El Poder de la Mente Subconsci

Keep your conscious mind occupied with expectations of the best.

This book is one of the few exceptions, probably due to two factors. First, the author, Joseph Murphy, was a popular minister of the Church of Divine Science and second, because his book was rooted in both science and religion. From today's perspective, the book feels a bit woo-woo, but at the time, it hit exactly the right nerve.

That's why this practical guide to manipulating your own behavior to get what you want has sold millions of copies and remains popular to this day. Here are 3 lessons to help you tap into the unconscious part of your mind:

Use visualization as a way to exploit the placebo effect to your advantage.

If you can't decide between several options, take a night to sleep.

Make a sincere effort to wish others well, because envy only gets in your own way.

Would you like to steer your behavior in the right direction on autopilot? Who does not? So let's see what we can learn!

Lesson 1: Visualization is a means of using the placebo effect to your advantage.

The whole point of the book is that you can use your imagination to suggest ideas to your subconscious to get what you want. If repeated often enough, your mind will direct your behavior more toward making those ideas come true, without you even knowing it. There are many ways to do this, but most of them can be summed up under the concept of visualization: imagining yourself achieving a certain goal or result.

The scientific idea that this plays into is called the placebo effect. In medicine, a placebo is a pill with no real chemical or biological consequence, usually made of sugar. But if patients believe that they are receiving strong drugs, they may still see some of the benefits, based solely on this belief. While the effect has been observed in many studies, I wouldn't call it pure science, because how well it works is highly subjective and depends on the individual.

Murphy describes many examples in the book, such as an opera singer, who used this technique to overcome his stage fright. Another is a surgeon in the 1900s who lowered the death rate of his patients by telling them they wouldn't get infected. There are also plenty of modern examples, such as actor Jim Carry, who used visualization to make it big as an actor.

Lesson 2: When in doubt, sleep on it. Often, you can make safer decisions after a good night's rest.

Another way you can make use of your subconscious is to simply sleep on things when you are having a hard time deciding.

Murphy's example is that of a woman who was offered a job on the opposite coast of the country. It paid her double her current salary, but she wasn't sure she would move to the other side of the country to get it. While meditating at night, he fell asleep. In the morning, her instincts confirmed her initial doubts and she decided not to accept the offer. A few months later, he found out that the company had gone bankrupt.

Now, hindsight is 20/20 and it's impossible to know how things might have changed if she had taken the job, but the basic premise holds true. Your subconscious can process information faster and in different ways than your conscious self. So letting it do its thing while you sleep can lead to clearer thoughts and a more confident opinion the next day.