American self-help author Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) shook the world with his well-thought and resourceful personal-success literature. Through his writings, Hill has explained the role of personal beliefs in achieving personal success. From 1933 to 1936, Hill worked as an advisor to American President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Think and Grow Rich Review
In the book ‘Think and Grow Rich’, Napoleon Hill focuses on how the psychological power of the brain and mind can impact upon gaining both your career achievements and personal satisfaction. Here the author has explained 13 steps to think and grow rich:
A powerful desire is rooted in two kinds of motivation: ‘pull motivation’ (when the probable outcome of your goal pulls you towards that goal) and ‘push motivation’ (when the probable harm of not taking action pushes you towards action). The author defines 5 key areas which can influence your mindset for Desire: Career, leadership, money, failure, and other person’s desire.
Any kind of success starts with Faith. According to Hill, faith can be created through repeated affirmations to our subconscious mind. To utilize ‘Faith’ as an antidote of failure you need to encourage positive emotions (like confidence, courage, desire, etc) and eliminate negative emotions (like fear, doubt, uncertainty, lack of confidence, etc) from your mind. If you believe in yourself, you can make other people believe in you.
It is told that one’s subconscious mind controls one’s life. ‘Auto-suggestion’ can directly convey your desires to your subconscious mind in the guise of resolute faith. If an individual repeats his conscious desires in a routine way, he can gain absolute control over the thoughts which can reach his subconscious mind. Thus he can exercise control over his decisions, actions, and feelings.
Hill emphasizes acquiring specialized knowledge on the specific field which can bring you a fortune. To translate your desire into career, fame, monetary, or another kind of success, it is essential to gain specialized knowledge regarding that profession, service, or product.
Imagination is a magic wand that can produce and shape your ideas. In this book, Hill introduces the readers with two types of imagination: Synthetic imagination (reorganizing old plans, ideas, or desires into new blend) and creative imagination (extracting ideas from infinite intelligence, sixth sense, and inspirations).
If you hope to succeed but can’t take action accordingly, it won’t work. The author reminds you that every success starts with a desire, which is translated to reality by imagination, and finally gets implemented through an organized plan. However, your plan may not be perfect all the time. When the plan doesn’t work according to your expectations, accept failure, take lessons, and rebuild your plan. Quitters can never get the opportunity to cultivate success through long-term organized plans. So, don’t give up before reaching your goal.
Successful people tend to make any decision promptly. They surely know what they really want and haunt their desire whole-heartedly. It requires courage to make definite decisions. Procrastination can downplay your decision-making capacity. So, you must overcome it to achieve your goal.
Hill defines persistence as another major requisite of success. Though persistence mainly depends upon will power, it is also influenced by some other factors like precise knowledge, solid purpose, Habits, Self-reliance, the certainty of plans, staying out of negativity, accountability to encouraging people, etc. On the other hand, lack of persistence can be caused by some factors like procrastination, fear of criticism, lack of firm interest, irresolution, indifference, lack of strong desire, quitting mindset, lack of organized plans, looking for shortcuts, etc.
An individual can hardly acquire success without the power of mastermind. When a team of people helps an individual to carry out his plans, Hill calls them ‘mastermind’. It behooves you to decide who could be in your team and how could you form that team. According to Hill, the goal of a mastermind is translating knowledge into power, organizing definite purposes, and converting those plans into action.
Human’s subconscious mind connects his finite mind with infinite intelligence. Hill inspires the readers to use their subconscious minds as a medium to transmute their definite desires. If an individual fails to implant his own desires into his subconscious mind, it runs the risk of getting fed upon any negative thoughts that reach it. To gain control over the subconscious mind, Hill defines some positive emotions, like Desire, Faith, Hope, Enthusiasm, Love, etc. The author also warns about some negative emotions, like Fear, Hatred, Revenge, Envy, Greed, Superstition, and Anger.
According to Hill, every human brain serves as a station that broadcasts and receives the vibration of inner thought. The subconscious mind is the medium through which thoughts are sent to the brain. Creative imagination is the receiver tool to pick up the vibration of thoughts from the ether. When positive emotions can stimulate the vibration of thoughts, the brain becomes more receptive to those thoughts.
Hill reveals that one can understand one’s sixth sense through meditation, and development of mind from within. Once an individual can master the sixth sense, he can sense both an impending danger to avoid and probable opportunities to attain in time. The factors which can downplay your sixth sense are indecision, doubt, and fear. The fears include fear of poverty, fear of criticism, fear of ill health, fear of loss of love, fear of old age, fear of death, and vulnerability to negative influences. Now how to shield yourself from these negative forces? The solutions are constant use of willpower in achieving control over thoughts, mental immune against negative influences, finding the positive company, and controlling your subconscious mind.