Self-Suggestion Can Do Everything

“Self-Suggestion Can Do Everything. My Method” is a collection of two works by Émile Coué, a French pharmacist and practicing psychotherapist.

“Self-Management Through Conscious Self-Suggestion” is one of the earliest—and at the same time most structured—texts on how to influence your own inner state with words. Coué does not offer a set of energizing slogans, but a clear, repeatable practice in which attention, imagination, and the habit of directing thought in the chosen direction become decisive.

At the heart of the book is a simple but key idea: when “will” comes into conflict with “imagination,” imagination more often wins. That’s why the author advises you not to “break” yourself through effort, but to gently reprogram your inner automatic processes with a regular formula. Coué describes a specific ritual (including the famous “every day, in every respect, I am becoming better and better”) and explains how to apply it to habits, anxiety, confidence, productivity, and self-regulation—without mysticism and without overloaded terminology.

“Believing that you are the master of your thoughts, you become them. Each of our thoughts—good or bad—becomes tangible, real, in a word, turns into reality,” and the book explores what makes this happen.

“My Method” rapidly became a worldwide cultural phenomenon: it was printed in advertising, quoted in songs, and even sold on bracelets—an unusual example of how a psychological technique entered urban fashion. In the United States, a real boom erupted around Coué’s books and lectures: newspapers wrote about a spike in sales and endless reprints (including pirate editions), and one person involved in the book trade recalled that “Macy’s” ordered the book in batches of 500 copies, multiple times a day.

The power of these works lies in their clarity “without haze”: Coué shows why attempts to “make yourself” often backfire, and how to get around inner resistance—through a calm, repeatable formula that works not by pressing the will, but by the precision of suggestion. This is not a philosophical treatise and not a religious doctrine, but a practical tool for everyday life: how to craft the wording, when to repeat it, how not to slide into self-deception, and what to do if “it doesn’t work.”

Today, the book sounds especially modern precisely because it does not sell miracles: instead of promises, it offers a minimalist “self-management protocol” that can be easily built into ordinary life. If you need a text that includes practice from the very first pages—without lecturing and without an esoteric gloss—this collection is for you.