Goines On: Auto-suggestion

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For several days after Goines and his wife returned home from Minneapolis, Goines had felt as tired first thing in the morning as he had going to bed the night before. He was groggy, his body hurt, he had little energy. He needed to do something to feel sprightly each morning. He decided to try something he had often used before, if not lately – something he called “auto-suggestion.” Before going to sleep, he would imagine things he could be excited about the next day, in the expectation that his mind – his mind/body – would prepare itself accordingly.
    He hoped that auto-suggestion would still work for him, despite his seeming to have reached a new low. Rather than suggesting how he would be in the morning, he did something more like issuing commands to himself, in the moments before he slid into unconsciousness. “I am going to wake up lively and eager to get out of bed,” he told himself (without uttering it aloud). “I will feel energized, rested, ready to get up immediately and get going.” He said two or three other variations of this and went to sleep….
    The next morning, sure enough, Goines awoke and immediately got out of bed, in no particular pain or fog. He even skipped his usual morning stretches, went right to his usual getting dressed, putting artificial tears in his eyes, brushing his teeth, and going around to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
    As night approached, he remembered how well the auto-commands had seemed to work that morning. So now the question was: would it work again? In bed, sleepier than he remembered being the night before, he affirmed how rested and energetic he would be in the morning, even visualized how spryly he would undertake….
    It worked pretty well again; he arose fairly energetic and pain-free. And he had even been too sleepy the night before to remember and remind himself that today would be the first day since they got back from Minnesota that they would permit themselves chocolate or cookies or ice cream or buttered crisp toast with fruit preserves – a particularly desirable activity to look forward to.

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