Napoleon Hill, The man who interviewed 500 successful and great minds of his time, took 20 years to compile it all, gave us a book. A book which I thought would be similar to “Psychology of Money”. A book that literally changed my perception on almost everything.
Desire- The first step to riches
It always starts with a goal, regardless of how big or how out of reach the goal may seem, Set a goal.
Over a 100 years ago, A merchant named Edwin Barnes had the dream working in a partnership with Thomas A. Edison. He was so passionate about his goal that he worked day in and day out to achieve it. Although he was poor, Barnes managed to take a trip to the Edison labratory and poorly presented himself in front of the Man. Barnes quoted his dream to Edison and everyone except Edison laughed, Edison decided to give the man a job of sweeping to which barnes said, “I will start anywhere. I will do anything Edison tells me to do, but before I am through I will be his associate”. Barnes diligently worked for Edison with one goal in his mind, “There is but one thing in this world I am determined to have, and that is a business association with Edison. I will burn all bridges behind me, and stake my entire future on my ability to get what I want.”
“I bargained the life for a penny And Life would pay no more,
For life is just employer, He gives you what you ask,
I worked for a menial’s hire, Only to learn dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid”
But what after you set the goal? Setting the goal is merely a beginning, You dont just set a goal without a need to achieve it. You want $1 Billion but do you actually desire it? Napoleon said this in the book and it stuck with me, “The desire to achieve the goal must burn brighter than the desire to quit”. If you desire your goal, you should be willing to work without seeing your limits.
Faith- The second step to riches
The poem below speaks volumes and there is no point in setting a goal and trying to achieve it with self doubt, with the feeling that you are unlucky.
“If you think you’re beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, But you think you can’t, It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out in the world you’ll find Success begins with a fellow’s will, It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you’re outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late, the man who wins,
Is THE ONE WHO THINKS HE CAN.”
Faith is the antidote of Failure
Faith is the starting point of all accumulation of riches
A great man once said, “There are two types of people, those who think they can and those who think they can’t, and they are both right.”
Have faith in God if you believe in him, Have faith faith in those around you but most importantly, Have faith in yourself
Auto-suggestion- The third step to riches
This was one of the chapter where Napoleon talks about how one can activate their subconcious brain to make it work for themselves. The steps are pretty simple and obvious yet effective, He asks us to write our goals on a piece of paper and hang it somewhere it is easily visible day and night. He then preaches to loudly do the follwing-
- I am someone who accomplished the goal
- How I would achieve the goal
- What am I willing to sacrifice in order to achieve the goal
This is quite like words of affirmation but rather than drowninng yourself in fake promises and hiding your weaknesses, you highlight them and realise what you have to do in order to reach where you want to be.
Specialised Knowledge- The fourth step to riches
Just writing and religiously believing yourself is not enough to achieve a goal, you must gain knowledge about the same. This chapter speaks about how and why one should have in depth knowledge regarding the goals you set.
The person who stops studying merely because they finished school is forever hopelessly doomed to mediocrity, no matter what their calling is.
Take inspiration from those who have achieved your goals, learn from those who couldn’t but never stop learning.
The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.
Imagination- The fifth step to Riches
Our only limitation, within reason, lies in the development and use of our own imagination.
Napoleon talks about two types of imagination
Synthetic Imagination
“Through this faculty, one may arrange old concepts, ideas, or plans into new combinations. This faculty creates nothing. It merely works with the material of experience, education, and observation with which it is fed.”
This is the imagination that involves gathering and organizing all the ideas you already know or have read once into something greater.
Creative Imagination
“Through the faculty of creative imagination, the finite mind of man has direct communication with Infinite Intelligence.”
This in simple words can be explained as the imagination that involves hunches or new imaginations. Most of the successful people use this imagination but the issue with this is that our brain is too fast at producing thought so remembering each and every thought is literally impossible but Tiago Forte came up with the idea of a “Second Brain” which can be useful.
Organised planning- The sixth step to riches
I don’t really understand why the chapter is named organised planning rather than Leadership because from the get go, Napoleon talked about two types of people, a leader and a follower. He says that being a follower is neither good nor bad because an intelligent follower has the ability to acquire knowledge from the leader and then later become a leader themselves.
People are not paid for what they know but what they do with what they know.
