Book SummaryThe Power of Your Subconscious Mind, by Joseph Murphy

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

In the self-improvement classic The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Joseph Murphy claims that all of your life experiences are the result of the interaction between your conscious and subconscious minds: Your subconscious mind creates your life experiences according to your habitual conscious thoughts and ingrained beliefs. Murphy argues that you can dramatically improve your life experiences by using your conscious mind to imprint positive thoughts and beliefs upon your subconscious mind.

We’ll first explore Murphy’s explanation of how your subconscious mind learns from your habitual thoughts to influence your feelings and behaviors. We’ll also explain how you’re designed to experience happiness because you have an inbuilt connection to a benevolent higher power (Universal Consciousness). Then, we’ll clarify why your conscious thoughts create negative experiences in your life. Finally, we’ll discuss specific methods you can use to train your subconscious mind to create positive life experiences.

Part 1: Your Subconscious Mind Creates Your Life Experiences

According to Murphy, your mind is made up of two parts: the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

Murphy explains that your conscious mind is your active mind. It contains all of the thoughts and feelings that you’re aware of at any given moment. You use it to judge your environment and to make choices and decisions based on these judgments.

(Shortform note: Research backs up Murphy’s judgment of the conscious mind as your active mind. According to Brian Tracy (Eat That Frog!), your conscious mind continually identifies, compares, and analyzes all of the information you perceive so that it can make decisions about what is relevant to you. However, Tracy notes that your conscious mind functions like a binary computer—it has no memory and can only think one thought at a time.)

Meanwhile, Murphy explains that your subconscious mind is your passive mind. It’s always awake because it regulates all of your bodily functions, and it records and stores your every experience even when you’re not consciously paying attention. Over 90% of your brain’s activity takes place in your subconscious mind: It’s a reservoir of thoughts, feelings, and memories that lies beneath your conscious awareness.

(Shortform note: There is still much to be learned about how the subconscious mind works, but even in 1963, Murphy was right about its importance—neuroscientists have confirmed that 95% of your brain activity takes place beyond your conscious awareness, in your subconscious mind. Further, research reveals that your subconscious mind makes decisions about how you choose to feel or act before your conscious mind even perceives the need to make a decision.)

Your Habitual Thoughts Imprint Upon Your Subconscious Mind

Murphy claims that your subconscious mind is impersonal because it passively accepts your habitual conscious thoughts without question. In other words, it doesn’t judge any of your conscious thoughts (in the same way that your computer doesn’t judge the documents you save onto your hard drive). All of the thoughts you think in your conscious mind filter down into your subconscious mind and leave an impression. The more often you think certain thoughts, the heavier the impression you leave on your subconscious mind.

According to Murphy, the way your conscious thoughts imprint upon and mold your subconscious mind determines your personality traits and how you respond to your life experiences. This is because your habitual thoughts train your subconscious mind to create associations and shortcuts between all of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences it has stored.

Murphy also claims that your subconscious mind forms conclusions about what your overarching beliefs are based on your habitual conscious thoughts. It then automatically relies upon these overarching beliefs to process and catalog all of the information it records.

(Shortform note: Murphy claims that your subconscious mind passively and impersonally carries out the orders it’s given based on your habitual conscious thoughts and overarching beliefs. However, he doesn’t mention that while your subconscious mind is at the mercy of your conscious mind, it also influences your conscious mind to think in specific ways and leads you to act automatically in ways that align with your overarching beliefs. According to Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics), the conclusions that your subconscious mind forms about your beliefs and how it should respond to your experiences affect the way you engage with the world by triggering your emotions and leading you to react in specific ways to your environment.)

Why Your Subconscious Mind Relies on Your Conscious Thoughts to Create Shortcuts

Research supports Murphy’s claim that your conscious thoughts train your subconscious mind to create shortcuts. Your subconscious mind is an unlimited memory bank that permanently stores your every life experience: As Murphy describes, everything you experience is imprinted in this area of your brain. This memory bank processes 4 million bits (a measure of data transfer) per second and includes both significant and insignificant experiences including how you felt the first time you fell in love and the many hours you’ve wasted on Netflix.

According to psychologists, **[your conscious mind relies on this memory bank to access the information you...

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind Summary Shortform Introduction

In the self-improvement classic The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Joseph Murphy claims that all of your life experiences are the result of the interaction between your conscious and subconscious minds: Your subconscious mind creates your life experiences according to your habitual conscious thoughts and ingrained beliefs. Murphy argues that you can dramatically improve your life experiences by using your conscious mind to imprint positive thoughts and beliefs upon your subconscious mind.

About the Author

Dr. Joseph Murphy (1898-1981) was a pioneering voice in the New Thought movement (which we’ll explore further in the Intellectual Context section below). He was a bestselling author, renowned speaker, and Minister-Director of the Church of Divine Science, a religious faction within the wider New Thought movement. This religion’s core belief is that God is good, the source of all creation, and omnipresent. Further, this faction teaches that negative circumstances only come about when we fail to practice the presence of God—in...

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind Summary Part 1: You’re Connected to a Powerful Force

In the self-improvement classic The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Joseph Murphy claims that all of your life experiences are the result of the interaction between your conscious and subconscious minds: Your subconscious mind creates your life experiences according to your habitual conscious thoughts and ingrained beliefs. Murphy argues that you can dramatically improve your life experiences by using your conscious mind to imprint positive thoughts and beliefs upon your subconscious mind.

