This book has been suggested to me by more poor morons than any other book of all time. I suppose it makes people feel better about what they can imagine they are going to get, but it just seemed a bunch of weak minded bosh to me.

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.

3 "fascinating, ridiculous but well-meaning" stars !!!

2016 MOST AVERAGE OF AVERAGE AWARD

Let me start with a childhood story:

As some of you know, I have an aunt that I love to bits. She has been my anchor in childhood chaos, my wise teacher, my introduction to literature and opera, my favorite playmate and a believer in "Jaidee" through all my trials, challenges and tribulations.

Anyways back to the story. I am about six and I am spending the day with her. We went to Woolworth's for grill cheese and coke, walked in the park and came to the second hand bookstore where each week we would each choose a book. I look up and lo and behold I see this book "Think and Grow Rich" (I learned to read when I was four or so). I said "Auntie what is that book about?"

She winked. O how I loved her winks, with her long dark blonde hair, bright red lipstick and brightly colored polyester dresses she looked like a movie star. She whispered, "Jaidee, if you close your eyes hard enough and wish hard enough and if you are good enough- money will appear".
My brown eyes must have grown huge because she said- "but only when you are with me." Well now not only was she a movie star but like a tooth fairy.

That whole day my eyes were closed so tightly and at the end of the day I found a quarter in my pocket. This game went on for two years until I found out the truth and I mist over thinking of the magic that wonderful woman made for me and that is only one example.

Now enough sentimentality and onto the book:

I have wanted to read that book since then and finally I have. I read the 2015 updated edition and it was absolutely fascinating in a scary kind of way.

Napoleon Hill was a motivational speaker who was friends with Edison, Ford and some other wealthy people and he "studied" them and came up with thirteen steps to riches. The book is engaging and full of "convenient" examples.

The book is a real slice of Americanah with many examples taken from the depression and it is infused with common sense, populist thought, pseudo-mysticism, quasi psychology and philosophy and a lot of silly little exercises that if somebody tries hard enough will lead to untold riches. Of course if you don't- you didn't try hard enough and there are fears tied in your subconscious that you have not yet overcome.

There was an interesting chapter on sex transmutation. In short- turn your horniness into money- read the chapter and you will found out how.

This positive thinking book is really well meaning but I just cannot give it any more than three stars despite its interesting nature due to the fact that it blames a complex problem of poverty right on the poor rather than the greed of capitalism or the myth of socialism.

Sociologists, Economists and Psychologists must cringe when they read this.

It was however very interesting, lures you with its common sense, feeds on your sense of greed and if you are middle class is no more dangerous than a lottery ticket or small trip to the casino.

For the millions of poor however , I think this is a harsh and dangerous slap in the face. Read it with a grain of salt, no make it a shaker of salt and for entertainment value only.

This is a book I listened to many years ago-so not a current read. My husband listened to motivational tapes in his car as he traveled his sales route. I had never heard of them before we met. After we got married I would listen to his old ones as I got ready for work each morning. As far out as the premise of this book seemed I tried it. Thought and believed I would make "X" number of dollars before I retired, it was an unrealistically high salary for my position in the company. I have thought of this book often because, as unrealistic as that number was, my last raise was that exact amount.

Money can’t buy happiness but ___.

What do you say?

✨What the book is about:

☑️inspirational and motivational self help book with anecdotes and real life experiences on what makes a person achieve their goals
☑️the differences between a person who achieves their goals vs the rest

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.

One more book I can't believe is written years ago (1937) because it feels right in time NOW.
He was so ahead of his time with his understanding of how changing ones mindset is everything! Of course, some people always have know and applied this in the past.

Also this is one book you can reread multiple times and learn more from it every time.

Overview: 60% brilliant, 30% obvious, 10% batshit crazy - and 100% worth reading

Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" is about more than getting rich: it's about getting what you want. And while his no-bullshit insights come with a liberal dose of craziness and – well – bullshit, his overarching philosophy is spot-on. Hill's recipe boils down to this: to get what you want you must 1) desire, 2) believe, 3) act, and 4) persist.

First, the battiness
Hill's advice is always useful, even if not always completely truthful. For instance, he repeatedly claims that "thoughts can affect mother nature." I don't think this is true, and Hill doesn't provide any evidence to support his claim, but his reader might be better off believing it. Because thoughts do profoundly affect you. And if you think you can affect nature by thought alone, and "think" accordingly, the impact this will have on your beliefs and your actions can be profound.

"Lack of evidence" is a common theme through "Think and Grow Rich." Some of the claims Hill makes are pretty crazy, though they're presented as if they were glaringly obvious and unquestionably true. He often states that a claim has been "proved" where it's simply been stated. You'll read about the transmutation of the subconscious, about how thought vibrations travel through the ether, and how to plant creativity in your subconscious via communication with the infinite intelligence. The book is heavy on mystical musings and light on facts. That said, I don't think these bits of battiness detract from Hill's core message, and if anything, my occasional outrage kept me engaged.

