The mind cannot differentiate between truth and falsehood, we simply need to instruct or manipulate it toward a certain mode!


'Think and Grow Rich' by Napoleon Hill, takes an in depth look at the power of the mind and personal belief and how these influence our success. Hill uses examples of past success such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to show how factors such as desire, the subconscious mind, faith and goals can interweave to create favorable condition for success.

The title of this book can be quite deceiving. I thought it would be a get rich quick book but was pleasantly surprised. Hill used timeless principles to illustrate the power of the mind, visualization and channeling our desires to attaining financial greatness. While the book was written many years ago, the principles demonstrated here in fact serve as guides to modern day self-help programs and books. The chapter on autosuggestion showing how we have the power to direct our minds toward achieving a certain goal fascinated me. Hill shows how the mind cannot differentiate between truth and falsehood, we simply need to instruct or manipulate it toward a certain mode.

This is a must read for everyone, regardless of your professional background. The insight you receive here will help you move from procrastination and fear to actualizing your goals.

I bought this book just as the year 2008 is starting. What's odd about this is that I don't even have any inkling of what kind of a book this is when I bought it in downtown Recto (I eventually found that it belong to the self-help genre). The book's title, "Think and Grow Rich" by napoleon Hill just flashed in my mind and, finding no prospective book to read at that time, I plunged on. As of this writing, I had finished the second round of reading it with future plans of doing it the third, fourth, and fifth time as my time permits. But life is too short and there's too much of books I still got to read. ^_^
Anyway, I'd outlined here a summary of the book's philisophy of how to accumulate Huge Amounts of money. I also found fascinating the subjects on the Principle of Autosuggestion and (get this!!) The Mystery of Sex Transmutation! Getting curious what these are all about..?? Why don't you grab the book and be awakened by the eternal truths on how to "attract" the surging wave of riches.

* Find something you love to do. You have to love what you are doing; you have to be anxious to go to work in the morning. Until you find something that you really love to do, you are probably not going to be successful because just making money doesn't make you successful.
* Develop a plan of action. Developing a plan takes more than just thinking. You have to take action, too. Hill says you may not have all the details figured out in the beginning, but forming a plan is a good start. You can always alter your plan later on, he adds.
* Involve other people. Hill states that in addition to finding something we are passionate about, we need to align ourselves with other people to accomplish our goals. No matter how smart we are, we need others because we can't know everything about a particular thing.
* Don't forget to give back. The more success you have, the more you are in a position to give back and make a difference in the lives of others is the philosophy that I have imbibed by reading this book. Most people who have been successful are very willing to help someone else achieve their own goals.

I wish to state here the insights I've gained in reading this book, but I think it will deprive you of the fascination of knowing these things first hand. I envy you the journey of truly knowing yourself. Remember it's not the destination that matters, but how you've come to enjoy the journey and made the most out of it!
My warm regards and happy reading! ^_^

This book has many advantages over other self help books. 1. It does not teach that just thinking about something will make it happen. It teaches that you have to DO something to make it happen. 2. It teaches how to go about figuring out what you want and pursuing your dreams. 3. This book is relatively old yet still sells so it has passed some test of time.

The Good:
Teaches how to go about making life goals and plans. Shows how to believe in yourself and make things happen. Shows the importance of having specialized knowledge and leadership skills. Shows the importance of having creativity and a scientific mind. The book makes you think because Napolean Hill puts things in his terms through his own philosophy. As he says this book is a philosophy of success. So there is a lot to the book and a lot can be mined out of it multiple times.

The Bad: There are some difficult to understand sections, and you have to put up with some new agey bullcrap to get to the goods. The author also assumes that all poor people are poor because they choose to be. But he never really faces up to the fact that rich people often do abuse those who work for them, and keep many poor people down. He also does not face up to the fact that there are life circumstances that keep people down (he will emphasize you can get out of them).

The Ugly: Thinks the world would be a better place if Christians and Jews had cooperated with Islam. Teaches there are no miracles, and there is no supernatural. He is a new agey type pantheist. He teaches his philosophy of success through this lenses so you have to think for yourself, and as my teacher said eat chicken, but do not swallow the bones.

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.

1. Fundamental. Buku klasik yang satu ini isinya sangat relevan untuk jaman now, dan akan tetap relevan sampai generasi cucu saya nanti.

