Today I will summarize a book called The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. I’ve prepared six life-changing and practical takeaways for you.
I especially recommend watching the second takeaway where I will explain the mistakes you do that are not allowing you to attract success and money to your life.
You are probably familiar with this feeling – you work hard, you do everything you can, but somehow you can’t get what you want. Quite worse, somehow you end up getting the opposite of what you want.
But on the other hand, there are some people who don’t seem to be even trying, but they get all the money and success. Why is that? Why do some people get what they want so effortlessly, while others struggle a lifetime without success?
The answer is in the way they use their subconscious mind. Before I go further on this topic, let me first explain how your subconscious works.
Takeaway #1: The Difference Between the Conscious and Subconscious Mind
The conscious mind is like the captain of a ship. The captain stays on the deck and can see where they are sailing and control everything on the ship.
On the other hand, engineers who are responsible for controlling the engines and the other instruments can’t see what is going on outside the ship – they are inside the ship, following orders coming from the captain.
Engineers are like the subconscious mind. The engineers do not know where they are going, they follow orders. They would go on the rocks if the captain issued wrong orders. They obey the captain because he is in charge, he is supposed to know what he is doing.
In the same way, your conscious mind is the captain of your ship – your body and your environment. Your subconscious mind takes the orders you give it, based upon what your conscious mind believes and accepts as true.
It does not question the orders, it does not engage in proving whether your thoughts are good or bad, true or false. It responds according to the nature of your thoughts.
The subconscious mind is like the soil – whatever seed you plant there, it will grow. Soil does not say “let me prioritize this apricot seed over another seed and give more nourishment because it will bear fruits one day.” It grows whatever you plant there, without differentiating what seed you have planted.
Your subconscious mind also doesn’t understand a joke – it takes you at your word. Under hypnosis, if a practiced hypnotist holds a cup of water under your nose and tells you that it is a cup full of pepper, you will start sneezing. Or if a hypnotist tells you that you are a cat or dog, you will start behaving like a cat or dog.
Your subconscious mind does not have the ability to argue or dispute – if you give it wrong information, it will accept it as true. That is why if you repeatedly say to yourself “I can’t afford it”, your subconscious mind takes you at your word.
And as long as you keep on saying “I can’t afford that car, that vacation, that home”, you can be sure your subconscious mind will follow your orders. You will go through life experiencing the lack of all these things, and you will believe that circumstances made it so.
It will not occur to you that you have created those circumstances yourself, by your own thoughts.
Takeaway #2: You Have a Fundamental Right to Be Rich
Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed of your desire to be rich. It is not only good, but very good to be rich. When your blood is circulating freely in your body, you are healthy. When money is circulating freely in your life, you are economically healthy.
There is nothing wrong with being economically healthy. There is no virtue in poverty, it is an illness like any other mental illness. If you were physically ill, you would realize there was something wrong with you. You would seek help and try to cure the condition at once.
In the same way, if you do not have enough money constantly circulating in your life, there’s something radically wrong with you. But have you ever thought about what is wrong with you, and why you can’t get what you want?
For many people, there are three key reasons (you can also call them emotions) that are holding them back from success:
Reason #1: Envy
When I was a kid playing with my friends in the neighborhood, we would very often see a young guy driving an expensive car. With my friends, we would all look at the car with envy and then say things like “God knows what kind of illegal things this guy did to buy such a luxury car at a young age” or “Why can such arrogant guys drive a luxury car but not us?”
Basically we would talk all sorts of envious things behind the guy’s back without even knowing him or what he does.
After reading books similar to this one, I completely changed my behavior. The reason I changed was that entertaining envious thoughts are devastating – it places you in a negative position, therefore wealth flows away from you instead of to you.
If you get annoyed or irritated by the prosperity or great wealth of another, then you have pushed wealth away from you. Remember that you lose what you condemn, you cannot attract what you criticize or envy.
Would you stay with a girlfriend or boyfriend who constantly criticizes you? Of course not. And neither will wealth.
Wealth is like a sexy blonde girl sitting alone on the bar, waiting for the gentleman to compliment her beauty and buy a drink. If you approach her and start criticizing her beauty, do you think she will go out with you? Of course not, she will talk to the man who knows how to appreciate her.
If you have thought envious things about anyone’s wealth, stop doing it for your own benefit. The thought you have about the other person is your thought, because you are thinking it. Therefore you actually create in your own experience what you think and feel about the other person.
The suggestion you give to another, you give to yourself as well. Because your mind is the source that created those thoughts. Your subconscious mind records it and plays it back to you.
These days when I see a young guy driving a nice car, I truly feel happy for him. I feel happy that he is blessed to drive such a nice car. In my mind, I wish him the best and thank him for motivating me and showing me what is possible. I say to myself “If he can do it, I can do it as well.”
Reason #2: You’re Trying Too Hard
Suppose you were asked to walk along a narrow plank that is on the floor. You would do it easily, without question. But now suppose the same plank was 50 m high between two walls. Would you still do it?