Onto practical matters: The first step towards riches is DESIRE
On first glance, this statement might seem banal, or even tautological: if you want riches, the first step is to… want riches. But Hill's advice cuts much deeper than this. It is not enough to want riches, or to wish you had them. Hill means something more radical: you must have a burning desire to be rich. If you fail in this regard, you will fail to achieve your (vaguely) desired goal.

Hill gives some concrete advice for nurturing desire. First, you must define your purpose. Only then can you become consumed by it. Hill's recipe for making desire concrete is this: decide exactly how much money you desire; establish a definite date by which you intend to possess it; create a definite plan; write it down; and read your written statement aloud - twice when you wake up, and twice before you go to bed. Become so obsessed with desire that you already see yourself in possession of the money

But don't kid yourself into thinking desire will be enough: "wishing will not bring riches... [only] planning definite ways... and backing those plans with persistence" will. Take, then, this burning desire, and put all your effort behind it. I love Hill's emphasis on action: you are instructed to be a practical dreamer. It's not enough to 'decide' you're totally committed: act accordingly. Cut off all sources of retreat, Hill tells us. Burn all bridges behind you, so that you win or perish. The tone here might be a little extreme, but his message carries crisp and clear: don't half-ass it.

Include liberal doses of FAITH
It is impossible to translate burning desire into action without belief. You must have faith: you must believe in your plan, and more importantly, believe in yourself. Of course, this is easier said than done. One concrete way to foster faith is through autosuggestion. The idea here is that you can come to believe something by repeating it to yourself sufficiently. Repetition of thought is powerful, and Hill claims it's the best way to influence your subconscious mind – the presumed bastion of belief.

This might come off as a little crazy, but Hill elaborates: repetition alone isn't enough. The mere reading of words is of no consequence unless you mix in strong emotions. Desire is one such emotion. Thus, if we've followed Hill's first step and developed a burning desire, it will be that much easier to apply autosuggestion to foster a sense of faith. And believing in yourself, and in your plan, is absolutely crucial. This might all be getting a little speculative, but so far, I'm inclined to agree with Hill.

A short aside on transmutation: the mystical powers of sex and the subconscious
It's only when Hill starts discussing the power of belief that I find myself getting incredulous. Hill claims that belief is "picked up by the subconscious mind and transmuted to its physical equivalent." If by this Hill means 'your beliefs will affect your own actions,' then I agree. If instead he means 'your beliefs themselves can influence physical reality,' then I disagree - or at least I would love to be presented with evidence.

And indeed, you soon discover that Hill does mean the latter. He explains that our brains are connected by vibrations of thought, and that these vibrations connect us to the "infinite intelligence" – whatever that is. Hill confidently states that there is an undiscovered organ in the brain that receives 'vibrations of thought' – called hunches – from this infinite intelligence. Once these hunches have been captured, our subconscious mind will hand them over to our conscious mind in a flash of inspiration. And this, he claims, is how to get your plan for riches. As best I could tell, this is what Hill means by "transmutation of thought."

It's my opinion that Hill here is liberally dipping into craziness – and he doesn't stop there. "Sex transmutation" comes next. We're told that "sex energy" is "creative energy," and you're implored to "harness and transmute" your desire for sex to lift yourself to a "higher sphere of thought." Harnessing sexual energy, it seems, will help you capture those aforementioned hunches. Here, at least, Hill offers some circumstantial evidence: apparently, many of the highly successfully men he studied were "highly sexed." Again, I'm not quite sure what this means, and I'm not quite sure how he was able to ascertain the sexual nature of so many strangers, but there you have it.

There is no substitute for PERSISTENCE
Back to practical matters: we've discussed desire and belief, and the need to "act" has been referred to throughout. The final ingredient is persistence. Without persistence, you will fail. Unfortunately, lack of persistence is a "weakness common to the majority of men." Fortunately, it can be overcome, and the ease with which it may be conquered "depends entirely on the intensity of one's desire." Of course, it's hard to 'learn persistence,' since you need to be persistent in the first place to be able to successfully employ a 'persistence enhancing technique.'

That said, Hill does give some good 'persistence enhancing' advice, which amounts to restating the advice that’s been given thus far. The key, again, is to have a definite purpose and a burning desire for its fulfillment. You must then transform that purpose into a definite plan, and immediately act. Consciously conquer procrastination and indecision. Throughout, guard your mind against negative and discouraging influences. And finally, form a "master mind alliance" – a coordination of knowledge and effort, for the attainment of a definite purpose – consisting of people who will encourage you to follow through with your plan and your purpose.

Conclusiont
Hill might be a little crazy, and his writing style is a bit over the top. He tends to take on the tone of a late night infomercial ("I have never known anyone who was inspired to use the secret, who did not achieve noteworthy success in his chosen calling") and he has an troll-like propensity to go into all-caps mode ("ALL ACHIEVEMENT, ALL EARNED RICHES, HAVE THEIR BEGINNING IN AN IDEA!"). More critically, some of the particular things he says are at odds with his philosophy as a whole ("these steps call for no hard labor. They call for no sacrifice"). The danger is that these are the statements readers latch on to, and lose the forest for the trees.

