a who "tries his hardest" to
fall asleep.

In order to formulate particular suggestions, go to a room where you
will be free from interruption, sit down in a comfortable chair, close
your eyes, and let your muscles relax. In other words, act precisely
as if you were going to take a siesta. In doing so you allow the
Unconscious tide to rise to a sufficient height to make your particular
suggestions effective. Now call up the desired ideas through the
medium of speech. Tell yourself that such and such ameliorations are
going to occur.

But here we must give a few hints as to the _form_ these suggestions
should take.

We should never set our faith a greater task than it can accomplish. A
patient suffering from deafness would be ill-advised to make the
suggestion: "I can hear perfectly." In the partial state of
outcropping association is not entirely cut off, and such an idea would
certainly call up its contrary. Thus we should initiate a suggestion
antagonistic to the one we desired. In this way we only court
disappointment and by losing faith in our instrument rob it of its
efficacy.

Further, we should avoid as far as possible all mention of the ailment
or difficulty against which the suggestion is aimed. Indeed, our own
attention should be directed not so much to getting rid of wrong
conditions as to cultivating the opposite right ones in their place.
If you are inclined to be neurasthenic your mind is frequently occupied
with fear. This fear haunts you because some thwarted element in your
personality, surviving in the Unconscious, gains through it a perverse
satisfaction. In other words, your Unconscious enjoys the morbid
emotional condition which fear brings with it. Should you succeed in
banishing your fears you would probably feel dissatisfied, life would
seem empty. The old ideas would beckon you with promises, not of
happiness truly, but of emotion and excitement. But if your
suggestions take a positive form, if you fill your mind with thoughts
of self-confidence, courage, outward activity, and interest in the
glowing and vital things of life, the morbid ideas will be turned out
of doors and there will be no vacant spot to which they can return.

Whatever the disorder may be, we should refer to it as little as
possible, letting the whole attention go out to the contrary state of
health. We must dwell on the "Yes-idea," affirming with faith the
realisation of our hopes, seeing ourselves endow