Think And Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill, Ross Cornwell | Summarized Books

Think And Grow Rich -The Original Version Restored And Revised

The way to achieve is to change the way you think

“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve” ~ Napoleon Hill.

Your individual power dwells deep within you. Far too many people create an idea, believe it’s going to work, and then they hit a roadblock, something small and usually quite insignificant, and then from there, they forget, they give up. If this is something you’ve done in the past, don’t feel downcast; you’re amongst the majority. What matters is that you change the way you do things from this point onwards.

Think & Grow Rich was originally published almost 65 years ago and has been remastered for the current day. The ideas are the same, having made huge successes of people you might have heard of, including John D. Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison. It can do the same for you! What you need to do is develop the mental tools and determination to avoid giving up when the going gets tough. It really is all within your mind!

“Success comes to those who become success conscious. Failure comes to those who allow themselves to become failure conscious”

How do you achieve unwavering desire?

The first step towards developing the mindset we just mentioned is to achieve desire; not just any old desire, but desire which is strong and unwavering, no matter what comes your way. In the past, you might have given up when things got a little tough, but how do you know you weren’t almost there?

Our author gives us one example of that very situation. During the Gold Rush, a large family discovered a supply of gold, but they didn’t have the machinery to mine it. They put together a plan to obtain the machinery and began to dig. They realized they had one of the best mines in Colorado and everything was fantastic for a short period of time. Then, out of nowhere, they couldn’t find the gold; it had dried up, disappeared. They gave up and sold the machinery, cutting their losses. What they didn’t realize was that if they had continued digging for just three feet more, they would have found the gold once more, affected by a simple fault line. Another family did indeed find that gold and obtained the riches the original family would have had if they hadn’t given up.

This is an all too familiar situation, but by turning your mindset on its head and developing unwavering desire to achieve your goal, you are far less likely to give up. Edwin C Barnes is a great example of this. He had a burning desire to work with Thomas Edison. He didn’t stop until he made that desire a reality, working with the great man for more than 30 years.

So, how do you develop unwavering desire? You control your thoughts. You tell yourself what you want, the more specific the better, and you create a definite plan to get it. You write all of this down and you read it aloud to yourself two times every day. Within a short amount of time, your desire will grow to levels that cannot be beaten down with small roadblocks.

Faith cannot be seen, but is all powerful

The next step is to develop faith. Many people struggle with faith because it is invisible, it cannot be seen or measured and that makes it confusing to the logical human brain. Faith is a state of mind, but it can be controlled and created by something called autosuggestion. This basically means that you can create a powerful sense of faith by telling yourself what you want to believe. Using visualization and affirmations you sent firm instructions to your subconscious, which soaks it all up like a sponge. From there, you make a plan and follow it through. Faith and desire will see you through any potential issues which come your way.

Our author gives us a good example of how faith can be affected. People who first come into contact with a particular criminal activity, e.g. theft or drugs, hate it at first, but when they are around it for a long period of time they grow used to it. If that person is around that crime for a long enough time, they will become influenced by it. All of this is down to repetition seeping into the subconscious mind. You are effectively training your mind!

To achieve faith you need to use autosuggestion, and that involves talking to yourself firmly on a daily basis. You need to tell yourself what you want and demand persistence and action from yourself. You need to tell yourself that you’re going to develop confidence in yourself and that you aren’t going to stop trying until you get what you want. This is your manifesto, something you sign verbally. Throughout this, you also realize that you cannot succeed if your actions affect others detrimentally. Keep your karma points clear!

In addition to this verbal manifesto, you should visualize already achieving what you want; how does it feel? What does it look like? All of this will help to influence your subconscious and therefore develop that invisible faith.

Don’t generalise; make your knowledge specialised

We falsely think that “knowledge is power”, but what use is it to clog up your brain with all manner of random pieces of information that are never going to be useful to you in your own life? Surely it’s better to aim towards specialising your knowledge, focusing on the areas which are going to come in useful, and which are going to inform your future actions and plans.

There are two kinds of knowledge, one is general and one is specialized, but knowledge itself doesn’t bring you riches, it simply influences your plan, and therefore, your actions. Henry Ford pointed out this idea very clearly; he was asked about his general knowledge or lack thereof, and he questioned why he would bother cluttering up his own brain with general knowledge when he had people around him who could tell him whatever he needed to know. Ford might not have been the most formally educated person in the world, but he made sure that his knowledge was specialized in his niche, and therefore made firm decisions based upon it.