We’ll discuss The Power of Your Subconscious Mind in four parts. In this first part of the guide, we’ll start by exploring Murphy’s explanation of how your subconscious mind works—it identifies with your habitual conscious thoughts and forms conclusions about your beliefs. Next, we’ll explain Murphy’s belief that you’re designed to be happy because your subconscious mind has an inbuilt connection to a benevolent higher power (Universal Consciousness) that flows within you and around you to create your life experiences.

In the second part, we’ll explain why your conscious thoughts sometimes inhibit the flow of Universal Consciousness to create poor health and negative...

Shortform Exercise: Consider What Instructions You’re Giving Your Subconscious Mind

According to Murphy, all of your life experiences are a result of your habitual conscious thoughts—these thoughts instruct your subconscious mind to orchestrate your experiences. Understanding how certain thoughts lead to certain outcomes can help you direct them toward what you want to experience.

Describe an experience you’ve had in the past week that felt positive to you (such as meeting up with a good friend).

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind Summary Part 2: Negative Thoughts Create Failure and Disease

In the first part of this guide, we explored how your subconscious mind learns from your habitual conscious thoughts to influence your behavior. We also explored Murphy’s belief that you’re designed to be happy because your subconscious mind has a connection to Universal Consciousness—the benevolent force that created and continues to manage the universe.

According to Murphy, life is very simple: You’re supposed to be healthy and happy because you’re connected to a powerful and positive force of energy. But, life isn’t that simple for most of us: We don’t always get what we want and, sometimes, happiness and bliss can seem like far-off dreams.

Therefore, in this second part of the guide, we’ll explore the reason why life isn’t always as easy and perfect as Murphy claims it should be. We’ll explain how the interaction between your subconscious mind with both your conscious mind and Universal Consciousness can either work with the positive flow of Universal Consciousness or against it to create your life experiences.

Your Negative Thoughts Block the Flow of Universal Consciousness

According to Murphy, the impressions your conscious thoughts leave on your...

Shortform Exercise: Determine What Thoughts Are Holding You Back

According to Murphy, if you’re not entirely happy with your life experiences, it’s because you’re thinking negative thoughts. Developing awareness around your negative thoughts will help you to intentionally create more positive thoughts and experiences.

Describe a situation where you often find yourself thinking negatively. For example, every time you bump into your neighbor, you feel annoyed and irritated because she offloads all of her problems and you find it difficult to cut the conversation short.

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind Summary Part 3: Train Your Subconscious Mind to Create Positive Results

In the previous part, we explained how your negative thoughts inhibit the positive flow of Universal Consciousness, prompting your subconscious mind to create poor health and negative experiences. Fortunately, Murphy believes that you can reverse this process and train your subconscious mind to create the life you want.

According to Murphy, the process to retrain your subconscious mind is very simple: You just need to use your conscious mind to imprint positive thoughts and images upon your subconscious mind. Murphy explains that there are two steps to making this process work for you: First, you need to decide to think positive thoughts. Then, you need to trust that your subconscious mind will create experiences that align with your positive thoughts. In this part of the guide, we’ll explore these two steps in detail.

Step 1: Decide to Think Positive Thoughts

Murphy argues that you need to take control of what thoughts your subconscious mind identifies with by consciously deciding to get in charge of your thoughts. Recall that your conscious mind is active and your subconscious mind is passive. Even though your subconscious mind creates your...

Shortform Exercise: What Does Happiness Look Like to You?

According to Murphy, you need to imprint positive thoughts upon your subconscious mind to improve your life experiences. Let’s define what kind of thoughts feel positive to you.

Think of something positive that you want to experience. Create a detailed picture of this experience. What does it look like and why does the idea of it make you feel happy?

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind Summary Part 4: Methods to Realign Your Thoughts

Now that we’ve discussed the two general steps for retraining your subconscious mind, we’ll explore specific methods you can use to align your conscious thoughts with the positive flow of Universal Consciousness. According to Murphy, this will retrain your subconscious mind to create the positive experiences that you want, such as perfect health, satisfying relationships, wealth, and success.

Murphy suggests five methods you can use to take control of your conscious thoughts and train your subconscious mind to create positive experiences in your life:

1. Choose thoughts that make you feel happy.
2. Identify with what you want.
3. Create automatic behavior using conscious repetition.
4. Visualize what you want.
5. Relax your mind to reduce interference from your conscious mind.

Method 1: Choose Thoughts That Make You Feel Happy

Murphy believes that you need to focus on thinking only positive thoughts if you want your subconscious mind to create positive experiences. But how can you know whether your habitual conscious thoughts are positive or not? According to Murphy, you just need to judge how you feel. If you feel happy and you have positive expectations about your...

Shortform Exercise: Focus on What You Want

According to Murphy, when you focus only on what you want to experience, you give your subconscious mind clear instructions to follow. In this exercise, we’ll determine what you want and how you can focus on it.

What one thing that you want would immediately improve your life experience and make you happy? For example, your life might improve drastically if you find a satisfying job that pays well.

Shortform Exercise: Develop the Habit of Thinking Positively

Murphy argues that thinking positive thoughts will improve your life. Let’s explore how you can make it a habit to think positively.

Make a list of at least five happy and positive thoughts you can run through your mind throughout the day (for example, “Life is good”).