15 Lessons From Think And Grow Rich (Free PDF)

Napoleon Hill wrote the self-help book, Think and Grow Rich in 1937. This book is 25 years of research on some of the most economically successful individuals. The main idea is that you can be anything your mind deems possible. Although this book is many decades old, its lessons are still valuable for amassing wealth in this current dispensation.

Napoleon Hill interviewed the 500 most successful business people and distilled everything about succeeding in 13 principles. He defines it as what you need to do to think and grow rich. If you want to get on the path to mastery, success, riches, and becoming a millionaire, you can use these 13 principles of the book. Because it worked for those five hundred people, and it’ll work for you if you apply them.

15 Lessons From Think And Grow Rich

In the book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says there’s a secret in this book. He said if you can find the mystery in the book, you can have anything you seriously want. He pointed out that everyone who found it and used it has earned millions.

Researchers found there are 30 major causes of failure. But there are only 13 ideas that contributed to a person accumulating a fortune or enjoying real success.

Let’s get into the best 15 ideas and lessons from Napoleon Hill’s “Think And Grow Rich” book.

1. Mindset

Think and grow rich sounds like a bad 80s infomercial, right? It’s not a get-rich-quick book. It’s the opposite. Getting rich or acquiring wealth is less about the actual numbers and money in a bank account and more about the person you become. If you lock 17 millionaires in a closet, take away all their money, and let them out ten years later, chances are they have the same skills.

• Set up your mindset with fixed goals.

The same mindset has millionaires. So becoming someone who values financial I.Q and the mindset behind thinking and growing rich will be how you become rich.

2. Desire

The second principle of this book and the second-best idea is Desire. Napoleon Hill calls this a burning desire that you’ve got to want whatever you’re going after in life bad enough to be an obsession.

• Wish for some desires to activate willpower.

Napoleon Hill says we need to have the mentality of burning the ships and going all-in on our dreams, goals, desires, etc. We got to be committed to making things happen.

3. Faith

You have to have faith. If we go all-in, we have to have faith that it will work. Otherwise, it’s going to be incredibly nerve-wracking to go all in. You’ve got to be so sure that whatever you’re doing. If you’re an entrepreneur doing a business, it’s going to work, and you’ve got to keep revisiting that.

• Believe in yourself and don’t listen to others’ negative speech.

Many people have this saying, with faith and going for things that you’re not all there for yet striving towards things they say. Fake it till you make it right. Have you heard that saying for the job you want, not your current job? The problem is that you’ll always feel like a fraud if you’re faking something.

So the better view of that and having faith is an act. Act as if whatever you want has already happened in your mind and revisit that repeatedly. A great example for acting as if you want to get healthy. You want to lose 20, 30, or 40 pounds. Then act as if you’re that healthy person, and you’ll be on the path. You’ll be on the path to becoming healthy. Start doing that.

4. Adopt quotes

I will go over two quotes from this book that are solid standouts. The first one: “You are the master of your destiny.” You can influence, direct and control your environment. You can make your life whatever you want it to be. We are in the driver’s seat of our life at the end of the day. We can respond however we choose to life situations.

• Adopt some motivational quotes and write sticky notes.

In the second quote, before success comes in, any man’s life will surely meet many temporary defeats and perhaps some failure when defeat overtakes a man. The easiest and most logical thing to do is quit. That is what a majority of men do. Their greatest success came one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.

We’ve got to keep at it if we want to acquire anything in life, any goal, achievement, or success. And you never know when it’s going to pay off or happen. It might be sooner for some people and way later for you, but we got to keep at it.

5. Specialized knowledge

Napoleon Hill said that you could become rich with specialized knowledge. There’s general knowledge. So what we’re taught in schools, and then specialized knowledge, you have to be an expert.

• Increase and improve the knowledge power.

Seth Godin calls this the linchpin, being someone they can’t outsource. A good question for this is, what are your unique strengths with something you can only do? In other words, be a specialist if we want to grow rich. It pays very well to know a lot about a little. For instance, do you want to see a general practitioner when your right foot falls off? No, you want to see a specialist.

So the better people in medicine specialize in something generally, the higher, the more money they make. Look at the highest-paying surgeons. They’re not general. The more and more specialized they are, the more experienced they are. The more expertise they have in that area, the higher paid they are for it.

6. Organized planning

And next step to growing rich takes organized planning. It is an infomercial term that can take a lifetime. So how do you achieve gigantic goals like working towards anything in life? You set smaller goals to keep yourself motivated. It’s the only way to do it. Don’t go after the little goal. Because if you try to go for it, chances are you will fail, be discouraged, and never want to try again.

• Organize your plan and mark them serially.

Organizing planning involves setting small goals, hitting them, and feeling motivated to continue forward. Instead of seeing it as ten goals, you see it as one goal. It’s way more discouraging. That’s the first thing you can do to get momentum. And then it gets easier and more accessible.

7. Persistence

Step number seven to thinking and growing rich takes persistence. That saying that, it took ten years to become an overnight success. Bill Gates was locked up inside a cubicle, grinding away talk about the level of persistence there. He had nothing to show for it for ten years, and if he had stopped at year nine, he wouldn’t have gotten any of the results he got right now.

It’s because he kept going and didn’t know for eight years. He went all the way to year 10 to get the results he took. It took persistence.

• Be patient and stay motivated.

The lack of persistence is why wealth generation is difficult for many people. Napoleon emphasizes that you must develop the spirit of persistence for success to be accomplished. Many people tend to give up on their first attempt to try something new, so the likelihood of succeeding is zero. Successful people have built an unwavering persistence in their dreams and aspirations.

