Napolean Hill : Think and Grow Rich - Laws of Success
Lesson 1: Definiteness of purpose
Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.
Have a clear picture of what you want in life in your mind.
We all come with two envelopes from the time we are born.
Envelope 1: "riches"
- Sound health
-peace of mind
- a labour of love of your own choice
- freedom from fear and worry
- a positive mental attitude
- material riches of your own choice and quantity
Envelope 2: "penalties"
- ill health
- fear and worry
- indecision and doubt
- frustration and discouragement throughout life
- poverty and want
- a whole flock of evil consisting of envy, greed, jealousy, anger, hatred and superstition
If you wish to write your own ticket from here on out for the remainder of your life---
Instructions:
A) prepare a neat pocket size notebook.
On page one write down a clear description of your major desire in life - the one circumstance, position or thing, which you will be willing to expect as the idea of success.
And remember, before you begin writing, that your only limitations are those which you set up in your own mind or permit others to set up for you.
B) on page two of your notebook write down a clear statement of precisely what you intend to give in return of what you desire from life.
C) Memorise both the statements. What you desire and what you intend to give in return for it. And repeat them at least a dozen times daily.
End your statements with this expression of gratitude for the blessings which you were gifted at birth - "I ask not, oh divine providence for more riches but more wisdom with which to accept and use wisely the riches that I received at birth in the form of the power to control and direct my mind to whatever ends I desire."
Lesson 2: mastermind principle
It consists of two or more people who work in perfect harmony for the attainment of a definite purpose.
E.g. - the declaration of independence
You need trust, education and experience and capital from others.
Form a mastermind alliance with your associates in your organisation or work place.
How to apply the mastermind principle - Increase your own income, promote yourself to a higher position, to get full cooperation of your management. Write your own price tag, fix your own wages, establish your own working hours and give yourself financial independence.
Three things to do:
- decide definitely where you wish to be and what you wish to be doing in the next three years.
- decide how much money you need to be making and what you are going to do to earn it.
- form a mastermind alliance with one person in your family and one other person to whom you are selling your services.
There is nothing such as something for nothing. For everything including your personal success there is a price that must be paid. And the only price you are requested to pay for your present is the effort necessary to do the three simple things that I have suggested.
Before you take the three steps- control your mental attitude and make yourself friendly and agreeable with those who you are going to relate to.
Your mental attitude is the one and the only thing over which you can have complete control.
Remember success is something which has to be planned. Success is something which has to be earned in advance.
Success is the knowledge to get whatever you want from life without violating the rights of others and helping others to acquire it.
I can never give you for which you are not ready.
Lesson 3: the habit of going the extra mile
Which means the habit of tendring more and better service than one is expected to render and doing it in a positive mental attitude.
QQMA formula = quality of service you render + quantity of service your render + mental attitude in which you render your service = determines the space you occupy in your chosen calling an the compensation you get for your services.
benefits -
- bring you to the favourable attention of those who can and will provide you with opportunities to promote yourself into a better circumstance
- it will place at back of you that great natural law of increasing returns of which the service you render will bring back greater than average compensation
- making this habit will make you indispensable in your chosen occupation
- help you to excel in your line of work
- if you work for a salary this habit will give you preference, when work is slack and others are laid off.
- it will help you benefit from the law of contrast because those around you will not be making efforts for going the first mile let alone the second mile
- improve your personality and liked by others
- keen and alert imagination
- it will inspire you to move on your own personal initiative instead of waiting to be told what to do
- helps you master the habit of procrastination. Biggest reason for failure.
- going the extra mile influences other people to respect your integrity and inspires them to go out of the way to help you in a friendly spirit
- develop definiteness of purpose
- provides you the one and only purpose to get a promotion to be at a better place in life
- conditions your mind to maintain a mastermind alliance with others
The law of increasing return comes to those who go the extra mile.
Service / job
Instructions:
A) render some form of useful service to someone who you are not supposed to for which you neither expect or ask for compensation.