What this basically means is that you should avoid trying to learn all the answers to the questions on Trivial Pursuit and instead focus on areas connected to what you want to achieve.

If you can imagine, you can achieve

As children, we’re always told to imagine and dream, but somehow, as we get a little older, we stop doing it. If you want to achieve your own dreams in adulthood, you need to continue imagining, but focus it a little more sharply.

Your imagination is where you come up with ideas and you make your plans, and there is a saying that you can create anything which the human mind can picture or imagine. This is proven when you think about the huge leaps forward we’ve made in technology; who would have dreamed that we would be able to speak to people on the other side of the world simply using a computer? Who would have dreamed we would regularly be sending people into outer space? These were all ideas that were created in someone’s imagination.

There are however two types of imagination, and it’s important to use the right one. There is synthetic and creative. Synthetic isn’t really about coming up with anything new, it is simply about rehashing the things you already know. Creative imagination, on the other hand, is extremely powerful, and it is where the brain communicates with something called infinite intelligence. It is through this which you experience those hunches or flashes of ideas which don’t seem to have much sense or reason. These are the ideas which have brilliance about them, and whilst they might not be logical when they first arrive, the process of making a plan and developing it will turn it into a reality if you can foster total desire and faith.

Be a leader and make a firm plan

When you begin to turn your ideas and hunches into a plan, this plan needs to be definite and organized. The more definite and organized you are, the more likely your plan is to succeed. You cannot do this alone, however, and you need to create a team of people who you can bounce ideas off, gain advice and a new perspective. Our author calls these your Mastermind Alliance, and you need to choose these people carefully whilst ensuring harmony and fairness amongst all of you, meeting up on a regular basis to move forward with your plan.

Did you know that Thomas Edison failed around 10,000 times before he actually came up with the famous light bulb invention? 10,000 times! Reading that sounds terrible, but these failures were only temporary. He continued to believe, he didn’t give in, and he eventually got where he needed to be. Remember, a quitter never wins, and a winner never quits!

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartbreak, carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit”

The point is that you should expect to fail a few times because this is simply part of life. Even the most organized of plans is going to hit roadblocks, but you simply rebuild it and try once more. Your Mastermind Alliance will help you with this. Of course, you need to be a leader amongst your alliance and develop the right leadership skills. These include:
• Total courage
• The ability to control yourself and your actions
• A sense of justice
• Keen decision-making skills
• The ability to make definite plans
• Always going above and beyond
• A pleasant, easy going, and understanding personality
• Responsible, someone who will accept responsibility when required
• Being able to cooperate and work well with others

Do a self-analysis of your leadership skills and don’t be afraid to ask yourself hard questions. By becoming a firm leader, you will be able to make firm plans which can weather storms, perhaps through a little rebuilding along the way.

Avoid procrastination, be firm in your decisions

The most successful people on the planet are able to make quick and firm decisions, without allowing procrastination to affect their choices. Henry Ford himself was renowned for his ability to make fast decisions, but then if changes needed to be made, he was slow to do so, checking every avenue beforehand. This is true of some of the most successful people who have ever walked on this planet.

Caring too much about what other people think, or listening to opinions, is simply going to slow you down. If you care too much about the opinions of other people, you’re not going to be able to create that desire or faith, because you’re too concerned about others. You should only care about your own thoughts and the thoughts of those within your Mastermind Alliance. For this reason, be very selective with whom you let into your group; friends and family might mean well, but it rarely works.

Being definite and firm in your decisions, however, takes a lot of courage in many cases. Our author brings to mind the 56 men who put their signature on the Declaration of Independence. They put their lives on the line, definite in their choice. Whilst your decision might not be quite so dramatic, it needs to be equally as definite and firm.

Persistence

We’ve mentioned a few times already about possible roadblocks and not giving up, and that is helped a huge amount by persistence. This is true power and will help to turn your unwavering desire into cash. Persistence can be described as willpower, but when you add this to desire, it’s a combination which little can get in the way of.

Many people throughout history who have been extremely persistent have been labeled cold-blooded or even ruthless. Again, Henry Ford was labeled in exactly the same way, but in so many ways he was misunderstood. He simply had a desire that reached an intensity where nothing would get in his way. He wanted it so much that he was persistent, no matter what. One of the main reasons that people fail is because they don’t have persistence or not enough of it in general.

It’s also worth remembering that persistence might mean you have to move slowly, baby steps even, but you’re still moving, it’s still progress.