Probably not. Your desire to walk the length of the plank would come into conflict with your imagination. You would imagine falling down. You might very much want to walk across, but your fear of falling would keep you from being able to do it.
The more effort you put into conquering your imagination, the greater strength is given to the idea of falling. The thought “I will use my willpower to overcome my failure” leads to failure.
It’s like deciding not to think about a green hippo – the decision makes the idea of a green hippo dominate the mind. And the subconscious always responds more to the dominant idea. And since most of the time the dominant idea is failure, that is exactly what ends up happening.
So what is the source of the problem here? Well, the problem is that you are trying too hard. Never try to force the subconscious mind to accept your idea by using willpower. Such attempts are doomed to failure, you will get the opposite of what you want.
The effortless way is better. You are probably familiar with this situation – you go to an exam and you feel as you know it well, but when you face the exam paper, your mind goes blank. All your knowledge of the subject has suddenly disappeared. You can’t recall a single relevant thought.
The harder you try, the farther the knowledge seems to run. When you leave the exam room, the mental pressure eases and suddenly the answers you were hunting for so desperately a few minutes ago flow back into your mind.
The mistake you made was to try to force yourself to remember. So what is the solution then? Relaxation. Don’t push yourself so hard to find the solution or look hard for ways to reach your goal.
Just know what the end result will look like and feel the happiness you would feel if you achieved that goal. Feeling and imagination are the most important factors for the subconscious mind.
Your new idea must be felt in a finished state. If you do that, then your subconscious mind will work hard to find ways to reach your goal. You will start getting new ideas, you will start meeting new people and seeing new solutions.
It’s super important to be open to new solutions at these times. Sometimes we are so fixated on how the end solution should look like, that we don’t see the perfect solution presented by the subconscious mind.
Reason #3: Fear
I’ve heard this sentence a lot: “I said affirmations and did visualizations but I did not get results.”
Well, it is because you probably indulged in fear thoughts perhaps 10 minutes later, and neutralized the good you had affirmed.
Imagine that you got into a taxi and asked the driver to take you to your home address, but after a few hundred meters you asked the driver to take you to a different address. After a short period you changed the address again.
If you keep changing the destination every few hundred meters, the taxi driver would be confused. Even if he wanted to follow your instructions, chances are he wouldn’t be able where you would end up is anybody’s guess.
It’s the same when working with the enormous powers of your subconscious mind. You must have a clear idea in your mind. You must arrive at the definite decision that there is a way out, a solution to the problem.
As I mentioned a few minutes ago, the idea that realizes itself is the one to which we give the most concentrated attention.
For example, if you have an exam or interview, most of the time you will probably think about failure. As a result, it is a failure that the subconscious mind brings into reality. The fear of failure creates the experience of failure.
Here is a technique for overcoming fear:
Suppose you are afraid of swimming. Begin now to sit still for 5 or 10 minutes, three or four times a day. Put yourself into a state of deep relaxation.
Now imagine you swimming – you feel the coolness of the water and the movement of your arms and legs. It is a real, vivid and joyous activity of the mind.
This is not idle daydreaming. You understand that what you are experiencing in your imagination will be developed in your subconscious mind. You will be forced to express the image you created in your deeper mind.
Next time when you swim, it is the joy that will surface. This is the law of the subconscious.
You can apply the same technique to other fears such as interviews, exams or public speaking.
Takeaway #3: How to Visualize Your Goals
The easiest and most obvious way to visualize a goal is to see it in your mind’s eye as vividly as if it was alive now.
You might ask – is it possible to see things that don’t yet exist? And the answer is yes, of course we can see things way before they exist. This is how the computer or the phone you are using right now came into existence – someone saw it before it existed.
You have probably heard the saying “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” Well, guess what – we humans can count our chickens way before they hatch!
Architects do this all the time – they see the building in its complete form before it even existed. It may be an ugly or a beautiful building, but it is being first created as a visualization.
So it is possible to see things before they exist. In fact, it would be foolish to start something without visualizing and seeing it first in your mind’s eye.
For example, imagine you see a man building something and ask him what he is building, and he replies “I have no idea what I’m building here. I am just putting bricks on top of each other and hoping it will turn out to be something nice.”
You would probably call the police to take away this crazy man so that he does not harm himself and others. So it is not just possible, but necessary to visualize and see things before they exist.
The best time to visualize your goal is before you go to sleep or after meditation. The reason is that when you are in a relaxed and sleepy state, the conflict between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is reduced. Which means the subconscious mind has an easier time to work on your goals.
Another benefit of visualization before sleep is that you give a task to your subconscious to work on while you sleep. Many people think that you get tired during the day and you go to sleep to rest the body, but nothing rests in sleep.
Your heart, lungs and all your vital organs function while you are asleep. If you eat prior to sleep, the food is digested. Your nails and hair continue to grow.
In the same way, your subconscious mind never rests or sleeps – it is always active, controlling all your vital forces.
