In the early 1920s, one sentence swept Europe and America. People repeated it on waking and before sleep, twenty times over, counting on a knotted string: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”
It came from a retired French pharmacist named Émile Coué, and it made him one of the most famous men of his time. It also laid the groundwork for a great deal of what is now called self-hypnosis, affirmation and positive thinking.
The pharmacist
Émile Coué was born in 1857 and worked as an apothecary in the French town of Troyes from 1882 to 1910.
Behind his counter he noticed something. When he handed over a remedy with a few confident words about how well it would work, and a small encouraging note, customers seemed to do better. He was observing what would later be called the placebo effect.
He studied hypnosis with the physicians of the Nancy school, who held that hypnosis was a matter of suggestion. But he came to prefer a method people could use on themselves, wide awake.
The clinic
In 1910 Coué sold his business and retired to Nancy, where he opened a clinic. Over the following sixteen years it is said to have delivered around 40,000 treatment sessions a year, to patients from the region and from abroad. He taught in groups and did not charge.
His book Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion caused a sensation when it appeared in England in 1920 and in the United States in 1922. Visitors travelled to Nancy in such numbers that the clinic was described as a kind of secular Lourdes. Eminent figures endorsed him, and he toured Britain and America to large crowds.
He died in 1926.
The method
Coué’s instructions were simple.
- Every morning on waking and every night before sleep, repeat twenty times: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”
- Say it quietly, without effort, like a litany.
- Use a string with twenty knots to keep count, so you do not have to think.
The phrase was deliberately general. Coué reasoned that “in every way” covered everything, so the mind could apply it wherever it was needed.
For pain or distress he taught a second technique: pass a hand over the affected place, or the forehead, and repeat very rapidly, “It is going, it is going,” until it eased.
His ideas
Coué’s most distinctive claim concerned will and imagination.
Imagination beats will. When the two are in conflict, he said, imagination always wins. His example: anyone can walk along a plank laid on the ground. Raise the same plank between two cathedral towers and almost nobody can, however hard they will themselves to. The image of falling overrides the intention.
Effort backfires. Trying hard to sleep keeps you awake. Trying hard not to stammer makes it worse. Trying to recall a name drives it away. This became known as the law of reversed effort.
So do not force it. Suggestion should be passive and effortless.
All suggestion is autosuggestion. Coué insisted he had never cured anyone. People accepted an idea and it did its work. “I have no healing power,” he told audiences. “You have it.”
What he got right
- Expectation changes experience. Modern placebo research confirms it, particularly for pain, mood and fatigue.
- Effort can backfire. Research on thought suppression shows that trying not to think of something tends to bring it to mind, and trying to force sleep is a recognised cause of insomnia.
- Imagery is powerful. Mental rehearsal measurably affects performance.
- Repetition and routine matter. A fixed daily practice is easy to keep.
- The person does the work. This is the modern view of hypnosis.
What he got wrong
- He claimed far too much. Coué’s followers reported cures of organic diseases. Suggestion changes how we experience symptoms. It does not cure infections, cancers or broken bones.
- Generic affirmations have limits. Research suggests that very positive statements can backfire in people with low self-esteem, who find them unbelievable. “Getting better” is easier to accept than “I am wonderful,” which may be one reason his phrasing has lasted.
- Repetition is not enough. Without action, a sentence changes little.
His legacy
Coué fell out of fashion soon after his death and became something of a joke. But his influence is everywhere: in autogenic training, in the ego-strengthening scripts of modern hypnotherapy, in affirmations, and in sports psychology. John Hartland, who wrote the standard British hypnosis textbook, built his confidence script directly on Coué.
Try it
Tonight, as you settle to sleep, say the sentence quietly twenty times. Do not try to believe it and do not argue with it. Let it run like a tune. Do it for two weeks and see what you notice.
The bottom line
Coué oversold his method and was mocked for it. But his central idea, that what you quietly and repeatedly tell yourself shapes what you experience, has survived a hundred years of testing.
Next in the series: Can Hypnosis Boost Your Immune System?
This article is for general information and is not medical advice.