Ted, my old boss at KWE (Kintetsu World Express) first recommended this book to me and told me that it very much changed his way of thinking. He said it might do the same to my own thinking.

I was skeptical and after forgetting that age old phrase of "never judge a book by its cover" (and not reading it for two months even after I bought it...I bought it only to appease Ted because I knew he was going to ask me if I had bought it...which he did)I finally sat down to read it and couldn't put it down.

I thought it would be about making money and "growing rich" as the cover leads one to beleive...and which only half-heartedly interests me. I was wrong, however, and came to learn that the book was more about setting an "envisioned desired outcome" for ourselves each day or for each activity instead of passively going through life. What one may learn from this book is that life will only give you what you ask of it...whether it is joy, happiness, money, friendship, love, family, a dog ;) or anything in between.

To my great benefit, Ted actually worked with me in analyzing the book to help me pull out meaning from it. We could spend 1-2 hours at a time after work just talking about it and trying to figure out what the book was saying.

I am very thankful now that Ted had the patience he did with me then. In fact, ha, because of this book, Ted has become a mentor of sorts to me...even though I am an ocean away in Europe at the moment...I still keep in touch with him frequently.

Profound.

Voor dit boek heeft Napoleon Hill in de jaren ’30 een groot onderzoek gedaan van 20 jaar lang. Hij interviewde 500 miljonairs die in zijn ogen ‘succesvol’ waren en hij keek naar welke eigenschappen ze hadden in tegenstelling tot minder succesvolle mensen. Het resultaat van dit onderzoek is dit boek. Het is door dit diepgaande onderzoek heel waardevol en tijdloos omdat het over gedachten en eigenschappen gaat.

Met een hoofd vol zorgen vertrok ik in de zomer van 2011 voor een reis naar Brazilië. Ik nam dit boek mee aangeraden door een vriend. Daar zat ik op het strand terwijl Napoleon me aansprak. Zijn woorden troffen mij als een bliksem. Het boek veranderde mijn denken en daardoor mijn leven. Zonder dit boek had GROWTHINKERS nooit bestaan.

Twee grootste lessen uit het boek

1. Angsten herkennen en ze verslaan

In het laatste stuk van het boek schrijft Napoleon Hill over de volgende zes angsten:

1. Angst voor armoede.
2. Angst voor kritiek.
3. Angst voor ziekte.
4. Angst voor verlies van liefde.
5. Angst voor de dood.
6. Angst voor ouderdom.

Toen ik dit las merkte ik hoeveel ik van die angsten eigenlijk had. Ik was een jongetje van de zorgen geworden door mijn verleden. Ik was heel erg bang geworden voor conflicten en ruzies. Ik was bang omdat ik onbewust angst in mijn leven heel belangrijk had gemaakt. Ik beet nagels en dacht in doemscenario’s. Ik was gevormd door alles wat ik had meegemaakt.

Napoleon Hill vertelde me hoe ik deze angsten en zorgen kon herkennen en wat ik er dan vervolgens mee moest doen. Ze vervangen met één van de zeven belangrijkste positieve emoties.

2. De zeven belangrijkste positieve emoties

1. Verlangen
2. Hoop
3. Geloof
4. Sex
5. Enthousiasme
6. Liefde
7. Romantiek

Elke keer als ik in Brazilië angst en zorgen voelde dan zette ik dat meteen om in een positieve emotie. Ik dacht aan een groot verlangen of een moment van goede sex en romantiek. Ik liet mijn geest baden in goede gedachten en liet de negatieve gedachten meteen vertrekken door de achterdeur.

Het leverde iets prachtigs op. Omdat ik mezelf steeds vervulde met positiviteit werd ik krachtiger. Krachtiger in uitstraling en naar anderen toe. Ik had mooie avonden met mooie vrouwen en ontdekte wat dit met je kan doen. Angsten helpen je niet verder, optimisme wel.

Napoleon had me een grote les cognitieve gedragstherapie gegeven en ik was ‘hooked’ aan persoonlijke ontwikkeling. Thuisgekomen in Nederland gooide ik het roer om. Ik ging weg uit mijn zolderkamer in Utrecht en ging bij mijn vader wonen. Weg van de druk van ‘geld moeten verdienen’ en meer tijd maken om nog meer te lezen.

Ik las het fysieke boek in het Nederlands en schonk het boek aan iemand anders. Nu staat de Engelse versie op mijn Kindle. Bij deze de vijf markeringen uit het boek die de meeste indruk op me hebben gemaakt.

Mijn top vijf markeringen

A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.

