“Your subconscious mind does not argue with you. It accepts what your conscious mind decrees. If you say, ‘I can’t afford it,’ your subconscious mind works to make it true.”
Surprisingly good! While this was on my to-read list for almost two years, I decided to listen to it semi-passively in audiobook format on YouTube (it’s a six-hour-long audiobook).
The author touches on the most powerful topic of all… how your own subconscious influences you on absolutely everything you do, how you look, how you feel, how you think, how you see, hear, and perceive the world around you and within yourself.
This book was released in 1963, so there is heavy emphasis on religion (i.e., religious America, circa 1960s). But I presume the author himself knew his audience quite well, so he wrote his message about the subconscious this way.
The Real Message
“Praying to a higher power” was, in fact, simply convincing yourself that things would be better. Science shows that religion helps people be happier, so there is a heavy emphasis of this in the book.
But taken from a secular, non-religious point of view, the message is absolutely deep and profound. What you say to yourself, what you think about yourself, what you reaffirm every single day, will be projected onto the world around you and within your own body.
Think badly of your colleagues, family, situation, finances? Then your actions will indicate this, and it will influence your body language, your reactions, and how you remember the events.
Yet, if you think highly of yourself, of your colleagues, friends, family, situation, etc., then your actions will indicate this.
Your Subconscious Never Sleeps
One of Murphy’s most fascinating claims is that your subconscious mind is working 24/7 — while you’re asleep, while you’re eating, while you’re zoned out on a bus. It never stops processing. And whatever you feed it during your waking hours becomes the raw material it works with overnight.
This actually lines up with what I’ve experienced personally. There have been times where I went to bed stressed about a business problem — how to structure a campaign, how to fix a landing page that wasn’t converting — and woke up with the answer just sitting there in my head. I didn’t consciously figure it out. My subconscious did the heavy lifting while I was knocked out.
Murphy says you should use this to your advantage. Before sleep, feed your mind the outcome you want. Not the problem. Not the anxiety. The OUTCOME. Let your subconscious chew on that instead.
The Placebo Connection
There’s a section in the book where Murphy talks about healing — and I’ll be honest, some of it sounds a bit out there. He claims people cured themselves of diseases through belief alone. Now, do I think you can think away cancer? No. But here’s where it gets interesting.
The placebo effect is one of the most well-documented phenomena in medicine. Give someone a sugar pill, tell them it’s medicine, and a significant percentage of them ACTUALLY get better. Their body responds to what their mind believes. That’s not woo-woo — that’s science.
So when Murphy says your subconscious can influence your health, he’s not entirely wrong. He’s just explaining it through the lens of 1960s spirituality instead of modern neuroscience. Strip away the religious language, and you’re left with a core truth that researchers are still studying today.
Positive Reaffirmation
It’s a very simple message. Reaffirm positive outcomes, or even positive beliefs. Even if things don’t look bright, simply reaffirm that everything will be okay next time!
I personally lost thousands of dollars and went broke, had two motorbike accidents, was robbed at knifepoint, almost died while scuba diving, almost missed expensive flights multiple times, and need to deal with uncertainty every day as an entrepreneur.
Any one of those things could have made me bitter, paranoid, or risk-averse. But I chose to reframe every single one of them. The motorbike accidents taught me to be more careful. Going broke taught me to manage money better. Getting robbed taught me situational awareness. Each disaster became a lesson, not a scar.
Reframe everything in a positive way, and you will do well in life, because you believe you are doing well in life.
Be positively delusional, and you will lead a successful life!
Where It Falls Short
Look, I’m not going to pretend this book is perfect. The religious framing gets repetitive — there are only so many times you can read about “infinite intelligence” before you start tuning out. And some of the anecdotes feel more like parables than real case studies.
Murphy also oversimplifies things at times. He makes it sound like ALL you need is the right mental attitude, and everything will fall into place. Anyone who’s built a business knows that’s not the full picture. You need positive thinking AND hard work AND strategy AND a bit of luck. Mindset alone won’t pay the bills.
But honestly? That’s a forgivable flaw. The core message is powerful enough to carry the book, even when the delivery gets heavy-handed.
Final Thoughts
What Joseph Murphy wrote in 1963 has been repackaged and resold by EVERY self-help guru since — Tony Robbins, Napoleon Hill, the entire “Law of Attraction” crowd. They all trace back to this fundamental idea: what you consistently tell yourself becomes your reality.
Is it groundbreaking by today’s standards? Not really. But reading the original source is still worth it, because Murphy lays out the concept with a clarity and conviction that most modern authors can’t match. He wrote this before it became an industry.
I recommend this book! I recommend at least listening to it in audio format. It’s one of those reads where the MESSAGE matters more than the writing style — and the message here is genuinely life-changing if you take it seriously.
3.5/5 — dated in delivery, but the core ideas are timeless.
Thanks for reading.
— Leonidas