8. Master mind

The mastermind concept is unique to this book, which has many applications in today’s business world. Napoleon Hills is saying you are the average of the top five people. You hang around most, hang around five negative people, spend money, and smoke cigarettes.

• Surround yourself with a positive community.

Napoleon describes the mastermind principle as the coordination of knowledge and effort between two or more people who work towards a definite purpose in a spirit of harmony. Two minds can never come together without creating a third invincible intangible force, likened to a third mind.

Many new ventures that were once garage businesses have thrived and become established realities in today’s world because of the combined efforts of many high-performing minds. No matter how hard you try, you cannot get to the top alone. You need people to help hold the ladder and suggest ways to climb better.

If we want to think and grow rich, we need to surround our entire life with people trying to do so. He recommends a mastermind thing, where you get a group of people. There are two hundred years of wisdom in that one group that is all giving advice, obviously in person, would be ideal. That’s the best. The second best is online.

9. Become bored

Thinking requires almost a level of boredom to dive deep into where we get thoughts. It takes time to come up with good ideas. Also, It takes time to get clarity on what you should do in life.

• Stop all the distractions: turning the phone off, sitting in the room.
• Start the journaling session: maybe meditating or going on a long walk.

Box it out to where you become bored, and sometimes the best insights come this way. Think about taking an extended vacation or a trip that flights over where you’re staring out the window. Listen to music if you’re on a road trip as well. So becoming bored is a great way to clarify what you want to do and your goals.

10. Powerful Thoughts

Thoughts are powerful things. It is one of the main ideas of this book. Thinkers can accomplish something is already a step toward the finish line. As humans, we often get caught up with so many physical activities that we don’t pause to know what is happening to our mental faculties. We could improve our lives by changing actions and acting a certain way.

Indeed, change in behavior can transform our lives. But is it possible to change behavior without first paying attention to the thoughts that go on in your mind?

• You must first change thoughts and narratives to change life’s outcome because thoughts are powerful entities.

Napoleon asserts that thoughts are powerful things. They are mixed with purpose, persistence, and a burning desire to translate into riches or other material objects.

11. Imagination

Albert Einstein once remarked that imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, and imagination encircles the world.

What the statement, you can create anything your mind conceives and deems possible. -Napoleon Hill

• The power of imagination is key to getting the life you desire.

In the book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen Covey narrates the story of a prisoner who found freedom right in prison through his imagination. Unlike knowledge, creative visions are not limited but present realities. Instead, imaginations are like a world of our own, which we build by ourselves.

You must first imagine it for you to bring anything into existence. Three Desire is the starting point for all achievements. Many people are ignorant about desire’s role in actualizing dreams and ambition. When the word desire is mentioned, it is seen as a negative word that stems from selfishness. But that notion is not valid. Your desire to be wealthy does not make you greedy or evil.

According to Emerson, there’s nothing inconsistent in nature. The implanting of a desire indicates its gratification in the creature’s constitution that feels it. In other words, everything a man needs, good or bad, he must first desire. As long as you desire it, it is possible.

12. Positive energy

Napoleon noted that the subconscious mind registers our positive and negative thoughts. You can think of something positive and negative. At the same time, you can get both negative and positive emotions. Your subconscious mind is like an archive! It registers everything and acts based on your predominant thinking patterns. So if your emotion is continuously focused on success, love, and optimism, your subconscious mind works its way through.

• To ensure that those emotions, which form the basis of thoughts, translate into physical reality.

This is why you must, at all times, be conscious of your thoughts and emotions. Filter and do away with the negative and focus all your energy on developing positive feelings and thoughts.

13. Sexual impulses

Sexual impulses can be translated into productivity. Many people believe that sex is nothing but a physical feeling and experience. But in this book, the author points out that sex is a significant emotion.

• Napoleon mentions that an average sexual nature is a typical feature of highly successful people. However, this doesn’t mean that they use it physically.

A great salesperson can reach a position of influence in his field only to transmute his sexual energy during the sales process. Fully sexual transmutation is done by acknowledging your sexual desire and consciously translating it into enthusiasm and passion for your profession instead of its physical counterpart.

Although sexual transmutation is not natural and requires a high degree of willpower, you should practice it. Its returns on investment can change the whole life.

14. Fears

For every success in life, fear is the number one opponent. Fear is one evil adversary that has caused many people to die without realizing their potential and importance. Nevertheless, as dangerous as fear is, it does not have the power to cripple you if you do not let it in.

• If you want your brain to provide success, you must shut out fear and ensure that your emotions reflect only success.

Fear cannot stop a fearless man. Napoleon compares the brain to radio as they operate at specific frequencies. Thus, radio can only provide sound when the transmitter and receiver are set to the same rate. The brain activity in response to the emotions on the same wavelength conclusively.

15. Infinite intelligence

Infinite intelligence may and will communicate voluntarily without any individual effort or demands. According to Napoleon, infinite intelligence is a function of the sixth sense.

The sixth sense is a mysterious sense that is unable to give you thoughts and ideas to help you become a receiver of information instead of only a transmitter. It has also been referred to as the receiver and set through which ideas flash into the mind.

• Develop your six senses with intelligence and work with them.

The flashes are sometimes called hunches or inspirations. This Sixth Sense ability is essential, and anybody can develop it. Napoleon recommends that meditation and mindfulness is the best way to tap into the incredible power of the Sixth Sense.

Undoubtedly following the principles in this book and propel you to great heights if you suppress negative thoughts and focus on long-term goals.

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