Ik vind dit nog steeds een sterke quote maar ook een gevaarlijke. Je kunt namelijk iets kiezen wat je eigenlijk niet wil afmaken omdat het je niet gelukkig maakt. Deze quote geldt dus alleen voor dromen die kloppen voor jou. Niet voor dromen die zijn gebaseerd op wat anderen van je verwachten of die puur zijn gebaseerd op het verdienen van geld.

2. Relieve yourself forever of the fear of death by reaching a decision to accept death as an inescapable event. Whip the fear of poverty by reaching a decision to get along with whatever wealth you can accumulate without worry. Put your foot upon the neck of the fear of criticism by reaching a decision not to worry about what other people think, do or say. Eliminate the fear of old age by reaching a decision to accept it, not as a handicap, but as a great blessing which carries with it wisdom, self-control and understanding not known to youth. Acquit yourself of the fear of ill health by the decision to forget symptoms. Master the fear of loss of love by reaching a decision to get along without love, if that is necessary. Kill the habit of worry, in all its forms, by reaching a general, blanket decision that nothing life has to offer is worth the price of worry. With this decision will come poise, peace of mind and calmness of thought that will bring happiness.

3. Go back into your yesterdays, at times, and bathe your mind in the beautiful memories of past love. It will soften the influence of the present worries and annoyances. It will give you a source of escape from the unpleasant realities of life, and maybe – who knows? – your mind will yield to you, during this temporary retreat into the world of fantasy, ideas or plans which may change the entire financial or spiritual status of your life. If you believe yourself unfortunate because you have ‘loved and lost’, perish the thought. One who has loved truly can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and temperamental. Its nature is ephemeral and transitory. It comes when it pleases and goes away without warning. Accept and enjoy it while it remains, but spend no time worrying about its departure. Worry will never bring it back.

4. The emotions of sex and jealousy, when mixed, may turn a person into an insane beast.

5. The desire for sexual expression is by far the strongest and most impelling of all the human emotions. For this very reason this desire, when harnessed and transmuted into action other than that of physical expression, may raise one to the status of a genius.

Kijk voor meer boekreviews op mijn YouTube kanaal: http://www.youtube.com/growthinkers

I have no DESIRE to finish this book. The way this is written makes me want to throw it down every time I pick it up. I gave up at page 112. Not only is the book FILLED with annoying all-capital words and italicization's, there's a ton of New Age-y HOKUM to boot. This book seems to be the blueprint for self help books. It is so absurdly cliche by this point in time. If wealth is your particular self help interest, you're better off reading about some practical ways to accumulate wealth, rather than some dude who made HIS millions telling you there's some miraculous secret that can only be fulfilled by your DESIRE. Give me a break. It is quite literally impossible for each of the millions of people who believe the crap in this book to make even half the amount of money that the people Hill's referring to in this book had made. Regarding the New Age aspects of this book, as soon as I see words like "vibrations" and "ether," I want to light the pages on fire. A self help book about wealth which includes New Age terms, no practical or logical steps to accumulate wealth, no quantifiable data, nay, ANY scientific rigor whatsoever, is completely disingenuous about being for your benefit. By the way, this amazing SECRET that's mentioned in the first page of the book, is still not revealed by page 112. I'm sure it'll magically reveal itself to you when you make your first billion. This book was a total waste of time.

There are some books in your bookshelves which you can read many times and every time you will get some new ideas. Think and grow rich is a book like this. Whenever I read this book I find out some new ideas every time. The psychological techniques and dealing with cetain situaiton are delead in a pretty good manner. He is a time tested motivational author who wrote this immortal book. A child or a youth everybody needs motivation because it's a positive source of energy that keeps you going in full blaze.

If you want to read a very 1930's America version of The Secret, then read this book.

There were a few interesting ideas and approaches but others just turned me off completely. Adding the fact that the author himself is quite the controversial figure who seems to have lied about many things including "facts" mentioned in this book, I'm not sure how to feel about this.

I'm not not recommending this, maybe you'll get more out of it than I did but I'm sure that there are other, more modern and "readable" versions of the same philosophy to be found elsewhere.

I was looking through some of the reviews and see that some people gave it five stars and some gave it only one. I think if the people who gave it one star would practice the principles given in this book they would quickly upgrade their rating.

This book was published in 1937, during the Great Depression, and if the people who suffered during that time had read this book their lives might have been better.

It is really about convincing yourself to become wealthy. It outlines the steps you need to take and the steps you need to avoid.

There are also a lot of interesting ideas in this book. For example, sex transmutation is where you transfer the energy of your libido into other purposes. Great people have done this. Also, 99% of the public has no goal in life that is why they are stuck in jobs they do not want.