B) render this service in a pleasing mental attitude, which will show that you enjoy doing it.
C) do this for at least 7 working days.
Lesson 4: applied faith
Is the mental attitude where you can free your mind of all fears and doubts and direct it to whatever you desire in life.
You can use faith in two ways -
- either by putting it in reverse gear use it in a negative way by allowing your mind to dwell upon the circumstances and things that you do not want such as poverty, I'll health, failure defeat.
- positive
successful people see in the - capacity of belief.
you should begin with believing that you were born with the privilege of complete control over your own mind.
poverty, fear, illiteracy and superstition are four horsemen who keep you bound when you are born. Applied faith helps you get out of it.
Instructions:
- Know what you want and believe that you can and will get it.
- give expressions of gratitude several times a day for having received what you what, even before you actually get physical possession of it.
- keep your mind to hunches from within. There can be no application of applied faith without action.
- when overtaken by defeat, remember man's faith is tested many times before he is crowned with final victory and accept your defeat as nothing more than a challenge to keep on trying.
- a burning desire. Be definite, believe and act.
- when doubt creeps in your mind. Remember whatsoever a man believeth that he shall also reap.
Faith is not something you get, faith is something you already have.
Faith is guidance only and will not bring you what you want but will help you keep going to get you what you want.
remember that your faith is limited to your only capacity to believe. you can do whatever you make up your mind to do.
Believe and you Shall Receive.
Lesson 5: pleasing personality
See your personality just as others see it.
Traits:
- mental attitude. Keep positive. Tone of your voice, expression on your face, courtesy and consideration.
- flexibility of your mental attitude, without losing your composure or becoming angry. You cannot control others actions but you can control your reactions to the acts of others.
- ability to control and direct the emotion of enthusiasm. Uncontrolled enthusiasm makes people boresome and easily influenced by people by ideas that you would not like to be.
- sincerity of purpose.
Common habits which destroy a pleasing personality:
- one of the most destructive habits are of breaking in and running away in conversations when others are speaking.
- sarcasm expressed by insinuating and wisecracks which are not so wise.
- vanity expressed by words or actions makes you unpopular.
- indifference in listening while others are speaking.
- attempt to flatter, where flattery is not accepted.
- finding fault with people around you and the world at large.
- openly and directly challenging those with ones who may not agree.
- habit of volunteering unsolicited advice to others who have not requested it.
- habit of speaking about ones physical ailments.
- habit of use of words or topics unfamiliar to others.
- envy of those who are successful.
- carelessness and bad dressing.
Lesson 6: principle of self discipline
Mastering your negative habits and development and enforcement of your positive habits.
Rules:
- mastery over the Tongue. Thinking before you start speaking. After you are sure will not insure others.
- exercise discipline to not alder those who have an agenda against you. Forgive and forget.
- control your emotions of love, hate, fear and sex. they can make you and break you.
- your mental attitude needs discipline and control at all times.
- failure to exercise control on sex.
- stomach needs discipline on dieting and fasting
- religion and politics
- taking possession of your own mind. need a system.
Give us the freedom from the fear of death.
habit of taking the lines of least resistant makes all rivers and some men crooked.
Lesson 7: positive mental attitude
- learn to adjust yourself to other peoples state of mind and difficulties.
- establish for yourself an established fixed system of conditioning your mind at the beginning of each day, to keep yourself positive under all circumstances.
- Do not make yourself be drawn into arguments over unimportant things.
- adopt the habit of having a good hearty laugh whenever you angry or agitated and it will help you if you begin your day with at least one minute of hearty laughing.
- start each day with an expression of gratitude for all the adversities, defeats and failures you have experienced in the past.
- then give thanks to the blessing you expect to receive during the day.
- learn to concentrate the attention on the can do portion of your desire or your problem.
- learn to transmute all unpleasant circumstances into immediate action which calls for a positive mental attitude and make this a fixed habit.
- recognise that every circumstance that influences your life, pleasant or unpleasant is risked or you are a mill of life. Strength grows out of your struggles.