And this would be a shame, for when all is said and done, "Think and Grow Rich" is terrific book. Hill is passionate, and his advice is refreshingly practical. The above caveat aside, Hill tells it like it is. He decries the "universal weakness of lack of ambition" and our "national pastime of trying to get without giving". He explains that people mistake their wants for their just dues, and is explicit on the fact that you can't get something for nothing: "there is but one dependable method for accumulating, and legally holding riches, and that is by rendering useful service."

Mystical musings aside, Hill's philosophy makes sense, and not in the vague "no shit, Sherlock" sense. He believes that "riches begin in the form of thought," and he makes this claim concrete. Desire, believe, act, and persist, he advises. If you do these things, you cannot fail – and never forget that "a quitter never wins-and-a winner never quits."

Do I have to give this a star? This is a self help book that has some good ideas, most of which people already know they should be doing to be successful. He takes on such controversial issues as "never giving up," "planning ahead," and the ever progressive and edgy idea "talk with smart people to get good ideas." The only real problem with the book is he studied hundreds of successful people and that is his research. All of the people had their own individual ways of becoming successful, and yet he boils down everything to one specific plan on how to be successful. So even though everyone he studied didn't do everything in his book, he makes the logical leap that to be successful you need to do everything in the book. Oh, and if there is something you don't like (talking to yourself in the mirror for example) you're just not ready for it yet.

Bottom line, he has good yet not novel ideas that he got from successful people along with inspiring stories of success but he takes too much liberty with his research drawing definite conclusions for the secret formula for success without sufficient data. If you like this book I can point you to a thousand other self help books along these lines, but it wasn't for me.

Si bien el tema de visualización ya se lee por todo lado, me gusta mucho el hecho de:

*Desear, visualizar, autosugestionar con emociones y ejecutar!

Este libro refuerza el hecho de que a punta de pensar sin acción no sirve pa nada, pero sin duda alguna, todo empieza desde nuestra mente.

Es un libro que vale la pena leer para soñar, inspirarse y conocerse a si mismo un poco más. Como dice el autor, es importante leerlo y aplicarlo, sino, este libro no te va a gustar, yo ya empecé a incorporar un ejercicio en mi meditación mañanera con lo que me enseñó y seguro este libro y sus enseñanzas serán un 5 estrellas a largo plazo

Book-a-Week Nonfiction Challenge: Book 5

I think I need to think about my plan for this one going forward. It asks that you read this at least three times, stating that you might not understand or get anything out of it the first time. I understand that idea in principle, if the ideas are complex, but if you're writing a book it should probably still be useful to people who only plan on reading it once. It's not a short read that you can come back to all the time, especially if you aren't yet sure if it's the best book of its kind, and it's very boring in style. On top of that, most chapters asked that you go back and reread a previous chapter before continuing, so you've already read it twice by the time you get to the end for the first time. Reading it three times would be like reading it six times, so I'm questioning its effectiveness.

The book gives you six steps which could be useful, and I'm going to try them out to see.
Besides trying to make you more self-aware, I don't know that the chapters besides the last one, and chapter 2 (which contains the six steps) are particularly valuable to everyone.

Maybe that makes me one of those "unsuccessful" people who missed the point or isn't willing to put in the work, but I feel like I put in way too much work just to get out of it the few things that I did.

The Mother of All Self-Help Crap

This book contains a few common-sense pieces of advice that should be obvious to most people. Unfortunately, they are pretty rare and buried under a big pile of nonsensical mumbo-jumbo.

First of all, this book is prisoner of its own time. Written in 1937, not so long after WWI and the 1929 crash, the author praises capitalism without reserve. Mr.Hill chooses his champions from the past but mostly from modern USA (Ford, Carnegie, Edison, repeat ad lib). The fact that some of those men are still living at the time of writing gives to this book a flavor of propaganda in favor of the mega-riches. I found the constant boot-licking towards Mr.Hill's contemporary patros really irritating. For example, the author explains how national heroes such as Henry Ford differentiate themselves from other billionaires by being great benefactors to the rest of humanity. One year after the publication of this book, the same Henry Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi officials. So much for the humanism of this great person.

Secondly, this book is really US-centered. Unfortunately, it's centered around the worst of the US tradition. In short, America is great, the rest of the world is crap. Reliance on religion and pseudo-scientific reasoning is just laughable to an educated person. Some of the step-by-step recipes for "getting rich" a really similar to miracle elixirs from the Old west era.

Thirdly, the damage this book did to wisdom and morals doesn't stop at the last page. This book inspired generations of fake doctors and other bullshit-sellers up to now. In fact it cured me completely of this type of literature. Even the way the author passes his message sounds like a Ponzi scheme, always speaking of his "secret" that the reader will know after reading the book and advertising it to other victims.

All in all, it was a really tedious reading. The fact that so many people give it 5 stars is worrying for the state of our modern society. It seems that gurus have a bright future ahead.