Most people do not succeed until they are older. In fact, most success does not come until after you are 40 years old. Edison & Carnegie were past the age of 40 when they made their fortune. He forgot to mention that George Washington was 43 when he took on the greatest military on earth.

His roundtable idea is very intriguing.

I do not see why anyone would not want to read this book.

I don't really know what to say about this book.

There is way too many things that go into being successful. You have to desire more money, think about competition, your target audience, the demand, the supply, the willingness to work hard - you get the point. While there are many examples in the book that showcase all these people who started with a very simple idea and turned it into a fortune. While I will not defend or go against them and their ideas, one could make a point that they were lucky and were blessed with an idea that was marketable and very much in demand. Still, I am sure they worked hard on it.

If you were to fail, who would you "blame"? Is it you, your family, your competition, the consumer? Whatever you think it is, it is you. You didn't desire it enough or you skipped ONE aspect of this book and that is why you don't have a lot of money. You can't have any distractions or you will fail. Basically, if you want wealth, it has to be on your mind when you wake up, eat breakfast, drink coffee, poop, go to bed, and even if you sleep. Life is more than just having immense wealth.

When I mentioned above that luck plays a part in being rich (and Hill doesn't agree in such thing), there was a story about a preacher who wanted $1 mil and because of his speech that was energizing, somebody just walked up to him and told him he will give it to him. A million dollars is not pocket change (especially back in the day) so this story will not fly in the real world where a lot of people are getting by paycheck by paycheck.

There is also a bit with Hill having imaginary conversations with people like Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Edison to et insights into how their mind works and how to apply it to his life. This went on for many years.

Most of the ideas in this book are practical. However, take it with a grain of salt - just because you want to be rich doesn't mean you will, no matter how much you desire it. You got people who work hard and never get rich and then you have people who yodel in Walmart, end up on social medial, get thousands of retweets and become millionaires. I see the book as more of a think positive type of advice. Don't be negative, focus on the goal, work hard, and crush anything that stands in your way. For example, in the book, Ford wanted V8 engine to be made and his engineers told him it is impossible. He kept pressuring them until they made it possible. Elon Musk is similar with his workers where he pushes them to the limit and they make impossible things happen. One of the things discussed is the idea of a thing not existing and you making it come to life because you pressed on when everything was going against you.

If you want to be rich, you know you have to work hard and desire money more than anything. You don't need a self help book telling you "envision your million dollars in your hands and you will have it". I read this because it is a classic but a lot of ideas in this book are either far from being simple or are outdated. No book in the world will help you in terms of desire, drive, or need if you know yourself to be an average person with average needs. People who become rich are special. If all it took is for us to read a book to be rich, everybody will be living in mansions.

As a last thought - consider a study (google it) that measure happiness in terms of how much money you earn. I will simplify it way too much but it generally talks about how when people earn above $75K, their level of happiness doesn't increase. Anything below 75K and you still think way too much about paying house car, bills, groceries, etc. They think buying expensive things makes them happy but at the end of the day it doesn't. They feel important but realize that their Ferrari will get them to work just as well as somebody's piece of sh*t Honda from the 90s. Anyway, there is more to this study, but there are also different levels of happiness that you might not get if you follow everything in this book and become filthy rich.

It took me a lot of time to go through this. Although there were some useful parts, such as examining yourself about what is stopping you to go forward in life, my overall impression: it's ok, but I won't reread it.

About his deaf son on page 37: "We would not permit him to learn sign language. We were determined that he should live a normal life and associate with normal children, and we stood by that decision, although it cost us many heated debates with school officials."

That stupid statement immediately made me dislike Napoleon Hill. As someone who is hard-of-hearing and can function well in "normal society", yet, knows sign language, I take offense to this. I take offense that he thinks knowing sign language isn't "normal" and that he wanted his son hanging out with "normal" children. Ugh.

By the end of Chapter 2, I didn't want to read anymore.

Not only did I dislike his opinion about deaf children, but this entire book is about making money. Lots of it. And how to do so. And while his methods may work, I don't want to make a lot of money -- just enough to pay the bills. Life is about much more than getting rich.

Perfect book for you if all you care about is getting rich.

I re-read this book probably once per year and every time I learn something new.
One day I believe I will gather all the pieces together

Napolian Hill, my favorite motivational and self help writer and speaker, studied for twenty years to put together this volume entitled "Think and Grow Rich."
This is a very practical manual wherein he explains a step by step process to attain riches, both of the finantial and spiritual natures.
I believe this is a must read for all especially for those who are entrapreneureal minded and not afraid to think for themselves.
Enjoy and Be Blessed.
Diamond