Books by Joseph Murphy
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind is the Joseph Murphy book in our library. It belongs to the older tradition that treats repeated thought as formative, and its claims are broader than the modern books on this list. Read it as a strong statement of an idea rather than as a method.
The book is worth reading for the historical position rather than for technique. The idea it argues at length, that what you repeatedly assume about yourself sets what you are willing to attempt, turns up again in Mindset and in The Power of Positive Thinking in much more careful and testable forms.
How to read it. Read it as the origin of an argument you will meet again in better researched forms on this shelf, and read the summary rather than treating every claim as settled.
It sits in the Motivation and Inspiration bundle as the ancestor rather than the argument. Read it for the history and read the others for the version that holds up.
The book
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
Joseph MurphyThe strongest form of the claim that habitual thought shapes behaviour. Its assertions are wider than the evidence it offers, which is worth knowing before you start. The practical part, that repeated assumptions set the limits of what you attempt, is the part the later books kept and narrowed.
What it argues- Repeated thought forms the assumptions you then act from.
- What you assume about your own limits decides what you are willing to try.
- Relaxed attention is more effective than strained effort in this tradition.
- Expectation shapes how quickly you give up on something.
- The claim is broader than the evidence; read it as an argument, not a finding.
Suited to a reader interested in where the modern self-help argument came from, and to anyone who wants the historical version before the careful one. Not the place to start if you want something you can act on this week.
Where to start
Read it as a historical document and read the summary before the book. The value is in seeing the argument in its original, unhedged form, which makes the more careful versions on this shelf easier to judge. Read it last if you want the genre to stay credible, and first if you want to see exactly what later writers were softening.
Where this fits
This sits at the older end of the shelf. Mindset tests a narrower version of the same claim, and The Power of Positive Thinking is its direct successor. Read together, they show how an argument gets refined rather than replaced, which is more interesting than any of the three on its own.
The rest of this shelf
The Motivation and Inspiration shelf holds 5 books in total. These are the others, each condensed into a guide you can finish in about 15 minutes:
- The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
- The Wealth Money Can't Buy: The 8 Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest Life by Robin Sharma
- The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
The five-book motivation set
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind is in the Motivation and Inspiration bundle with The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, The Wealth Money Can not Buy and The Power of Positive Thinking.
Five complete guides, about 15 minutes each.
Explore Motivation and InspirationWhat you assume about yourself sets what you will attempt.