The major attributes of leadership are as follows-
- Unwavering Courage
- Self Control
- Definiteness of Decisions
- Definiteness of Plans
- A keen sense of Justice
- A Habit of Doing more than Paid
- Mastery of Detail
- Co-Operation
- Willingness to Assume Full Responsibility
- Pleasing Personality
- Sympathy and Understandable
Decision- The seventh step to riches
The title of the chapter says, “Decision- The Mastery of Procrastination” and ironically this is the only chapter I didn’t take note of but don’t worry I re-read it and it was quite basic.
The author talks about what every other youtuber talks these days on how to make your goals public so you have a feeling of responsibility when it comes to taking actions for your goals rather than just procrastinating.
Persistence- The Eighth Step to Riches
A fairly short chapter talking about Persistence being the driving force needed to reach a goal. The author then speaks about how to be more persistent, the signs u are lacking and how to improve them all.
Power of the mastermind- The Ninth Step to Riches
The author has been talking about a “Mastermind Group” from the start of the book and this chapter did live up to it.
Co-ordination of knowledge and effort in a spirit of harmony between two or more people for the attainment if a definite purpose.
Rather than being a know-it-all person simply work with those who can provide you knowledge of a specific topic any needed time. No one has all the knowledge in the world and neither will you. Take one niche you are great at and stick with it, the rest of the important niches can be covered by someone else. Now this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have any knowledge about a subject obviously, Have a lil above bare minimum knowledge.
People take on the nature and the habits and the power of thought of those with whom they associate in a spirit of sympathy and harmony.
The Art of Sex Transmutation- The Tenth Step to Riches
The people with high sex energy are more prosperous in life, this isn’t just a random statement but a statistic. Napoleon emphasis on the need of transmutation which is change of one energy to another, in the book the energy is sex energy to something productive or more specifically “Monetary gains”. Napoleon says that the greatest leaders of all time had mastered this art and most of the rich people get rich after the age of 35–40 because most of the people get a clarity on how to master the art by then. Most of the men who become great in their life often have one woman as the major force behind their success and the ones that often have more woman rarely succeed and even if they do, the second woman generally tend to bring them down.
The Subconscious Mind- The Eleventh Step to Riches
The subconscious mind works all day and all night. One becomes what they think and feeding the subconscious brain again and again the thoughts of the desire you have.
There are 7 major positive emotions-
Desire | Sex | Faith | Romance | Love | Hope | Enthusiasm
There are 7 major negative emotions-
Fear | Jealousy | Hatred | Revenge | Greed | Superstition | Anger
The positive emotions have to be hammered in the brain whereas the negative emotions are already there and need to be removed. One shit emotion can over power all the 7 major positive emotions. Even though there are multiple other positive emotions one can master, mastering these 7 will help you easily master all the other emotions.
The Brain- The Twelfth Step to Riches
Nothing much can be said about this chapter. He talks about hunches and just thinking clearly which is covered in other chapters.
The Sixth Sense- The Thirteenth Step to Riches
In this chapter the author talks about the sixth sense that we humans have but is not studied deeply. We humans get hunches which is a part of the human brain but not studied as to why we humans do get “hunches”. The author then speaks about his experience about the “Invisible Counsellors” which for Napoleon Rich were Emerson, Paine, Edison, Darwin, Lincoln, Burbank, Napoleon, Ford and Carnegie. Napoleon used to close his eyes at night and then imagine all his invisible counsellors sitting on a round table with him. Napoleon considered himself the leader/chairman of the group and then spoke about what he intended to learn from each of them like persistence from Edison and about success and failure, Sense of tolerance and human understanding from Lincoln. He even imagined scenarios with them and funny instances like Paine saying that apple was the thing that started the war between man and woman, Darwin laughed and said he should be aware of serpents lurking in the garden and then Emerson said, ’No serpents, No apples’, Napoleon further added, ‘No apples, No state’. There were many such light hearted instances and Napoleon even started imagining them and asking them for help in most of the scenarios. He stopped for a while when he thought that he was going too far and couldn’t differentiate between real life and imagination, He came back to it a little while later and added even more people to his group like Gaelilio, Confiscious etc.
Monologue
This has been my favourite read of the year so far and although it didn’t really teach about the money sector, It gave me as a pessimist the idea of being optimistic every so often. And my friends really did see a changed man. I was pretty confident for my papers and went and came out with a good mindset (my marks say otherwise). I would 10/10 suggest you to read the whole book because I have just grazed the tip of the iceberg and Napoleon actually goes too deep in the book. I also wanna write about more books but I don’t know which book y’all would want so if you have managed to read it till here, Pls do suggest a book!
Cheers!!!