2. Buku ini mengubah cara pandang saya terhadap sesuatu yang sering disebut "kapitalisme", yang biasanya saya memandangnya dari sisi negatif. Buku ini sukses memberi saya gambaran tentang kapitalisme dari sudut pandang yang positif.

3. Dari ini buku ini saya bisa mendapatkan jawaban yang sangat masuk akal atas pertanyaan2 klise yang saya ga pernah tau jawabannya, seperti:
- kenapa pria biasanya sukses setelah usia 40?
- Kenapa di balik pria sukses selalu ada wanita luar biasa di baliknya?
- Kenapa pria sukses yang mengkhianati istrinya dengan serong kepada wanita lain biasanya akan kehilangan kesuksesannya?
- bagaimana orang2 tertentu bisa menjadi genius?
- dll.. banyak banget.

4 Buat saya, buku ini bukan sekedar buku bisnis yang mengajarkan bagaimana untuk mengumpulkan segudang uang. Buku ini sekaligus buku tentang psikologi, self-help, spiritual, bahkan sains.

I’d wanted to read a classic self-help book, and several modern motivational speakers have credited Napoleon Hill. This book was written in the US in 1937, during recovery from the Great Depression. Hill asserts that the Great Depression was worsened by mass fear, and this concept seems just as valid in today’s economy. Much of what is offered in “The Secret,” including that now-trademarked name (a term that Hill coined but failed to copyright), is a direct rip-off from Hill.

Hill was challenged by his friend Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in the world, to find out how people made money, in an era where most people did not. Hill spent many years interviewing powerful men of the era (powerful women in that era being very few), for example Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Charles Schwab, and of course Carnegie. During a 20-year period, Hill distilled his findings into 17 principles by which to get rich and powerful. He hastens to point out that richness and power is not just about money, but about quality of life and achievement of goals. He even states that Mahatma Gandhi was the most powerful man living at the time, and that he also applied these principles to achieve that power.

Some of the concepts are old school: hard work, planning and persistence, for example. However, he was the first to suggest positive self-talk, imagination, and visualization as tools for achievement. He also offers some surprisingly modern ideas such as transmutation of sexual energy, sixth sense or intuition, and imagining wise counsel from a “Cabinet” of people one admires. He devotes a chapter to harnessing fear, giving tips on overcoming the “six basic fears” including fear of death and fear of ill health.

Although some of the material seems dated, I understand that an updated edition has been released that corrects this. While not written in a style I enjoy, I can appreciate the concepts that Hill pioneered that are still popular in self-help books today.

I think my notes sum up my thoughts on this book.
I bought this book largely because it often came up as THE book to read for productivity and goal management.

It reads like new age wishing to the cosmic genie for money.

There's some value in the ideas, but the ideas are hindered by the flaky interpretation of events that end up getting distorted to suit the author's personal bias. I stopped reading by the chapter on sexual transmutation because I just wasn't reading it - I mean my eyes read the words, but I was reading at this point for the sake of finishing the book, not to retain or understand the information. I officially stopped reading when he used the words 'scientifically proven' without citing the study, which just added to the new age infomercial vibe the book has.

