How Hulu’s 11.22.63 awakened me to the secret on Think and Grow Rich
Who said watching TV is useless? With good documentaries, movies and TV Shows it can also supplement things we are currently learning.
Last year I was presented to the classic book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I was impressed how I had never heard of it, despite of the fact it was the creator of the term Mastermind. At the same time I started reading this book, I started watching 11.22.63 on Hulu.
Spoiler alert: I’ll reveal here the secret of Think and Grow Rich. No spoiler for 11.22.63.
Photo: IMDB
Starring James Franco, 11.22.63 is an uncommon story based on the book 11/22/63 by Stephen King. On the story, Jake (James Franco) was at a restaurant signing his divorce papers. His friend and restaurant owner Al (Chris Cooper) serve him some coffee and 5 minutes later, reappear older, with a grown beard and clearly sick. Asked what happened he said he got cancer. Jake couldn’t understand how he could have gotten cancer in 5 minutes. Then Al show him a door on the end of the facility. He just asks for him to enter.
As Jake goes through that door, he goes to a totally different place, apparently in 60’s. He was not told how to get back but he managed his way. Scared and angry at the same time, he is curious to know what had just happened and then Al explains everything and also the rules.
For some unknown reason that door exists and has this power. Every time he goes there, he goes to the same time and day of Dallas, Texas, 1960. It doesn’t matter how long he stays there, when he gets back always 5 minutes only has passed. If he goes back to the door, he resets any change in history he might have made before. And going beyond, Al tells him what was his plan. He tried several times to avoid the assassination of John F Kennedy in 11/22/63. He told all he could until he had known and said that when it was certain that Lee Harvey Oswald was the one and only assassin, he could kill him and return. It was hard to be convinced but he accepted the mission. The mission that in the words of Al would make the world a much better place.
Credit: IMDB
So there goes Jake, with all the information he had, and also a book to make some money on bets. He was a teacher and found a new job in 1960 on a school. He met a woman. While watching that I had read more than half of Think and Grow Rich book and I started to wonder how Jake was like a Superman on that world.
And that not because of the knowledge he had about the future, but because he went to that world with a well defined mission: avoid the assassination of JFK. On that world there was just one way for him to fail. So, he was not worried about his job. As a matter of fact, he got a job to have what to do. He didn’t have to worry about women, politics, oil change, whatever. Anything he did out of his purpose, good or not, would be irrelevant as long as it didn’t really interfere on his mission.
Taken to another level closer to reality, it is somehow why so many immigrants achieve better life conditions than natives on the new country. Usually they leave their home country sure that with hard work they will succeed in another country like USA. This success belongs to them. It is already written on their biography, it just happen to be in the future and after a hard work. They go to another country with a well defined purpose. So they don’t really care if the simple way they live is not well seen by neighbors. They care about going through the path that they know will pay them what they deserve.
So by now I guess it is clear what is the secret on Think and Grow Rich: having a well defined purpose. Even when people think they don’t have a life purpose, their background will at least guide them through a not so ambitious and almost automatic purpose. For example: children usually think on maintaining the mediocrity of the environment they were raised. A not intelligent child raised in an upper-class family will usually find his way to maintain his lifestyle because that is her “normal”. A smart boy on a violent and poor community is not likely to achieve the upper-class level.
But the real power of the book read by so many successful entrepreneurs over generations is to show how by using auto-suggestion one can create on his mind a powerful purpose. As silly as it seems, I’m so grateful to have watched 11.22.63 because it made my understanding of the book much clear and if write this here, is with the hope of also enlighten others with the power of the message on Think and Grow Rich.
First published on marioishikawa.com.