Persistence is developed via the following traits:
• Having a purpose, a very definite one
• Desire
• Being self-reliant
• Making very definite plans
• Ensuring specialised knowledge
• Working with others, i.e. your Mastermind Alliance
• Strong willpower
• Creating positive habits

How harnessing sexual tension can create power

Sexual tension is an extremely powerful emotion, but in your effort towards creating monetary rewards, you can use that tension to your benefit. There are three main reasons for sex, basically to ensure the human race continues onwards, to ensure sound health, both physical and emotionally, and also to help transformation regular ideas into genius ideas through something called transmutation. It is that third reason which can help you to create a very powerful force.

Transmutation is simply changing something into an energy form, and in this case, you’re changing sexual tension or frustration, and turning it into something positive and useful. This is called sex transmutation and it means changing your thoughts about sex from a purely physical standpoint to something which can drive you onwards. When you add romance and love into the mix, you’re getting a very strong and powerful driver, which in many cases throughout history has been enough to ensure success.

Using sex transmutation doesn’t mean you need to become celibate, it simply means that you need to look at sexual tension in a different way. It is about using that tension in a positive and constructive way and giving it a creative outlet, something which you can use to channel your willpower, persistence, imagination, and courage.

Research in the past has shown that those individuals who went on to achieve great things were often highly sexual and they learned how to use sex transmutation to their own benefit

The power of the brain and the subconscious mind

Both the brain and the subconscious mind can be affected to a large degree by autosuggestion, something we talked about a little earlier. Your subconscious mind, in particular, is very vulnerable to the things you tell yourself and repeat, so it makes sense to use this to your advantage

“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be”

Your subconscious never stops, it is working whilst you are awake and sleeping. You cannot control your subconscious 100%, but you can to a large degree, especially by using emotions. The subconscious mind is far more affected by emotions than the regular brain, which is more about logical thought and reason. If you feel emotions towards something, you’re more likely to put a plan into action and attempt to get it or fix it. By using the 7 positive emotions (desire, faith, love, sex, enthusiasm, romance, and hope) you can create a positive mindset. It is impossible to be both positive and negative at the same time, one has to override the other. By kicking out the negative emotions (fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed, anger, and superstition), you can create a more positive subconscious mind, which will be of far greater use to you. This is called the Law of Habit.

Develop your sixth sense

As you work through the steps in Think & Grow Rich you will begin to develop something quite unusual — your sixth sense. It’s impossible to describe the sixth sense or show it, as it’s completely invisible, just like faith. However, the sixth sense can be developed and it appears when infinite intelligence and the creative imagination are fired into action. It is part mental, part spiritual, and for that reason, many people have a hard time believing in it.

By developing your sixth sense you will begin to receive warnings about problems coming your way, or hunches to push towards opportunities that might appear. It is more than your intuition, it is something cannot be put into words. Our author states that the sixth sense is the closest thing to a miracle that he has known, but it can only be developed as you master the other steps in the journey first. Autosuggestion will help you develop your sixth sense too, but it will also help you to develop the traits you need to become a person who succeeds.

Overcoming Fear

The final part of the journey is about overcoming fear. Giving in to fear is one of the primary reasons why people fail. The most common fears are:
• Poverty
• Criticism
• Ill health
• Loss of someone you love
• Old age
• Death

These also create a cycle, with one leading to another.

Indecision works hand in hand with fear. You delay making a decision or being unsure about it because you’re wrapped up in doubt and fear, the “what if”. What many people don’t realize is that fears are a state of mind and can be controlled, just like the subconscious.

In order to help protect yourself against fear and other negative factors, you need to develop willpower and always use it to build up a wall. This wall will keep out negativity and help you focus on your own mind and a positive mindset. It’s also important to surround yourself with people who are positive and helpful, not those who are negative. A negative person can easily transmit their negativity and doubt onto you, without even trying.

Conclusion

By following Think & Grow’s step by step guide to becoming a stronger, more decisive person, you’ll change your mindset to success. No more falling by the wayside when things start to become a little tough, and you’ll instead foster the single-minded route towards getting what you want and becoming someone that others will admire and look up to as a result.

Remember, changing your mindset doesn’t happen overnight, and this is a process you must dedicate time and effort to if you want it to work. You need to master each element completely before moving onto the others. The whole process is a snowball effect, and as you master one section, it will lead strongly into the next.

Try this:
• Use positive affirmations on a daily basis to build up your faith
• Identify the people you want by your side throughout your journey, i.e. your Mastermind Alliance
• Do a self-analysis and work out where your main fears lie and then work on changing them