I read Napoleon Hill’s wildly popular Think and Grow Rich book probably 20 years ago in my early twenties but it never really did much for me. It’s not until only just recently when I decided to pull myself out of poverty that I kept noticing it pop up. I kept seeing millionaires and billionaires and super-successful people mentioning the book so I figured I should give it another chance.
It was inspired by businessman Andrew Carnegie and first published back in 1937. Hill interviewed and researched more than 500 of best thought leaders and business men of his time and included the likes of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, Graham Bell, and J.P. Morgan. Before Napoleon Hill died in 1970 his money making book had sold more than 20 million copies. Think and Grow Rich continues to sell today and is now one of the best selling business books of all time with sales in excess of 100 million!
Self improvement gurus, management experts, business owners, Internet moguls, entrepreneurs, investors, and everyone in between recommend this book. Again and again I have seen it being talked about as the most influential book the person has ever read and that’s by some of the most successful people in the world. So, obviously I was missing something all those years ago when I first read it!
I started listening to an audiobook of Think and Grow Rich from Audible.com. I recommend the reading by Varoon P. Anand as it’s one of the cheaper versions, it’s more than 9 hours long, and he’s easy to listen to. I’ve listened to it twice already and I plan to buy another copy of the actual book as I can no longer find the old copy that I had previously read.
It’s obviously dated as it was written more than 80 years ago now but the bones of the message is still solid and just as usable today as it was back then. I’ve started using the book to change my thinking and “Grow Rich” today! I still wouldn’t call it the most influential book I ever read but maybe I just haven’t had time to fully implement the 13 steps to becoming rich by Napoleon Hill!
The 13 steps to riches with my simplified interpretation of each include..
- Desire – Get clear about the goal and passionately desire it. Don’t wish for it or hope for it but see it in detail, create a concrete plan to have it, and become obsessed with achieving it.
- Faith – Employ faith to bring your goals to life with constant repetition of your goal. Use affirmations to create a state of faith that forces your subconscious mind to believe in your desired outcome.
- Autosuggestion – Use the senses to see and believe your goal being achieved.
- Specialized Knowledge – Learn everything you can about your niche or industry. General knowledge doesn’t help much, you need specific knowledge. Be the expert in your field or employ the expert in your field.
- Imagination – Napoleon talks about synthetic imagination and creative imagination. He says the former is relatively useless as it simply uses known data and rearranges it. Creative imagination is where fortunes are created using the power of the mind.
- Organized Planning – Plan and develop a path towards your goal. Change and adapt it until it’s working properly.
- Decision – Make a decision and take action. Those who don’t succeed come to decisions slowly and will quickly and regularly change their mind when they finally do make a decision.
- Persistence – Work on increasing your desire for a particular outcome and your will power will also strengthen. Persistence is created by you so work on it.
- Power of the Master Mind – Create a mastermind group of like minded people in your industry with a similar desire to succeed and regularly meet up.
- The Mystery of Sex Transmutation – Understand and use sexual energy to supercharge your manifesting ability.
- The Subconscious Mind – Learn to plant the right seeds into your subconscious mind and weed out the wrong thoughts.
- The Brain – We broadcast and receive information.
- The Sixth Sense – Combine the mental and the spiritual to achieve your goals.
So, should you read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich book? YES, of course. Will it change your life and make you rich? Maybe, maybe not, who knows. It all depends on what you do with the information as knowledge is not enough. Knowledge is only valuable if it’s acted upon.
Look at some of the Law of Attraction books published recently to see similar modern spins on Napoleon Hill’s 1937 classic. I can’t wait to receive my physical copy of the book now that I have listened to the audiobook version of it. Grab yourself a copy and see what everyone is talking about.
Try an audio version at Audible.com (and get 2 free audiobooks if you join today) or buy a hard copy from my favourite book store @Book Depository or check it out on Amazon.
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