An Enduring Classic

If you’re a student of positive thinking, the law of attraction, or any other similar schools of thought, I hope you’ve read the classic Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Published in 1937, this little gem of a book contains the wisdom Hill gleaned after 20 years of interviewing the most successful men of his day—men like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell. Even if you have read it, it bears re-reading—and making notes in it and marking pages that catch your attention.

The table of contents gives a good synopsis of the book:

1. The Power of Thought
2. Desire: The Starting Point of All Achievement
3. Faith: Visualizing and believing in the Attainment of Desire
4. Autosuggestion: The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind
5. Specialized Knowledge: Personal Experiences or Observations
6. Imagination: The Workshop of the Mind
7. Organized Planning: The Crystallization of Desire into Action
8. Decision: The Mastery of Procrastination
9. Persistence: The Sustained Effort Necessary to Induce Faith
10. Power of the Master Mind: The Driving Force
11. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
12. The Subconscious Mind: The Connecting Link
13. The Brain: A Broadcasting and Receiving Station for Thought
14. The Sixth Sense: The Door to the Temple of Wisdom
15. How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear (Clearing the Brain for Riches)
16. The Devil’s Workshop

Interesting enough, right before I started to write this post, I checked my e-mail and found a message from our Twitter account (@YouRTheAnswer) that let me know I had what’s known as a “follow” from Bob Proctor—yes, the Bob Proctor featured on The Secret. I’m sure it wasn’t from Bob personally; many serious users have systems that automatically give anyone who follows their updates a “follow back,” and I had just signed up for his updates. (Almost every one of The Secret’s teachers are on Twitter, by the way.) As a thank-you, he had sent a link to one of his free videos. This is also a common strategy from high-level Twitter users—they send a link to a free video, a free e-book, or website. I’ve never clicked through to any of these offerings, but for some reason, I clicked on Bob’s. I almost fell out of my chair when he started talking about—you guessed it—Think and Grow Rich. Bob held up his well-read copy and explained exactly how he had put the book’s advice to use in his own life.

It’s difficult to find many modern self-transformation teachers who haven’t studied Hill’s classic. Read the author’s introduction to the original, and it’s easy to see why. Here’s an excerpt:

“Every chapter of this book mentions the money-making secret that has made fortunes for more than 500 exceedingly wealthy people whom I have carefully analyzed over a long period of years. The secret was brought to my attention more than a quarter of century ago by Andrew Carnegie…. When he saw that I had grasped the idea, he asked if I would be willing to spend 20 years or more preparing myself to take it to the world, to men and women who, without the secret, might go through life as failures.” The modern edition is updated and tells the story of some of our own modern giants, like Bill Gates and Steven Speilberg.

Hill tells us in Chapter 1, “A great many years ago I purchased a fine dictionary. The first thing I did was turn to the word ‘impossible,’ and neatly clip it out of the book. That would not be an unwise thing for you to do.”

It would be very wise, however, for you to pick up a copy of Think and Grow Rich.