant repetition.

Fifth – “I AM”

Your autosuggestion/affirmation must be in the first person and present tense. For example: I am [FILL IN THE BLANK].

You have to see the future already finished in advance. You have to think long term.

According to quantum physics, there is no such thing as past or future because they are conceptions of the mind. Everything exists now and will ever exist now because that is the only reality.

This means that whoever you want to be/are already exists, you just need to “collapse” this into an experience in your life by taking action.

It’s pretty hard to wrap your head around, but once you do, your mind will be blown. This pretty much means ruminating on the past and worrying about the future will only get you the same thing you’ve always gotten.

If you like where you’re currently at, that’s fine. Keep doing what you’re doing. But I’m guessing that you want some lifestyle improvements, or else you wouldn’t be reading this far down. 🙂

Sixth – Think Positively

Your autosuggestion must be positive – you cannot use the words “no, never, don’t, can’t” etc. in your suggestion. Your subconscious only responds to positive commands such as “I am always confident” versus “I am never nervous”.

See the difference?

Your subconscious, unfortunately, can’t take a joke. It’s a sourpuss if there ever was one. That means it doesn’t respond to “Haha, JK bro! LOL”. No. If you tell it to do something, that’s what it’s going to do.

When you focus on an outcome like “I am never nervous”, you focus on “don’t be nervous, don’t be nervous…please don’t be nervous…”. What happens? You’re nervous.

If you want to get to Florida, you don’t head to Canada.

Seventh – Practice, Practice, Practice

If you want your autosuggestions to be effective, you need to practice them – often.

Repetition is the best way to influence the subconscious mind. How did you learn to do anything? You did it over and over and over and over again.

Same with your suggestions. You need to do them over and over again until you actually feel that these autosuggestions are you – and you are them.

This is how you begin to manage your mind.

Here’s an action exercise to get you started:

1. Write out 10 states/goals you’d like to see accomplished in the next year or so.
2. Use these steps outlined.
3. Circle one autosuggestion on that list – that will be your central focus around which all other suggestions will revolve.
4. Do this every day for the next 12 months.

Autosuggestion is very effective if used properly but it is not a cure-all. You should treat it as one tool in your toolbox dedicated to self-improvement. Like anything else, there are no shortcuts with this.

But if you use persistent, diligent, repeat action – your life will change in incredible ways. I guarantee it.

Here are some of the amazing books that inspired this article. Check them out if you want to further your studies on the subconscious mind and mind programming. These guys were/are masters of the mind.

Their work has made a lasting impact on me and I guarantee it will do the same to you as well.

1. Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
2. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
3. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza
4. The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
5. Feeling is the Secret by Neville Goddard
6. Self Mastery through Conscious Autosuggestion by Emile Coué

Now, I want to hear from you.

Do you use autosuggestion? How have you achieved your goals using autosuggestion? Let me know in the comments!