"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve with positive mental attitude."
Think And Grow Rich was written in 1937 and sold 70 million books before its author, Napoleon Hill, died in 1970. Who knows how many copies since. Talk about a best seller. It's still in print.
Think and Grow Rich is about the science of personal achievement -- the philosophy of success.
And there's a lot in it for you.
Andrew Carnegie, the philanthropist of U.S. Steel and Carnegie Hall fame (the Bill Gates/Warren Buffet of the day), wanted to leave the masses a timeless formula for prosperity. He challenged a young buck, a West Virginia reporter by the name of Napoleon Hill, to research and write it.
Carnegie didn't pay Hill.
He just introduced Hill to the players of the time -- writers, inventors, business people, presidents, royalty, socialites, clergy, sports stars, and entertainers.
Hill spent twenty years studying the secret of what makes people successful. He identified seventeen common principles and wrote a heady book titled The Philosophy of Success.
It didn't sell well, so he modified it as The Science of Personal Achievement. That didn't sell well, either.
Napoleon Hill didn't quit. He condensed it with a catchy cover and a slick title: Think and Grow Rich.
People wanted to get rich, so they bought up his book and when everybody started talking about it, they told their friends, who wrote their pen-pals, who dialed-up others, who lettered-the-editor.
And it struck many people that growing rich was far more than making money.
Napoleon Hill spew pure truth. He got it bang-on and his secret has stood the test of time.
Read it. Modern updates are available through The Napoleon Hill Foundation if you don't care for the male vernacular of the time.
Here're Napoleon Hill's seventeen principles of success. Think about how they can work towards bringing health and happiness into your life.
- Definiteness of Purpose
- Positive Mental Attitude
- Self-Discipline
- Personal Initiative
- Enthusiasm
- Creative Vision
- Accurate Thinking
- Controlled Attention
- Learning From Adversity and Defeat
- Maintenance of Sound Health
- Budgeting Time and Money
- Pleasing Personality
- Applied Faith
- Teamwork
- Going The Extra Mile
- Master-Mind
- Cosmic Habit-Force
These principles are of no particular order, but they follow a pattern.
To achieve something, you must first conceive what you want -- your definite purpose -- knowing where you want to go. Then, you must have a positive mental attitude to go with it.
In other words -- you must believe you are going to achieve your definite purpose --then you must build your world around it -- using all these principles -- especially the mastermind.
Go read, or re-read, Think And Grow Rich.
And I've already given you a spoiler. The Napoleon Hill secret is:
"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve with positive mental attitude."
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Garry Rodgers is a retired homicide detective and forensic coroner, now bestselling crime writer. Garry lives on Vancouver Island on Canada's west coast and hosts the popular blog DyingWords.net.