When reading this website which has been especially designed for you, the reader of my new Self Hypnosis book, I believe it is important to say that  two of the people that influenced me most were Émile Coué and Napoleon Hill. Coué became world famous for bringing  self-hypnosis into the public eye with his ingenious and simple exercises, which he preferred to call auto-suggestion. He had institutes in Paris, London and New York. and Napoleon Hill, whose book Think and Grow Rich which has sold  around 100 million copies, was instrumental in me having such a thriving practice. I simply read his book and followed it. These two great thinkers and their methods are still as fresh as they were in their era.

 

I read it just as I was starting my  hypnosis practice. It had been recommended to me by a colleague who I greatly respected. He said it was unlikely that any CEO of a major company wouldn’t have read it. This is the book that a lot of famous modern motivational gurus based their training on even though it was written in 1937. Next time I should ask Donald Trump if he has read it, as he makes his way to the presidency.

 

I couldn’t put the book down and followed the simple instructions implicitly. I remember thinking that parts of the book were very much like self-hypnosis. When I interviewed Don Green, the CEO of The Napoleon Hill Foundation, while I was writing this book he pointed out Hill’s interest in hypnosis and highlighted the fact that Think and Grow Rich has an entire chapter on auto-suggestion.

 

Then the penny dropped and I realized that when I read Hill’s book it was in early 1990, the year I made £100,000. At that time it was a great deal of money. I remember I wrote down my plan on the goal sheet as it suggested, did my visualization, repeated the affirmations, and used some self-hypnosis.  I was extremely busy but very focused and became extremely successful shortly after I read it. Throughout my career I always return to the basic principles, both in hypnosis and setting goals,  rather than complicated ideas as they seem to get better results.