Think and Grow Rich

It does not come as a surprise that wealth is no guarantee to happiness but it has enough power to get rid of your liabilities and give you the freedom to do what you like.

As astonishing as it may seem, many lives on this planet can be summed up by one line, “In pursuit of fortune for achieving freedom.” Well, some accomplish it and many don’t but the struggle cannot be denied.

Napolean Hill is believed to have researched 504 people over 25 years to find out why only some are able to cross the line and go to the other side. Credit where it’s due, we need to applaud him for his work. Whether you want to agree or vehemently deny is solely at your discretion.

So let’s look at the 5 most important lessons we can learn and see if they really hold any merit in today’s time because the objective for which the book was written still holds true.

1. Desire

Wish, want, longing, craving, yearning, need, aspiration are various ways in which we can define this motive. But what really separates one person’s desire from the other is the determination and the willingness he or she has to get up after being knocked down over and over again.

Did you know that Colonel Sanders approached more than 1240 people before he finally got the capital to fund his fried chicken recipe!

This goes to show that having an aspiration is one thing but keeping the desire burning after hundreds of rejections is what is needed to be successful.

2. Faith

Trust, reliance, conviction, belief, assurance is how we can define it. But what does trust actually mean? It means that when nobody thinks you can make it or deliberately ignores you, you gaze at the mirror and say — There is one person who trusts in me and I will never let him or her down.

Like desire, it is easy to have conviction in yourself when things are going your way but it is during the failures that you really have to gather yourself and march on.

Arnold Schwarzenegger says, “Nobody thought I would make it big in Hollywood because I had an accent. But the same accent is what appealed to people and they showed how wrong were these critics by seeing my movies and talking good about them.”

3. Auto-Suggestion

Your mind is never empty; it is always being bombarded by information. The stimulus can come either from outside or from the inside and affect all the activities you do post that.

This is one of the reasons many motivational pundits say that when you break a relationship with someone — burn their photos or do not look in their direction. Personally, I think this is BS. People come into your life as a part of your destiny and if they go, don’t deliberate to forget them. But don’t sulk either!

Put your objectives and ambitions in your frontal lobe, the more you will be preoccupied by them, the more productive you will become. Don’t spend thinking all day long about what you did in your past.

4. Specialized knowledge

This is a dogma that can be very heavily challenged because the need for a specialized knowledge can be a 2 way street. If the world has demand for what you can produce or do then you will be a millionaire. However, if the trend is not your friend, you are headed for problems.

Let me give you an example: Say you seriously studied guitar for 5 years and became a qualified player. You even started your career well by performing on stage and also doing gigs in the recording studio. After 2019, things changed. While you can still perform on stage, the studio however is being replaced by AI as it is much cheaper. Which means that 50% of your job is being snatched away from you for no fault of yours.

Is there a way in which we can overcome an uncertainty? As much as I would like to say otherwise, I will concede and say, “No.” Luck plays a vital role in the success of people. There are a lot of deserving people who never made it and you can also conclude otherwise.

5. Imagination

Life is your creation — What an insight. I think the whole book is based on this premise that anything is achievable if you can visualize it.

But, I guess, the thing most people get wrong is that you cannot imagine something and think it will happen without any effort. You have to follow it through and do every single task that is required.

Russell Brand very humbly yet nicely puts it that any building you see was a fragment of imagination in someone’s brain before it was built. The same can be applied to everything.

The Wright brother imagined humans could fly in spite of not having wings.

John Khalkho: CEO — Dolores Education