Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill
“Desire, faith and persistence.”
Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill · 1937
Napoleon Hill was born in 1883 in Virginia, USA. He worked as a journalist and said that the steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie encouraged him to study the habits of successful people. After years of interviews and research, he published Think and Grow Rich in 1937, during the Great Depression. It became one of the best-selling self-help books in history. Hill died in 1970.
Hill's starting point is a definite, burning desire. Wishing is not enough. He tells of Edwin Barnes, who had little money but was determined to become a business partner of Thomas Edison. Barnes first joined Edison as an ordinary worker, waited patiently, and eventually won the right to sell Edison's dictating machine. Hill suggests writing down the exact goal, a date to reach it, and what you will give in return, and reading it aloud every day.
Faith, Hill says, can be developed by repeating positive instructions to your own mind. He calls this autosuggestion. What you think about with feeling and repetition shapes your actions. Combine this with specialized knowledge, because general knowledge alone does not create results. Knowledge becomes power only when it is organized into a plan and put into action.
Successful people, Hill found, reach decisions quickly and change them slowly. He also describes the Master Mind: a group of two or more people working in harmony toward a definite purpose. No one succeeds alone. Surround yourself with people who complete your weaknesses and share your aim.
Hill tells the story of a man named R. U. Darby, who stopped digging for gold just three feet short of a rich vein. He learned never to stop because of temporary defeat. Most great successes came just one step beyond the point where failure took over. Hill writes, whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Keep going. Your breakthrough may be just three feet away.