The Coué Method: “Every Day, in Every Way, I’m Getting Better and Better”

The Coué method is a form of autosuggestion created by French pharmacist Émile Coué (1857-1926): you repeat “Every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better” twenty times when you wake up and twenty times when you go to bed. Coué never produced controlled evidence for it, and his promises of healing don’t hold up. What survives is an insight research has since refined: the way you talk to yourself matters.

Published October 15, 2026

Who was Émile Coué?

Born: February 26, 1857, in Troyes, France
Died: July 2, 1926, in Nancy, France
Profession: Pharmacist in Troyes; from 1910, devoted himself to his method in Nancy
Influence: The Nancy school of suggestion and hypnosis: he first visited the physician Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault in 1886
Book: Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion, from a lecture; American edition copyrighted 1922
Formula: French: “Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.”

Coué ran a pharmacy in Troyes and grew interested in hypnosis and suggestion, which doctors in Nancy were studying closely at the time. Over the years he dropped the idea that people had to be put to sleep to be influenced: he wrote that he stopped doing it once he found it was not indispensable. In 1910 he left his pharmacy, moved to Nancy, opened what he called a “free clinic” and ran group sessions to teach his method.

His small book became an international success in the early 1920s. The French National Library holds a “new edition” self-published in Nancy in 1923 and a 1924 printing billed as the “87th thousand,” and the American translation, Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion, carries a 1922 copyright.

The original formula, word for word

Most people quote it from memory. In French, Coué wrote:

Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.
— Émile Coué, La Maîtrise de soi-même par l’autosuggestion consciente

The 1922 American translation renders it as “Every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better.” Even that edition isn’t consistent: its chapter on raising children gives “Day by day, in all respects, I grow better.” The version you’ll see everywhere today, “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better,” is a looser, catchier paraphrase.

Coué put the weight on “in every respect”: because those words apply to everything, he wrote, there’s no need for separate suggestions about specific problems. One general sentence replaces them all.

One detail is worth noticing. The formula doesn’t say “I am healed” or “I am perfect.” It describes movement: better and better. Long before the term existed, it was what people now call a bridge statement, a sentence about progress rather than a finished state.

What is conscious autosuggestion?

Coué defined autosuggestion as “the influence of the imagination upon the moral and physical being of mankind.” In his view, it’s not willpower that drives what we do, but imagination: what we picture as possible or impossible.

His best-known example is the plank. Laid on the ground, a plank 30 feet long and 1 foot wide is easy to walk across. Put it at the height of a cathedral’s towers and almost no one could take a few steps on it; “in spite of every effort of your will,” he wrote, you would fall. The plank hasn’t changed. Only your idea of what you can do has.

From this he drew four “laws.” The first sums up the method: “When the will and the imagination are antagonistic, it is always the imagination which wins, without any exception.” He added that the force of imagination is “in direct ratio to the square of the will,” while admitting himself that such expressions “are not rigorously exact” and were only meant as illustrations. Hence his central rule: never force it. Autosuggestion has to be done without effort, or it brings about the opposite of what you want.

How to practice the Coué method, according to Coué

Here are his instructions, in order.

Pick your two moments. Every morning before getting up, and every evening as soon as you’re in bed.
Close your eyes. Without trying to focus on what you’re saying.
Say the sentence with your lips. Loud enough to hear yourself: not just in your head.
Repeat it twenty times. Counting on a string with twenty knots, so you don’t have to keep count.
Use the tone of a litany. As simply and mechanically as possible, without any effort.
During the day, if needed: “It is going.” When physical or mental discomfort shows up, Coué advised getting some privacy, closing your eyes, passing your hand over your forehead (or over the painful spot) and repeating very quickly “it is going, it is going” for as long as necessary. He promised the discomfort would fade in about 20 to 25 seconds. That is his claim, never tested.

You can follow this routine as written, out of curiosity or because it feels good. Just keep the following in mind.

Does the Coué method work?

Coué never ran a comparative study. His evidence was case reports and thank-you letters, printed after his lecture in the book. That kind of testimony can’t separate the method’s effect from the natural course of a problem, the effect of getting attention, or Coué’s own charisma. Above all, his medical promises don’t hold up: he wrote that every illness, “whatever it may be,” “can yield” to autosuggestion. Nothing supports that, and no sentence replaces medical care.

