THINK AND GROW RICH!

In 1960 Napoleon Hill wrote a book called Think and Grow Rich which was the culmination of 20 years observing the work of Andrew Carnegie. In essence, it was the first “Secret” and truly captured the whole essence of the Laws of Attraction, which have become so popular in the last few years.

Since the topic of Think and Grow Rich is about money, I don’t think there is a single person who doesn’t think about it, or have some relationship to it. But Hill’s book is not just about making money. It’s about how we influence ourselves towards the making of money. In other words, it’s about how we think about money and about our abilities to generate it.

Did you know that your thoughts can influence how or when you become rich?

What if I was to tell you that it’s your mental attitude about money that gets in your way, not your ability to make it.

Now I know there are a hundred reasons you can come up with about why you’re not making the kind of money you’d like to make, and many of them are valid, but according to Napoleon Hill, we are all capable of bringing in exactly what we want if we first of all have a burning desire for it.

A burning desire that takes precedence over all the negative yadda yadda talk that we all feed ourselves, me included. That’s so intense you absolutely must have it and everything else is secondary. So intense that you would be willing to sacrifice everything in order to attain it.

Now that’s not to say we only wish it and it will come true. There isn’t a genie in the bottle waiting for our ‘wish is your command’ deal. But there is an element of that in the universal laws. I don’t know about you, but I have found in my life that when I really want something, and I get really clear about it, then it usually comes about. This demands that you take a totally focused, determined and disciplined approach to getting what you want. If you’re wishy-washy, unclear or unfocused, generally you stay that way. But it’s more than just goal setting, more than just knowing what it is you want, it is clarifying your objectives in such a way that there is no room for equivocation. You simply ‘KNOW’ what it is you want, and no matter what gets in the way, you will find solutions to move beyond them.

The English poet William Henley wrote a poem in the 1890’s called Invictus in which he used the phrase “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.” What he stated then was that we are all in control of our own destiny. We are the ones who make the decisions and choices around what works for us and what doesn’t. We have the power to control our own thoughts. Interestingly, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber quoted this on the way to the death chamber!!

Think about that. We can control our own thoughts. We have a choice. It can be negative or it can be positive and it takes the same amount of energy no matter which way you cut it.

You see thoughts are things controlled by our emotions. Most of the time it is our emotions that are running the show. We get pulled hither and thither by the swings of the pendulum and we cannot see straight because the demands are in control of our thinking.

Most of our thinking is controlled by our dinosaur brain. The place that works from habit, from outdated beliefs and from a desire not to rock the boat. We keep ourselves in this limited state because we think it’s safer. We keep ourselves in this place because we’re afraid to step out of the so-called ‘comfort’ zone into the area between knowing and not knowing what the outcome will be.

In the book Think and Grow Rich, Hill uses the example of Edwin C. Barnes who arrived on the doorstep of Thomas Edison penniless and without portfolio, but he knew he wanted to be in partnership with the great man and was prepared to do so without pay and no idea how he would survive. Edison was so impressed with his desire to do this that he hired him on the spot.

This single most burning desire eventually grew into a lifelong partnership with Edison and when Edison was about to give up on the Edison Dictating Machine, Barnes told him he could sell it. Within a short time, he was earning millions for himself and the company.

Barnes could have quit when he was penniless but he didn’t. He didn’t because he believed there was something there for him and he believed he could do it. He was not going to take no for an answer and he wasn’t going to accept failure as an option.

That is one of the most telling attributes of successful people. Failure is not an option. But it is more than that. It is the understanding that failure is part of the fabric of getting to success. Ask a successful man or woman if they have always been successful, and if they are honest, the answer is clearly no. But it didn’t stop them from moving on.

The key to this problem is the word NEXT! When something doesn’t work, the word is NEXT! If you make a mistake, NEXT! If you meet opposition and you are clear on what you want NEXT! We learn to say NEXT and we learn to embrace the changes.

Embracing the changes in our life is our ticket to success. We make our decisions and if they are the right ones we progress towards our goal. But even when we get stuck momentarily, it is simply that. A moment in our time track when we get an opportunity to consider doing something else.

Napoleon Hill said “Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.” Failures are just practice shots. We miss the basket and we try again. Persistence is the key to everything we desire in our life.

In my own life, I used the word MORE for the longest time. Whenever life was handing me not just the lemons, but the entire lemon grove, I knew there was MORE. From my earliest days I dreamed that I would leave my home town and go somewhere else. I dreamed that I would find financial comfort, and I dreamed that I would go on to write, to sing and to create a life on stage. My dreams have all come true, but it wasn’t because I sat around and wished for them. It was because my desire to have them was greater than my discomfort of staying in a place of limitation.
Originally, my burning desire was fueled by my need to prove to myself and my father, that I could do anything I wanted to. Now, my burning desire is driven by my need to be fully in the world under my own steam, under my own banner, and to manifest all that I feel I’m capable of becoming. I’m just getting started.

I started talking about the Secret and the Laws of Attraction as the recent manifestation of Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich. They are but one small corner of this entire universe of possibilities. I’m an ex-hippie and I’ve always believed that what goes around, comes around. The amazing thing is, it’s true. You get back what you put out.

You see, when you get clear about what it is you want, and you are willing to stake your entire life as it now exists on that premise, then the Universe will inevitably give you what you want. It may not come in the package you think it will. It may not be the people you have in mind. It may not even be all the way there to what you wanted, but there is one very clear part to this.

When you are totally present to your desire, can commit to it 100% without equivocation or doubt, then you will attract what it is you want to manifest in your life. Letting go of doubt and worry is essential to attracting what you want. These emotions get tagged onto our intellectual capacity and we get swamped in negativity. Remember, it takes as much energy to think positively as it does negatively.

“The emotions of faith, love and sex are the most powerful of all the major positive emotions.” The subconscious mind doesn’t differentiate. It only feels the power of them. The mind it where we create the blockages. What you think impacts how you feel and how you feel impacts how you think. Do you think there is a need for some harmony here?

When we think of faith, we usually think of religious beliefs, but when I mention faith here, I’m talking about the confidence to believe in yourself. The trust you place in your ability to do what you say you will do. We need to be clear about that, and the rest will follow. Guaranteed. When it doesn’t work….your negative thoughts and beliefs are running the show.

Your emotions are the ‘feeling’ portion of thoughts and these are what give your thoughts vitality, life and action. I’ll say it again, thoughts become things……think the good ones.

Think and Grow Rich is an amazing principle, and while I’m still working on the getting rich part, I’m definitely getting clearer about what it is I want and learning how to get out of my own way to make it happen. You might think it’s a whooo-whoooo idea, but many self-made people have taken exactly the same principle that Hill laid down. You can literally think your way to success. Refuse to let others tell you can’t. Refuse to allow the negative behaviors of your past tie you down. Refuse to be less than you know you are capable of becoming.

When you start to put that in place, there is no telling what heights you can rise to, what benefits you can give to the world and to yourself.

To quote Jacob Glass "You don't live the life you deserve. You live the life you think you deserve."

It is not your place to think small because in doing so, you do a great disservice to others who can benefit from your wisdom and your spirit. So think large, think positively and above all else, become the person you were truly meant to be.

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