- look upon your life as a continuos process of education.
- make the world over to fit your own pattern by begin with yourself in some sort of self improvement and open minded.
- express gratitude twice for having being given complete control over your own mind and ask for guidance that you might use this profound gift wisely in all your thought and acts.
- go out of your way to mention the positive qualities of the people you work and live with daily.
- accept all criticism of yourself as self examination to determine how much of it is justified.
- do not accept from life or anyone else anything that you do not desire.
There are two kinds of worries - one that you can do something about and the other you can't do anything about.
- If you ever be so unfortunate to ever feel so sorry for yourself, find someone who is worse off than yourself and start by helping them.
- choose some person who you would like to be. Then go to work and emulate them in your actions.
- cultivate a pleasing tone of voice. Sound of your voice is an open window for others to peep into your soul.
- write out this sentence so that u see it every day - "whatever a mind can conceive and belief, the mind can achieve."
And you are the only person who influences your positive attitude.
Your entire life's decision rests on it. what are you gonna do about it.
William James - The emotions are not immediately subjected to reason but they are always immediately subjected to actions.
Lesson 8: enthusiasm
Knowledge is power. It is only half the truth because knowledge becomes into power only when it is put into action for the attainment of a definite objective.
Everyone's brain is both a broadcasting and a receiving station.
Enthusiasm is one of the most important traits necessary for leadership.
what to do when you meet a person:
- turn up your enthusiasm and modulate your voice so that the other person feels you are happy to communicate with them.
- when you shake his hand take a firm grip on it. and give it a quick firm squeeze at the end of each word that you use. E.g. How do you do. I am so very glad to meet you.
- then if you begin conversation be sure it is of interest to the other person.
- follow questions to focus attention on that other person all the time.
- the best principle of salesmanship is to first sell others to themselves.
Instructions:
- speak enthusiastically for 10 minute by loud reading. Write down a list of 10 things that you like best.
- practise enthusiasm with friends and colleagues and family.
Where there is no motive there is no enthusiasm.
The three motives are:
- emotion of love
- emotion of sex
- desire for financial gain
Lesson 9: personal initiative
Personal Initiative is the dynamo which starts the faculty of imagination into action.
HJ Curtis owner of washington post said that - there are two kinds of men who never amount to much - who cannot do as they are told, and those who can do nothing else.
Those who amount to something worthwhile in life, are those who move on their own personal initiative.
The men who stand out on the minds of the public as the greatest successes from the days of George Washington, onto the present, are those who chose their own occupation business or profession and moved on their own personal initiative to achieve their purpose.
A winner never quits and a quitter never wins.
A big success is made up of a great number of little circumstances, each of which is small and seemingly insignificant that most people pass it by as not worthy of notice.
Attributes of a person with personal initiative:
- Has a definite major purpose in life and a plan for it's attainment.
- a mastermind Alliance.
- necessary persistence and will to win.
- he makes decisions promptly of he has the facts that he wishes to base them on.
- he follows the habit of doing more than he is paid for in a pleasing and positive mental attitude.
- to accept the full responsibility of your actions.
- takes friendly criticism positively.
- he knows the nine basic motives are of the human endeavours.
- he never expresses an opinion unless the has adequate knowledge or experience.
- listening much and talking only when it is beneficial.
- well developed habit of observation of detail.
- he never tells anyone anything why it should be done and how it can be done best.
- he follows the habit of concentrating full attention on one thing at a time.
- his mental attitude is positive at all times in communication with other people.
- if asked a question, he will give you a direct answer even if it is to say that he does not know the answer.
- he never puts off until tomorrow which should have been done last week.
your own promotion is entirely in your own hands.
Lesson 10: Overcoming adversity and defeat
Your positive metal attitude is the only means that you can convert your adversities, failures and defeats into assets.
