05-12-2012, 05:57 PM
SECRETS OF NAPOLEON HILL
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DESIRE
It is not accidental that Hill begins with desire. Success always begins
with desire.
Most people want to be successful. Wanting success is a waste of time.
Worse, it just produces frustration. Only a burning, all-consuming, fervent
and passionate desire will produce the exceptional results that make up
true success.
Wanting is best understood by its second meaning in the dictionary: lack.
To want for something is to lack something and so long as you merely
want success, you will lack success. Wanting is mere wishful thinking.
Desire, on the other hand, is an extremely potent force. It is a supreme
motivator. It is a metaphysical principle of creation.
Desire is an energetic emanation of the human spirit that enacts the law
of attraction. Desire is the metaphysical equivalent of gravity. Desire
draws to you the thing desired, or the elements that will constitute the
thing desired. Desire is the fuel that ignites the fire that transmutes
thoughts into things.
The sad truth about most people who claim to want success is that they
actually do not desire success. What they desire is comfort and security.
The path to real success often demands that you give up comfort and
security in order to gain rewards greater than mere creature comforts
and minor financial security.
For years, I wanted to be a millionaire. I wanted and wanted to no avail.
It was not until, one day, in my frustration and anger, I graduated from
wanting to truly desiring success, and, as a result, I was almost magically
catapulted into millionaire status.
FAITH
Hill says, "all thoughts that have been emotionalized (given feeling
through desire) and mixed with faith, begin immediately to translate
themselves into their physical equivalent or counterpart."
What he alludes to, but does not fully explain, is that it is our beliefs
themselves that either empower us to soar to previously unimaginable
heights or chain us to the lower echelons of achievement.
Not only must you have a burning desire for a specific thought of success,
but you must also have the faith or belief that success is not only
available to you as an abstract, but it is your birthright and all you need
to do is claim it as your own and it shall be yours.
Your faith in your ideal and your faith in your right to the havingness of
this ideal is crucial to your being able to end up having it.
Most people have their faith or belief formed by the evidence of what has
already happened or been made manifest. As a result, they find it difficult
to believe in things that are not historically proven. If what has been
historically proven for the masses and for you personally (thus far) is
mediocrity, then without the belief in the potentiality of success as being
'as real as' the actuality of mediocrity, you will not be able to achieve the
imagined ideal of success.
AUTO-SUGGESTION
Hill emphasizes in this chapter, for the second time in the book, the
crucial importance of having clearly defined written goals that are
repeated, preferably out -loud to oneself throughout the day. Now he goes
further and states that it is very important to affirm one's goals and
ideals at some quiet time, such as just before falling asleep.
He may have been unfamiliar with meditation techniques or may have
been reluctant to encourage their use in a time when such things were
seen as a part of eastern mysticism and as being out-of-sync with his
obvious Christian beliefs.
Here is why the quiet time is ideal for auto-suggestion or affirmation.
When you intentionally think about, repeat and affirm your ideals, you
are planting the seeds that will grow to bear fruit. When your mind is
busy with all kinds of distracting thoughts, or worse, non-contributory or
negative thoughts, you are planting your seeds amongst an abundance of
weeds. When your mind is still and focused, you are, in effect, preparing
fresh and fertile, weed-free, ground in which to plant your thought seeds.
In addition to preparing the ideal mental ground to plant your thought
seeds, meditation also stills your mind so that intuition can be accessed,
insight can be attained and your connectivity to the absolute can be
ascertained. Since all creativity springs from the potentiality of the infinite
and absolute, it only makes practical sense to become as intimate with
the infinite as you can manage. Meditation is the well-worn and proven
method of achieving this intimacy.
SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE
In this chapter of Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill goes to great
lengths to make the distinction between generalized knowledge and
specialized knowledge; and between formal education and practical
information. By citing examples of the lives of certain individuals in an
offhand manner, Hill alludes to the most important thing about
knowledge.
Here it is plainly spoken: Knowledge, by and of itself, has little, if any,
value.
You may find that shocking or, at least contrary to everything you've
been taught, but it is true. Knowledge only becomes valuable in its
application. You may have heard that knowledge is power. Wrong. It is
applied knowledge that begets power, wealth and the advancement of
humanity. The secret is in the application, not in the knowledge itself.
For years, I considered myself to be highly educated about success. I
willfully ignored the evidence of my own lack of success, considering it a
temporary aberration. Once, I really got that it is the application, not the
possession, of knowledge that produces results, I went from average to
highly successful in a matter of months.