Think and Grow Rich
This book report will be a little unorthodox for me – not because of the book, but because I am not taking the time to write as I usually would if I have more time and resources at my disposal. I am hopeful that it will not be too low below my normal standards.
The exercise of thinking and growing rich is not a process f making enough money to pay your bills or buy a nice car. It’s a process of becoming wildly rich where money flows in abundance. The story of Edwin Barnes’ quest to go into business with Thomas Edison was discussed in detail and the less from it was to know what you want. Keep in forefront in your mind and opportunities will present themselves. Henry Ford was also mentioned and demonstrated that leadership involves sometimes not taking no for an answer.
Desire and faith supply the driving forces for you success on an every day basis. Looked at separately, desire is the starting point of all achievement. You’ve got to be passionate about what you want in order to achieve it. Not just wanting it – a burning desire. Anything short of a burning desire will find you getting hung up on obstacles along the way. Have a burning desire is the only way to bust through adversity on a day to day basis. Faith is the visualization of and belief in attainment of desire. According to Napoleon Hill, faith is the state of mind which may be induced, or created, by affirmations or repeated instructions to the subconscious mind, through the principle of auto-suggestions.
If you truly desire money so keenly that your desire is an obsession you will have no difficulty in convincing yourself that you will acquire it. The object is to want money and to become so determined to have it that you convince yourself you will have it.
The chapter on auto-suggestion is an essential chapter because it is the process by which you will create your riches. Auto-suggestion is the agency of communication between that part of the mind where conscious though takes place, and that which serves as the seat of action for the subconscious mind. All sense impressions which are perceived through the five senses are stopped by the conscious thinking mind and may be either passed on to the subconscious mind, or rejected, at will. The conscious faculty serves as an outer-guard to the approach of the subconscious. Auto-suggestion is the most important element of self influence.
As Napoleon states, “The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all the plans created by man.” He goes on, “The impulse, the desire, is a given shape, form, and action through the aid of the faculty of the mind.” He differentiates between the two kinds of imagination, synthetic and creative. Synthetic imagination seems more of a deductive tool, as I see it. It’s what you figure out or create based on other things that you already know. Transformation of the intangible impulse, of desire, into the tangible reality, of money, calls for the use of a plan or plans. These plans must be formed with the aid of the imagination, and mainly with the synthetic faculty.
It is through our creative imagination that the thought vibrations from the minds or others are received, according to Hill. It is through this faculty that one individual may “tune in” or communicate with the subconscious mind or other individuals.
Plans are inert and use less without sufficient power to translate them into action. Power may be defined as “organized and intelligently directed knowledge.” Hill even declares, “No individual may have great power without availing him self of the “Master Mind.” So you can’t get where you’re going, at least all the way to great power, without interfacing with others.
The premise of the sex transmutation chapter is that, if you harness your natural energies – the sexual drive being the most powerful of human desires – to express yourself, you can accomplish great things. The word “transmute” mean “the changing, or transferring of one element, or form of energy, into another. Sex transmutation means the switching of the mind from thoughts of physical expression to thoughts of some other nature. Napoleon goes into much detail about the importance of a woman to a man, and vice versa, and sites many famous examples. Hill identifies sexual energy as the most powerful of human energies, followed by love and 8 other energy sources, including alcohol.
The subconscious mind is the key to making things happen including your plans to grow rich. It is through the subconscious mind that you communicate with the collective consciousness, the higher power source, or whatever you care to label it. That force is the medium by which thoughts become things. The subconscious mind is the great communicator. As Napoleon has shared with us before, the good news is that we can program our subconscious mind to draw to us what we desire. Auto-suggestion. The more complicated one involves us examining our own lives and experiences and identifying things that have happened to us that defies explanation. We tend to categorize the un-explainable as luck, chance, or some sort of happenstance.
Napoleon speaks of the Secret throughout the book and implies that “it will come to you.” It’s not something that you should be told, because unless you discover it for yourself, it will not have meaning. Therefore, I will not give you my opinion on that because it wouldn’t serve you.