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Every new year, I take some time to review Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
…”Thoughts are Things,” and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches, or other material objects.
…when a man really desires a thing so deeply that he is willing to stake his entire future on a single turn of the wheel in order to get it, he is sure to win.
…opportunity…often it comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat…this is why so many fail to recognize the opportunity.
..an intangible impulse of thought can be transmuted into material rewards by the application of known principles.
One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.
…I never stop because men say ‘no’…
Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delign in tripping one when success is almost within reach.
The better portion of all sales I have made were made after people had said ‘NO.’
…keep on keeping on, no matter how hard the going may be, a lesson I needed to learn before I could succeed in anything.
One sound idea is all that one needs to achieve success.
When riches begin to come they come so quickly, in such great abundance, that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.
…riches begin with a state of mind, with definiteness of purpose, with little or no hard work.
Success comes to those who become success conscious.
Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure conscious.
Another weakness…is the habit of measuring everything, and everyone, by their own impressions and beliefs.
…desire: knowing what one wants.
…”I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,”…because we have the power to control our thoughts.
…our brains become magnetized with the dominating thoughts which we hold in our minds…these “magnets” attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.
…we must magnetize our minds with intense desire for riches…we must become “money conscious” until the desire for money drives us to create definite plans for acquiring it.
Maintain a spirit of open-mindedness…
RESOURCES
January 8 2008
I’ve read Think and Grow Rich a number of times and although I don’t agree with everything it says, it definately makes you think and positions your brain in a posiive direction.
I always remind myself that the author, although initially successful died penniless and that it was his publisher who bought the rights of the book made the millions.
I think it is perfectly possible to know the theory of success and yet not know how to implement it. Unfortunately I don’t think it can be learned from a book, but a book can help you create a mind set and get pointed in the right direction.
Are thoughts things? Do they have a mass? They are certainly things that exist in the physcial world in the form of electricial impulses.
OK, I have to stop now else I will be rambling all day.
January 8 2008
Lyndoman makes an excellent point. Many have earned countless millions putting the books ideas into action. We can talk about the principles all day but putting thoughts (things) into action is an important ingredient.
Great reminder to keep moving forward, thanks!
January 9 2008
[...] Thoughts are things [...]
January 11 2008
Lyndoman, your statement that “the author, although initially successful died penniless and that it was his publisher who bought the rights of the book made the millions” is simply not true. Hill “died at age 87 on November 8, 1970, at his retirement home on Paris Mountain near Greenville, S.C., where he spent the last 18 years of his life.” (The quotation is from “Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised.”) His home was in an exclusive residential area, and he was extremely well off in his retirement after more a decade-long collaboration with multi-millionaire W. Clement Stone, at the time one of the richest men in America.
Hill and Stone, among other things, started “Success Unlimited” magazine and co-authored the hugely popular book “Success through a Positive Mental Attitude.” Hill’s royalties from his books and other “success materials” he developed left him an extremely wealthy man, wealthy enough to establish and endow a not-for-profit foundation that is still active today.
I had the privilege of having dinner on occasions with Hill’s official biographer, and I can tell you that while it is true that Hill had many ups and downs during his early career, he was well off in later life and died far from penniless.
Vic Johnson, founder of AsAManThinketh.net, had this to say on this whole subject (quoted, with permission, from a correspondence from him to me, Ross Cornwell):
“Several months ago I came across an audiobook biography of Napoleon Hill, and it was an eye-opening adventure into the life of a man whose days were not the ‘smooth sailing’ I had always assumed they were. Napoleon struggled against a myriad of obstacles throughout his life—many of which were brought on by some of the earlier choices he had made. I can’t count the number of times he became broke and penniless following a highly successful venture gone sour. His personal life was as spotted as his financial life, and a recounting of that could easily consume a full book.
“I would have thought that my discovery of his many flaws would cause me to lose respect for him, and thus doubt the veracity of his teachings that have influenced me for more than twenty years. But it is quite the opposite. Having listened to the struggles of this very human man has given me a whole new perspective of respect, even awe, of the incredible resilience and persistence that he displayed repeatedly against sometimes massive odds.
“I now understand that he didn’t write about some ‘theory’ of how to think and grow rich. He wrote from experience—his numerous experiences and the experiences of America’s most successful. While the casual observer would believe that this book is only about making money, those of us who have studied it for years know otherwise. It’s about a better way to live a ‘rich’ life. And for that I am grateful that Napoleon gave so much of himself in order that he might leave us with this incredible work.”
January 11 2008
Our thoughts are things, they form our perception of how things work.
July 17 2008
Ross I stand to be corrected as I am not an expert in this field. But, I have read his estate when he died was virtually nothing. I don’t know the exact details. But I do know he did not profit from the book like he should have.
I don’t discount his whole theory, my point is it was the men who commissioned him who were the success.
It was the same with Guttenberg.
Like I say, I stand to be corrected, so if you could point me in the direction of a verifible fact that would be great.
And I don’t mean wikipedia