Summary of Think of Grow Rich  -- by Napaleon Hill

updated, Sun 5-8-22

Principle 1 – Desire

The first step in attracting what you want is to cultivate a desire for it. More specifically, a burning desire. You have to viscerally want it, and then create a vision of your life where you have it. The desire has to be strong enough to sustain you even when things get rough (see Principle 8). By coupling longing, vision, and persistence, you can start to attain your objective.

Principle 2 – Faith

Once you have your desire, you need to have faith in the process. Faith is what Napoleon Hill calls an ‘eternal elixir which gives life, power and action to the impulse of thought.’ It transforms your ordinary thoughts into a spiritual force, which powers your communion with Infinite Intelligence. A weak expression of faith holds little power. If you want to attract more wealth, but you only believe in yourself and this process a little bit, than Hill argues that you’ll only attract a little wealth.

As such, exercising this creative faculty requires closing your mind completely to all that may dim your vision, quench your belief, or cause you to doubt. Put simply, the more rock-solid faith you have in this process, the more quickly and powerfully you can manifest what you want.

Principle 3 – Self Suggestion

If you want to maximize your faith, then you need to monitor your self-talk. Self-talk is the words and mental scripts that you tell yourself, whether it’s, “I struggle for money and I’ll never be wealthy” or, “I attract plenty of money with ease.” Your self-talk starts in your conscious, thinking mind; but if you repeat a certain phrase in your head enough times, it seeps into your subconscious. Hill calls this process ‘autosuggestion’. The subconscious is the fertile, creative aspect of your brain; and the words that it uses to describe you affect how you see yourself. By consciously shaping our self-talk, we can control what transpires in our lives.

Principle 4 – Knowledge

The fourth of the thirteen principles of Think and Grow Rich is that, contrary to popular thought, knowledge is not power. Knowledge attracts abundance when it is organized and intelligently directed through practical plans of action. An action plan built on knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient. You also need to have faith that your plan will produce the outcome you desire. That is done by drawing on the accumulated experience of those who have already accomplished the success you desire.

Hill differentiates specialized knowledge (knowledge organized and used for action) from general knowledge (knowledge that’s not organized and used for action, essentially just trivia). Specialized knowledge can help you to become wealthy, whereas general knowledge is useless.

Principle 5 – Imagination

One of the most famous Napoleon Hill quotes is “whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” If you want to attract abundance, start with an idea. The ability to use your imagination to see a picture in your mind of what you want starts the process of creation. What you want can be anything, from a big house on the beach to a job that lights you up every morning. Go ahead and dream big and have complete faith that Infinite Intelligence will do everything possible to make manifest your most vivid imaginings.

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Principle 6 – Planning

When you decide to take a road trip, the first thing you do is put your destination into the navigator system. Perhaps you’ll consult a map and decide on a route to follow to reach your destination. Having a well defined plan of how to achieve your goals is just as important as knowing what roads to take on your drive. But just like on a road trip, sometimes you’ll take a wrong turn and deviate from the right path. That’s why it’s important not just to make a plan before you begin, but also to course-correct when things go wrong. The sooner you course correct, the faster you reach your goal.

Principle 7 – Decision

A vague wish is the opposite of a definite decision. Everyone wishes to have more money, free time, and love. But when you only have a hazy idea of your desire, you can’t tap into the storehouse of power available from Infinite Intelligence. People without a clearly defined purpose procrastinate and put off achieving their goals, because you can’t hit a target you can’t even see.

Instead of making vague wishes, Napoleon Hill recommends that you make a conscious decision. Set a target—whether it’s $100,000 per year, enough money and free time to spend a week in the Bahamas, or something else—and make a decision to aim for that target. You’ll need a certain state of mind to employ this principle. One of the first decisions you’ll need to make is to be mindful of your thoughts and feelings. That is one of the requisites for benefitting from this philosophy.

Principle 8 – Persistence

Like a roller coaster ride, we all have ups and downs. Some days you’re flying high like a bird. Other days you’re the statue. Sometimes it seems like the latter is more common than the former. The easiest and most common thing to do when faced with difficulty, temporary setback, or rejection is to quit. Instead of giving up, when you’re feeling low is the time to double down and persevere. The most successful people aren’t the ones who never take a hit, they’re the ones who know how to take a hit without giving up.

Principle 9 – Mastermind

You must do it yourself, but you can’t do it alone. Sounds paradoxical doesn’t it? No-one ever scales the ladder of success without other people playing a role. If you want to succeed, then you’re going to need help. But you shouldn’t just ask for help from random people. Instead, Napoleon Hill recommends creating a mastermind with other talented entrepreneurs, so that you can work on problems together.

When two or more people join their talent, knowledge, and effort to achieve a definite purpose, Hill argues, it’s almost as though a third mind enters the room, one with more wisdom and experience than any individual member has. Almost all great achievement is the result of a group of dedicated individuals working together.

Principle 10 – Transmutation

Here lies another one of the secrets hidden within this success system. There are certain emotions that evoke a mental state that allows access to Infinite Intelligence. Every feeling has a vibration, and for you to come into harmony with the universal mind, you must be resonating on the same frequency as what you want to receive. That means that if you want the Infinite Intelligence to give you more money, start feeling abundant now. Use powerful positive emotions to make your mind oscillate on a higher frequency, so that you can be in a position to ask for and receive what you really want. Therefore, be aware of your mental, emotional state and choose to transform your thoughts and feelings, degree by degree, step by step into a higher (i.e. more positive) frequency.

Principle 11 – Subconscious Mind

The subconscious mind is the power center of your mental activity. It has dominion over every vital function taking place in your miraculous body and brain. Always on the job, the subconscious mind processes material, energy, and thought and transforms it into living tissue to maintain life. The subconscious is also the part of the mind that transmutes ideas, plans, dreams, and desires into material form. When you visualize abundance, your subconscious is the part of your mind that draws on the force of Infinite Intelligence and manifests abundance for you. This is probably the most complex of the thirteen principles of Think and Grow Rich, so to get a deeper understanding you can listen to Joseph Murphy’s The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind audiobook on YouTube.

Principle 12 – The Brain

Hill asserts that the brain is similar to a radio. Just like a radio, your brain operates at specific set frequencies. In the case of your brain, these frequencies are emotions: love, hate, despair, fear, confidence, and more. A radio can only provide sound when the transmitter and receiver are set to the same frequency. In the same way, if you want your brain to provide wealth, then you have to make sure that your emotions reflect that frequency. If your brain is set to a frequency of despair and poverty, then that is all that you will be able to manifest via the Infinite Intelligence, because that’s the only signal that the Infinite Intelligence sends that you will be able to pick up. But when you set your brain to a frequency of love, confidence, and feeling abundant, then you will naturally manifest those things. When we adjust our mental frequency, we have the ability to communicate, not just from one finite brain to another, but to the mind of Infinite Intelligence as well.

Principle 13 – Sixth Sense

This is where the entire philosophy of Think and Grow Rich culminates. Achieving a complete understanding of the other twelve principles prepares you to receive guidance from an infallible source. Namely Infinite Intelligence. When you’re receiving guidance from this source, it’s almost as though you develop a sixth sense that guides you, with unerring accuracy, to take the steps needed to manifest your desires. Napoleon Hill introduces the idea of a “secret” in Think and Grow Rich, that once discovered and applied will literally sweep followers of this system on to success.