To sum up the books contents by chapter:
1. Think about money all of the time. If you're thinking about your dinner, STOP! Think about money. Stay tuned and I'll tell you how you can be rich right after these messages from our sponsors.
2. Think about how much money you'd like to have and when you would like to have it. Use step one to think about it all of the time. Forget about the dog, he can feed himself. Think about money. My rich friends think about money all of the time, and so should you.
3. The only measure of a truly successful person is based on how much money he makes. If you don't think so, you're just bitter. Have faith that the cosmic genie shall provide, if you wish hard enough and often enough.
4. You're not wishing hard enough. Wish better. Your wish should be automatic or else the cosmic genie might miss your wish for money. You need money. What do you mean you're not wishing for money? Don't you want to be successful. Look at this person who is rich and by our society's standards is a good person because he is rich.
5. Here's some outdated practices to look for a job. You want money, you're going to need to work for it. Don't type your resume yourself, that's a woman's job. (In all honesty though, this chapter was by far the most practical and his advice is: understanding what you have to offer vs the sort of clients/employer you want to work for is pretty solid. It is of course the complete opposite of how we're told to look for work. I suppose this is running on the assumption that one is already employed and trying to better oneself). Also some really good advice on focusing on who you want to work to help you attain your objective - it might mean something like working for a mentor, or for a company that does what you want to sell to others but need the street cred to make it happen, or to learn the professional practices and so on.
6. You should be imagining money. Here's the story about coca-cola that barely connects with the point I was trying to make.
7. You need to have a plan (totally good advice until...): a new wave of business management is needed in our great country. Rich people are the only people who are born leaders, poor people who happen to get lucky are just posers and they're ruining the very fabric this country was made of. (I swear that sentiment was in there somewhere. He's also very disconnected between how business enterprises actually treated their staff and why labor laws had to become a thing - i mean if business entities were really run by good natured all around great people... just saying)
In all honesty, this wasn't a bad chapter. He covers failing, failing hard, and failing often.
8. Here's a story about our founding fathers. (I'm Canadian, I'm so tired of hearing this story. I'm not that attached to your parchment. Also locking a bunch of dudes in a room until they see things your way is NOT patriotic, it's torture. wait... maybe that is patriotic.) Side note: the only useful bit is using your desperate situation as a way to motivate/push you to succeed. (Read: Scarcity: Why having so little means so much - and it'll explain why scientifically 'with actual real studies done with actual real scientists' that might not be possible)
9. If you don't have money, it's your own damn fault for not thinking about money enough or in the right way. You need to seduce the money, make her feel loved, make her want you. Your poor because you don't want money badly enough and you keep thinking poor people thoughts.
10. don't tell anyone what you aspire to do. ever. they'll just steal it from you and do the thing better and faster than you can and then they will have all of the money. Only tell people WITH money your plan because only people with money can help you, that's because they don't need more money! It's like a social service or good will or something to help you out, and rich people are such great people.
11. ... I stopped reading when he mentioned something about something being scientifically proven but didn't cite the research and so it came off as an opinion based fact, and lets face it, if I wanted those, I have a facebook feed full of them.

I'm donating the book to the library where more desperately poor people can wish to the comic genie and not actually take serious steps to better their lives or fix their relationship with money.

Summary: What the mind can conceive, AND believe, it WILL achieve.

Every word in that summary is important. This book ultimately regards how you think and how your thoughts will get you to wherever you choose. Dating back to the post Depression era, Napoleon Hill does a great job in a theory-based piece on the psychology of thought and how it prevents or supports our dreams.

Every thing, action, circumstance, failure, or success is spawned by one -- thought. It is your thoughts and the way you develop and guide your thoughts that will bring you to wherever you want to be. I felt like this book's title is hardly doing it justice because the THINK part resonates with any aspect of your life. Think And Grow Rich, Think and Grow Happy, Think And Grow Religious, Think And Grow Successful, Think And Grow Into A Good Parent, whatever. Monitor and guide your thoughts and you'll get anywhere you want.

I give it four stars because 1 - the author often gets into such distant levels of English that it's hard to reciprocate well, 2 - some chapters are a bit out there, things like sex transmutation, ESP, and creating a mastermind group in your head with Abe Lincoln at the table, 3 - a small portion of the author's findings are a bit outdated, but this is hardly a negative because 90% of this book is timeless, and lastly 4 - only because in audiobook format it is very hard to follow. After completing it once, it ultimately is a reference manual. I'll certainly return to it in book form, not audiobook.

If you're willing to really be self critical and apply the teachings Hill suggests, you'll indeed be in better shape. But it won't be overnight. Overall a good read that I recommend.

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.

Буде простіше сприймати, якщо це початок вашого нонфікшн шляху)) сприймати треба не дуже скептично, бо треба ВІРИТИ, що ти вартий більшого. Багато застарілої інформації, все ж книга написана майже 100 років тому.
Та незважаючи на все вище написане, вона реально варта прочитання. Там багато корисної інформації, яку треба пропрацювати. Посидіти з ручкою і блокнотом, відповісти на багато запитань.
Раджу.

شخصيًا لا أميل للكتب التي تقوم بسرد القواعد البديهية لأي عمل. وفي الحقيقة لا أدري إن كانت فعلًا بديهية أم أن هناك فعلًا من لا يبذل جهد للتوصل إلى هذه القواعد بمفرده.
عمومًا ما يميز الكتاب هو ذكره للكثير من التجارب، التي تصلح لاستخدامها في سياقات متعددة.

This is one of my Top 5 favorite books of all time. I've read it 3 or 4 times.