Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich
Think and Grow Rich
Self-Help
1937
294
[In Lesson 4 of Kevin Trent Boswell’s The Nascent Magician course, the student must pick a book from a list of recommended reading and write a “book report” about it. This turned out to be one of the longest writing assignments in the course so far, and I ended up picking a book that I probably would never have read otherwise.]
Napoleon Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich in 1937 at the tail of The Great Depression, contemporaneously with Israel Regardie’s The Art of True Healing: A Treatise on the Mechanism of Prayer and the Operation of the Law of Attraction in Nature. Both books discuss the Law of Attraction, which is part of the New Thought philosophy based on the teachings of Phineas Quimby, a 19th century philosopher. Other books explaining the Law of Attraction were published before and after Think and Grow Rich, including Wallace D. Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich (1910) which influenced Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006, movie and book). Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, however, stands apart from the other works because it is one of the top 20 best selling books of all time, and because it never mentions the Law of Attraction, New Thought, or Quimby (although Infinite Intelligence, a key concept of New Thought, is discussed throughout).
Simply put, the Law of Attraction, is the notion that “like attracts like”, but Hill expounds on 13 steps required to use the “Power of Thought” to attain riches:
- Desire
- Faith
- Autosuggestion
- Specialized Knowledge
- Imagination
- Organized Planning
- Decision
- Persistence
- Power of the Master Mind
- The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
- The Subconscious Mind
- The Brain
- The Sixth Sense
I will consider these steps in three large categories:
- Thought
- Organization
- Transformation
The first three steps fall into the category of thought. Hill says “the starting point of all achievement is desire” and begins his book talking about Desire: one must really want something in order to obtain it. But desire is not enough, one must also have faith that what is desired can actually be attained. Hill asserts that it is not just our waking desire and faith that are important, but also that our subconscious minds must share the same burning desire and unquestioned faith that we feel consciously. The chapter on Autosuggestion explains how our waking mind can essentially “brainwash” our subconscious mind into sharing that desire and faith.
Indeed, a recurring theme of the book is that beliefs held in our subconscious minds — beliefs which may not reach conscious awareness — can aid our successes or hasten our failures throughout life.
The next four steps are in the category of organization. Difficult endeavors require Specialized (and organized) Knowledge that may come from personal experience, study, or consultation with experts. Imagination must then be applied to this knowledge so that an Organized Plan of action can be formulated. Finally, after Desire has led to a plan, a firm Decision must be made to begin execution of the plan.
The remaining six steps are in the category of transformation, since they help the reader to follow-through on the plan and transform raw desire into reality. Hill discusses Persistence first, since the transformative path is often difficult and one must not abandon the plan before it is complete. Others have traveled similar paths, and their assistance, guidance, and advice is invaluable; hence, Hill tells the reader to form the Master Mind, a group of experienced experts with the reader’s best interest at heart.
The last four “steps” are less action-oriented than the first 8 steps, and here Hill’s strong command-oriented chapters give way to abstract discussion. For example, the chapter on Sex Transmutation leaves one with the nebulous conclusion that the “sex drive” is important for attaining wealth, but with some questions about the actual techniques involved: neither abstinence nor intemperance are advocated, but no further clarity is provided, perhaps because of the era in which the book was written.
The “steps” regarding the Subconscious Mind and the Brain return to earlier themes, reminding the reader that the subconscious can be a source of restriction as well as encouragement, and building on the idea that the brain is a malleable thing that we can control and change.
In the last step, the Sixth Sense, Hill explains that the mind can attain knowledge directly from Infinite Intelligence and that we should be open to this knowledge, as it can help us attain the object of our Desire.
Overall, the book was inconsistent, with some chapters setting forth clear actionable goals (mostly the early chapters), some chapters containing practical business advice (such as the chapter on preparing a résumé, which seemed almost out-of-place for a book of this type), and other chapters containing only commentary (such as the chapter on the Sixth Sense). Throughout the book, the reader is reminded that every single chapter states the “secret”, but no where is the secret actually articulated in a short, simple sentence. On one hand, the secret might be that all achievement begins with an idea; but on the other hand, the secret might be that the idea must be combined with desire, faith, and a lot of hard work before it will result in financial success.
Further, Hill’s data is gathered from interviews of successful people, and he implies that anyone can emulated the traits of the successful and then become successful themselves. I wonder, though, if these traits are largely learned by successful people when they are children, or are otherwise inculcated by parents or close friends — Hill gives us hope that we can change ourselves, but provides few examples of otherwise unsuccessful people who, after being introduced to the 13 steps turned their lives around and became successful.
I would like to conclude with a brief story from my own life where a close friend inspired me to succeed using some of Hill’s ideas. In college, as I was on my way to interview for a part-time on-campus job that paid the standard $3.35 per hour minimum wage, my friend took me aside and said “ask for $6 per hour”. I thought he was crazy, and said as much, but he persisted in telling me to ask for that much, reassuring me that I could get it, and telling me repeatedly not to back down: he instilled in me Desire for a higher paying job, the Faith necessary to believe I could get it, and warned me to be Persistent (my current job already provided me with Specialized Knowledge that was rare). I talked with the professor offering the job, and he balked, pointing out that he didn’t pay his graduate students as much as I was asking for. But I persisted, in part because I didn’t want to tell my friend I had failed, and in part because I wasn’t afraid to lose this job offer since I already had another job. A few days later, the professor gave me the job, at $6 per hour, having made a joint funding arrangement with another lab that had similar requirements.