This new edition of the classic, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, is the best book it has been my pleasure to read on how to engage your mind to accomplish more. The new edition, revised by Dr. McMahan, is clearly more than a five star book. If you sincerely want to improve, this book will make many powerful contributions to your efforts to do so.
The book begins by describing the relationship between your conscious (active, focused thoughts) and subconscious (automatic thoughts, such as directing your breathing and heart beat) mental processes. Your subconscious mind is able to tap into all of your memories (even ones that you cannot consciously remember) and takes emotionally-laden messages seriously (that's why you get adrenaline pumping when you feel afraid, so you have more energy to get away from danger).
The key lesson of this is that if you consciously believe something, your subconscious mind is ingenious in finding solutions to your problem. An example comes with the well-known placebo effect. If you give people a sugar pill and tell them it will cure their disease, many people will be cured. The way this works is that their belief in the cure provides changes in the biochemistry of the body that causes the body to go back into a healthy state.
This effect has been found to work with those who focus on innovation. They will leave a problem for their subconscious mind to focus on, and soon a solution appears in a day-dream or in a sleeping dream.
The book takes these well-known connections and applies them into virtually every area of living including:
Overcoming disease
Achieving a result you want
Wealth building
Innovating
Avoiding marital problems
Experiencing happiness
Having harmonious relations with other people
Forgiveness
Removing mental blocks to progress (such as writers experience)
Reducing or eliminating fear
Staying young in spirit as the body ages.
The book provides general descriptions of how these mental processes affect physical reality. Each subject area then contains some examples that relate to the specific area of improvement. Some examples are well-known ones, while others come from the author's life. General references are then cited to reinforce the lessons here, which include the New Testament, historical experiences, scientific studies, and contemporary research on these effects. Finally, the relevant section concludes with very specific instructions for pursuing the effects. This information usually includes possible affirmations to reiterate with emotional conviction several times a day.
I personally can subscribe that the methods here work, having employed them in my life for many years. Unlike the books that encourage you to do affirmations, this one makes the connection to holding real belief and experiencing emotion about that belief. Affirmations that are not based on emotional belief that you have made these changes are a waste of time.
Most people know about the power of changing beliefs and acting in accordance with those beliefs. Yet, they do not follow through. They lack faith in the reality they want to create. This edition will make it much easier for you to have that faith, because the book is quite credible.
If you have enjoyed books like Think and Grow Rich and The Power of Positive Thinking, you will find this book to be an improvement over even those superb self-help classics. This book provides more reasons to have confidence in this method, more ways to apply this way of improving, and directions for you in how to change more parts of your life. As you improve in one area of your life, it will be easier for you to go on and improve in the next.
Let me share an experience I had in rereading this book. I was waiting for a friend who wanted to discuss some important decisions he is about to make. Because his flight was delayed, he never arrived at the meeting. With nothing to do but wait, I wandered into the hotel gift shop. It had only about a dozen books in it, and this was one of them. I bought the book, and realized that the book provided the answers to many of my friend's concerns. We finally got together the next day, and I gave him the book.
I came away from that experience feeling that his delay in arriving was somehow connected to helping him accomplish his desire to improve. The delay meant that the book came into his hands with directions on what to focus on. That event would not have occurred otherwise.
If he hadn't been serious about wanting to improve, he would never have contacted me. I would not have been waiting for him. Further, I would not have been thinking about his problems that night when I saw the book in the store. Also, I would not have been thinking about his problems as I read the book. Because he persevered, he finally made it to see me the next day so I could give him the book. The rest is up to him now.
I do suggest that you also share this book with others whose minds are muddled about what they want and expect. In that way you can help them see and enjoy the beautiful life that they can create with the right mental focus.
Focus on the good . . . and it will follow. Avoid the alternative!
