You may not remember the name, but the phrase "Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better," will forever be attached to French psychologist and pharmacist Emile Coue'.

Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion created a sensation upon publication in England in 1920 and America in 1922. Dr. Coue's method of positive, optimistic ones resulted in thousands of cures, based on testimonials I've read, that occurred at Coue's clinic in Nancy, France. He saw nearly a hundred patients a day and nearly always put in a sixteen hour day. Married into a wealthy family, Coue' did not charge for his services.

"As patients listened to Dr. Coue', their alertness ebbed away, they were lulled into a drowsy state, peopled only by vivid images he called up before the eyes of the mind," C. Harry Brooks writes in The Method and Practice of Autosuggestion. "Coue' had been merely an agent calling the ideas of health into his patients' minds. Henceforth they could and must be the pilots of their own destiny."

When the will and imagination are in conflict, when they disagree, almost always it is the imagination that will triumph over willpower, Dr. Coue' believed.

Suggestion is the act of imposing an idea on the brain of another. We do this all the time, whether or not we realize it consciously. Advertisers do their best to impose ideas on our minds and believe me, they DO know what they're doing. This however, differs from suggestion in that it is "the implanting of an idea in oneself by oneself."

If right now you stopped reading this article and said, "Day by day, in every way, my life is getting better and better?" what would your Inner Voice reply? "Are you kidding? Let me give you a lengthy list of why your life's anything but better and better. Stop this day by day in every way nonsense," or would it reply, "The so-called evidence of your senses that might appear to indicate your life isn't working. but there isn't enough evidence to take your case before a jury and get a conviction. Actually your life truly IS getting better and better. You're happy and don't know it. That's the real issue. Anything else on your agenda?"

How powerful is our imagination? "If you imagine you cannot do the simplest thing in the world, it is impossible for you to do it," Coue' wrote in Suggestion and Autosuggestion, "and moleholes become for you unscalable mountains."

"People are always preaching the doctrine of effort, but this idea must be repudiated," Dr. Coue' insisted. To men who were the captains of industry in Coue's era, success required WILLPOWER and dogged perseverance. "Train your WILLPOWER or you'll go nowhere," they bellowed. Coue' disagreed.

According to Coue', "Effort means will, and will means the possible entrance of the imagination in opposition, and the bringing about of the exactly contrary result to the desired one." Many years later plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Maltz would say the same thing in his bestseller Psychocybernetics.

"In order to make autosuggestions, you must eliminate the will completely and only address yourself to the imagination, so as to avoid a conflict between them in which the will would be vanquished," Coue' wrote.

"Our imagination always overrules our will when there is a conflict between the two, and in this case we do the contrary [or get the opposite results] to what we want to do. We tell ourselves, "I must go to sleep, I must go to sleep, I've got to go to sleep," and all the vaunted willpower backing those statements only creates more tossing and turning.

The idea behind auto or self suggestion is this: "Every thought entirely filling the mind becomes true for us and tends to transform itself into action," Coue' told his patients. "When you have something to do, always think 'it is easy,' and make the words 'difficult' and 'impossible' and 'I cannot,' and 'it's stronger than I,' 'I cannot prevent myself from'...disappear from your vocabulary." Replace them, he said, with the phrase "It is easy and I can."

I am convinced that Dr. Coue's voice, physical presence, confidence, and his ability to convey his belief to each of his patients that they would either get well, better, or - in cases where the illness was too far advanced for cure - find relief from racking pain, his personal magnetism and demeanor conveyed suggestions of HOPE to his patients and when their "inner mind" BECAME CONVINCED, amazing turn-arounds occurred in their lives.

For pain relief, Coue' said not to focus your autosuggestions on the specific organ or the pain itself because "addressing it directly only reinforces it." The phrase "It is going," or "It is going away," or even better "It is going, going, going, going, going - GONE!" repeated every hour or half hour will bring relief.

Remember, Coue', a pharmacist himself, wasn't negating the medical fraternity's efforts on behalf of patients, but he believed drugs were prescribed and surgeries performed far too often for a specific range of conditions that could be cured by mental therapeutic means - in other words, self-suggestion.

To grasp the part played, as in repeating his famous phrase "Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better," requires an understanding of our unconscious self which Coue' believed to be "the grand director of all our functions." Saying "Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better," or a similar positive suggestion is like tapping the head of a nail with a hammer in order to drive out the old nail or "belief system" out of the brain.

This article has focused so far on the cure aspects as practiced by Dr. Coue', but the principles of turning that part of our mind that is "amenable to suggestion," into a true believer are applicable to not just better health, but success, wealth, and happiness. For cases of stage-fright, playing better tennis, golf, losing weight, autosuggestion provides a means to keep our moods upbeat while we engage in the actual work these activities will require.

"The dimension of any obstacle depends at least as much upon our mental attitude," C. Harry Brooks indicates in The Method and Practice of Autosuggestion, "as upon its intrinsic difficulty. Tell yourself the work you're about to begin will be easy and pleasurable." Why do this? "Since the impediments created by fear and anxiety are now removed, our ideas will flow freely, our plans will construct themselves in the quiet of the mind, and we shall come to the actual work with a creative vigor and singleness of purpose," Brooks says.

According to Dr. Coue', "Every idea which enters the conscious mind, if it is accepted by the subconscious, is transformed by it into a reality and forms henceforth a permanent element in our life."

The British writer Colin Wilson says that discovering we have a partner that wants to cooperate with us on projects that would once have seemed impossible is "analogous to falling in love and realizing that your feelings are reciprocated." The good news? You are not alone; you have a powerful ally who wants to work with you.

The key, then, is learning how to enlist the active support of this other, suggestible self or mind, and this is where Coue' enters the picture with his philosophy of positive optimism - the "can do spirit" that says "Of course you can be successful, healthier, happier than ever before - why not? It's easy. You can do it Nothing's holding you back except yourself!"

Wilson tells us that "The You who lives in the left side of the brain is not even aware it has this immensely powerful co-worker occupying the right side of the brain." When anxious, we separate ourselves from its source of power, but - and here's the exciting part - "We have a willing ally who can take half the work from our shoulders," as well as supply energy from our vital reserve tanks to finish the tasks we tackle.

"When I anticipate some emergency or delightful event [like a holiday], I transfer large quantities of ready energy to these surface tanks, just as I might draw a large sum out of the bank before my trip," Wilson writes.

What kind of autosuggestions work best to enlist the aid of our unseen ally? "Never lose sight of the great principle of autosuggestion," Coue' wrote. "Optimism always and in spite of everything, even when events do not seem to justify it."

Autosuggestion sustained by a faith and powerful inner conviction, Dr. Coue' taught, "is a formidable force." As soon as we induce these states of inner certainty by self-suggestion, we almost immediately begin to observe their effects.

"We become less accident-prone," Wilson says. "Some sixth sense helps us steer clear of trouble. Interesting coincidences begin to occur."

You see, our hidden partner or ally is helping us. So when we let our suggestible mind know "All is well," it responds with a glow of warmth and an upsurge of sheer joy," which we interpret as happiness. It's able to do this because, as C. Harry Brooks pointed out, "Below our fussy perturbed little ego...is an ocean of [untapped] power."