Modern research hasn’t tested the Coué method itself, but it has studied close relatives.

Repeating a general positive statement. In a 2009 study, students with low self-esteem who repeated “I’m a lovable person” felt worse afterward (Wood et al., 2009). Two 2020 studies found no effect either way (Flynn and Bordieri, 2020). A broad statement repeated on its own seems to do little you can measure.
Writing about your values. The self-affirmation exercise psychologists study has small but measurable effects on stress and some behaviors (Cohen and Sherman, 2014). It differs from Coué in one key way: it relies on specific, true things about you, not on a formula.
Changing how you talk to yourself. Talking to yourself as “you” or by name helps you gain distance before a stressful task (Kross et al., 2014). How you talk to yourself does matter, which may be the most accurate part of Coué’s intuition.

For the full research picture, see do positive affirmations work.

What’s left of the Coué method today?

In French, “c’est la méthode Coué” (that’s the Coué method) has become a put-down: it means talking yourself into believing everything is fine, or mistaking wishes for reality. That’s unfair to part of his work and fair to another part.

What still works is the format: a short sentence, said at set times, without forcing, about progress rather than perfection. Those ideas line up with what we know about habits (an action repeated at the same moment becomes automatic, faster for some people than others) and about believable wording. What has aged badly is the promise: the idea that one formula is enough, that it works on everything, and that it can heal. A related but far bigger idea has since become popular, that thoughts attract events; we look at it in law of attraction affirmations.

A believable version of Coué’s formula

If Coué’s sentence feels too sweeping, you can keep its spirit, movement rather than a fixed state, and make it more concrete. A few lines from Selfia do exactly that:

One small win today can be enough to spark the next one.
A step forward no one hears about is still a step forward.
Small progress makes no noise, and I’m learning to listen for it.
Checking off just one box today is still one box checked.

You can also write your own variation, for example: “Today, in at least one small way, I can do a little better.” Our guide on how to write affirmations shows how. To keep Coué’s two daily appointments, a morning routine helps anchor the habit, and morning affirmations, affirmations for sleep and short affirmations are good places to start.

Limits and cautions

It’s not a treatment. If you have a health problem, physical or mental, the Coué method can at best go alongside care, never replace it.
If the sentence makes you feel worse, stop. A formula that rings false on a hard day doesn’t help. A more modest line will do more.
Don’t use it to deny a problem. “Better and better” shouldn’t keep you from seeing what’s wrong, or from talking about it.

Coué method: frequently asked questions

Does the Coué method really work?

No controlled study has evaluated it, and Coué offered only testimonials. Research on close relatives suggests that repeating a general positive statement has little measurable effect, and his healing claims have no demonstrated basis. Its format, though, a short sentence at set times without forcing, remains a simple way to pay attention to your inner voice.

What exactly did Coué say?

In French: “Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.” The 1922 American translation gives “Every day, in every respect, I am getting better and better.” The popular “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better” is a looser paraphrase.

How many times should I repeat it?

According to his book, twenty times in a row, in the morning before getting up and at night in bed, eyes closed, out loud but softly, without effort. No study shows twenty is better than any other number: it’s Coué’s instruction, not a research finding.

Why a string with twenty knots?

So you can count without thinking about it. Coué wanted the repetition to be as mechanical as possible: sliding one knot per sentence means you don’t have to keep track in your head.

Where can I read Coué’s book for free?

The 1922 American translation is in the public domain in the United States and available on Project Gutenberg. The French text is on French Wikisource. Links are in the sources below.

Sentences about progress, every day

Selfia keeps the best of Coué, short sentences at moments you choose, and leaves the promises out. The app brings together more than 17,000 affirmations in English and French, organized by theme, with reminders you set yourself for the morning or the evening. It’s free on Android.

Selfia is not a medical device and does not replace a doctor or a therapist. If you are going through a very hard time, in the US call or text 988; in the UK, call Samaritans at 116 123; elsewhere, find a helpline at findahelpline.com.