Isn't it strange so often people have to be cut down by failure and defeat before they learn that they have minds capable of mastering all of their problems.
every individual has the freedom of thought and actions.
it is definitely a part of the overall plan of the universe to give man the benefits of only those blessings he recognises, embraces and uses constructively.
In nature it is a law that you lose that you do not use.
Nothing can be called failure until you accept it as such.
Lesson 11: creative vision
Imagination is the workshop wherein we fashion the purposes of our brain and the ideals of our soul.
Two forms:
A) synthetic imagination - organising and putting together of recognised ideas, concepts and facts arranged in a new combination. Very seldom anyone creates an idea which is new.
B) creative imagination - which operates through the sixth sense and has its base in the sub conscious section of the brain and serves as the exclusive medium through which new ideas or facts are revealed.
All the good ideas have been used up. Did I hear you say? Quite to the contrary the best ideas are yet to be revealed and put to service for the greater good of mankind.
There are no more opportunities to become rich. Did I hear you say? If you will give me an acceptable plan for influencing married people to adopt and use the mastermind principle. or training sales people.
Lesson 12: rules of accurate thinking
- based on two simple fundamentals - inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. IR is used when the necessary facts on which to base your reasoning are not available. In this case you act on hypothesis. DR is used when you have the facts or what appear the facts, to base your thinking.
Separate facts from fiction.
Separate facts into two classes - important and unimportant facts.
what is an important fact? - any fact which will aid you in any extent whatsoever which will help you attain the object of your major purpose in life.
Lesson 13: Cosmic Habit Force
This law gives definiteness of action to everything, which moves throughout the entire universe. It keeps the stars and planets in their desired places and it fixes the life patterns of every living thing from the smallest insect to the largest animal, excepting the only man, who has been given the means by which he may use this law to establish his own habits and determine his own desires and movements throughout life.
Cosmic Habit Force can have a positive and a negative influence both at the same time. The negative application of this law is called “Hypnotic Rhythm”. Which means, among other possible results, it fastens upon individuals that by neglect to fix our thoughts upon the things we desire in life and thereby gain the power of cosmic habit force in attaining these desires, the law automatically acts through the negative hypnotic feature and fixes our mind on things we do not desire, and attracts to us the physical counterparts of these desires.
The nearest description to the cosmic habit force is the Emersons law of compensation – in which he clearly establishes the truth that nothing ever just happens by luck but every effect has its definite cause or be it we often observe effects, the causes of which we cannot isolate or understand.
Cosmic Habit Force fixes the pattern of the electrons and the protons and the chemical reactions between them. For example, one grain of wheat only produces one grain of wheat, never a pumpkin. One atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen combined always produce water. Understand the power of sex as being the power of cosmic habit force as being the ultimate power to generate and create, we need to control the power of sexual emotion.
We sometimes hear of successful people as being on the beam. By which they mean they mean that those who enjoy success have established a success though pattern in their mind, which cosmic habit force has picked and carried out to its logical conclusion.
You are on the beam when you can truthfully say - “I know precisely what I what from life and I have faith that I shall get it.”
You are not on the beam when you don’t have a major definite purpose and are drifting aimlessly through life. People who are failures are also on the beam, but they are on the negative side of the beam because they have neglected to use those riches, which came over with them in that sealed envelope. And they have placed themselves under the hypnotic rhythm, which is the negative application of cosmic habit force. There is one word which doctors dread and it is fixation, which means that a sick person believes in his sickness as something that cannot be cured. Fixation can become a priceless asset for those who have discovered the great master key of success and have learnt how to develop fixation in their minds based on the things that they desire most in life. Cosmic habit force is the power which makes things permanent.
Lastly, remember that your mental attitude is something that you control outright, and you must use self discipline until you create a thought pattern or thought habits, which keeps your mental attitude positive at all times. Your mental attitude is important because it acts as a magnet which attracts to you every single thing, every circumstance, which makes you what you are and where you are.
If you wish to keep on the beam that leads to success, be sure that you give cosmic habit force a though pattern, based on the things that you want the most in life and it will do the rest.