You spend one-third of your entire life in sleep, and many answers to our problems come to us when we are asleep. Many famous people have understood this and have used it very effectively to find solutions to the problems they are facing.
Nicola Tesla and Albert Einstein are just a few of the many examples.
Takeaway #4: How to Receive Guidance from Your Subconscious
When you have to make a difficult decision or when you fail to see the solution to your problem, begin at once to think constructively about it.
If you are fearful and worried, you are not really thinking. True thinking is free from fear. Here is a simple technique you can use to receive guidance on any subject:
- Quiet the mind and still the body. Tell the body to relax.
- Focus your thoughts on the solution to your problem. Try to solve it with your conscious mind.
- Think about how happy you would be about the perfect solution. Sense the feeling you would have if the perfect answers were yours now.
- Let your mind play with this mood of happiness in a relaxed way.
- Then drop off to sleep.
When you awaken, if you do not have the answer, get busy with something else. While you are preoccupied, it is possible that the answer will pop into your mind.
You do not always get the answer overnight, so keep doing it. Believe that you will have the answer. Now feel the joy of the answer in the way you would feel if you had the perfect answer.
Your subconscious will respond to your feelings. Guidance comes as a hunch, an inner awareness, a strong feeling that urges you to do certain things. Follow these feelings with faith and never doubt its power.
In the book there are several great examples showing how people used this technique to find an answer or solution to their problem. The simplest example was one that happened to the author himself.
The author says he used this technique to find his lost ring. After several repetitions, one day he got a hunch that he should ask his neighbor Robert. It didn’t make any sense since Robert was just a kid and there was no way that he would know where the ring was.
Despite the hesitation, the author asked Robert. He said “Oh yeah, I found it a few days ago and put it on the table at home. Let me go home and bring it.”
Takeaway #5: How to Use the Subconscious Mind for Forgiveness
Life always forgives you. It forgives you when you cut your finger by healing the wound. When you burn your hand, it gives you new skin and tissues.
Life holds no resentment against you. It always forgives. But we can’t do the same. We feel guilty for years for the things we did in the past. We keep blaming ourselves and feel terrible every time we remember what we did or said.
We all have one or two things that we did in the past that we regret and can’t forgive ourselves or others for. Maybe you said something to your parents that hurt them a lot, or did something to your friends that you shouldn’t have done.
Years have passed but you are still feeling terrible. If what I just described applies to you, then listen to this carefully:
Scientists tell us that every single cell in our bodies is replaced every 11 months – both physically and psychologically.
Do you know what that means? It means that you are reborn every 11 months. The person who did something wrong years ago is literally dead now.
If you are still suffering for the things you did a long time ago, then you are blaming an innocent person. My friend, let me ask you this:
If you could relive the same event again today, would you do and say things as you did years ago? Probably not, right?
If that is the case, then wouldn’t it make sense just to forgive yourself and stop suffering for the mistakes of a dead person?
Takeaway #6: How to Use the Subconscious Mind for Healing
If you create a watch and one day that watch stops working, you would know how to fix it, right?
The subconscious mind is like a watchmaker – it created your body and it knows exactly how to heal and restore all the vital functions of your body, whether you are awake or asleep.
Your subconscious mind controls all the processes of your body without the help of your conscious mind. Your heart beats, you breathe, etc. If you were forced to operate your body’s functions with your conscious mind, you would probably die in a few minutes because the process is very complex.
The heart-lung machine that is used during open heart surgery is one of the wonders of modern medical technology. But what it does is infinitely simpler than what your subconscious mind does 24 hours a day, every day.
Your conscious mind cannot operate your body, but it can get in the way of proper operation. If you put an ordinary person into the cockpit of a plane, he would not know how to fly the plane, but he would definitely know how to distract the pilot and cause a problem.
In a similar way, products of the conscious mind such as worry, anxiety, fear, and depression interfere with the normal functioning of the heart, lungs, and stomach, and cause problems.
Stress creates problems for the harmonious functioning of your subconscious mind. When you feel physically and mentally disturbed, the best thing you can do is let go, relax, and slow down the wheels of your thought processes.
Start guarding the door to your conscious mind like a bodyguard guards the door – carefully watch all ideas and thoughts trying to enter, and only allow the positive ones in.
Feed your subconscious with thoughts of harmony, health, and peace, and all the functions of your body will improve. Keep your conscious mind busy with the expectation of the best, and your subconscious will reproduce your habitual thinking.
Imagine the happy ending or solution to your problem, and feel the thrill of accomplishment. The feeling of health produces health; the feeling of wealth produces wealth. Keep this in mind at all times – your subconscious accepts what you feel to be true.
The dominant idea is always accepted by your subconscious mind. The dominant idea should be health and wealth, not poverty or illness.
This was the last takeaway from the book. Now a few good words about the book itself:
Overall I think it is a good book and worth checking out. The book is also full of real life stories showing how people used the subconscious mind to reach their goals or heal themselves.