The Secret of “Think and Grow Rich”
I found it. Here it is.
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Author Napoleon Hill refers to a “secret” that runs throughout his 1937 self-help book Think and Grow Rich. This secret, he writes, appears at least once in every chapter. But he does not specifically name the secret.
Hill writes that it is more beneficial and penetrating for you to arrive at the secret yourself. Some readers, he says, grasp it almost immediately. For others it takes multiple readings. Sometimes, right in the midst of a chapter, the secret may flash into your mind. It often comes, Hill writes, when you are ready for it.
I had such an experience recently. I found what I believe is the secret. In actuality, what I discovered is an expansion of something that I’ve written about earlier — but with a difference. I have previously written that the secret of Think and Grow Rich can be put this way: “Emotionalized thought directed toward one passionately held aim — aided by organized planning and the Master Mind — is the root of all accomplishment.” I stand by that. But a more basic conception of Hill’s secret reached me as I was revisiting Hill’s section on “applied faith.” It is this:
The “secret” of Think and Grow Rich is to place yourself within the overall scheme of creation, obeying natural laws that inevitably and invariably beget growth, expansion, renewal, and generativity.
Each step in Hill’s work is designed to bring you into natural, reproductive alignment with laws that enable nature and all of life. This is not dissimilar to concepts found within Taoism and Transcendentalism. Once you are in alignment and work within this cosmic flow — toward continual growth and expansion — cycles of generativeness appear at your back.
You become like the seedling that eventually bursts through the soil. All of nature operates to make this growth occur. Unlike the seedling, however, a sentient being must consciously and selectively labor. That is your role in creation. But when you are productively united — mentally, emotionally, and physically — in the direction of your aim, you naturally enlist these reproductive laws. These laws possess greater potential for…
