Introduction
You often struggle with fear, poverty, and adversity while wondering why success remains out of reach. Napoleon Hill shows that you possess complete control over your own mental attitude. By mastering this single domain, you can command universal natural laws and transform any hardship into lasting achievement.
You can transform any adversity into success and achieve mastery over your life by taking absolute control of your mental attitude and harnessing universal natural laws.
The book explores fifteen chapters detailing how to overcome physical pain, conquer fear, and direct the subconscious mind. You will examine the power of habit, the laws of change, and the invisible guides that shape your destiny.
- How do you take absolute control of your mental attitude?
- What methods engage the subconscious mind for achievement?
- How do you convert temporary defeats into equivalent benefits?
1. The Power of Mental Attitude
The foundational step in applying the success remedy is to refuse to accept as inevitable any circumstance in life that you do not desire. When faced with adverse conditions, you must reject the notion that you are forced to accept them. Maintaining this unyielding stance sends psychological directives through the subconscious mind that influence nature and bodily systems to correct the affliction or problem.
Napoleon Hill refused to accept that his newborn son, born completely without ears, would be deaf for life. Through nine years of applying psychological directives, the boy developed bone conduction hearing reaching sixty-five percent of normal capacity. Twenty-five years later, an X-ray test confirmed the boy had acquired sixty-five percent of normal hearing capacity.
Mental attitude is the single aspect of life over which every human being has complete, unchallengeable personal control.
While you cannot control others, external events, or your entry and exit from life, you possess the inexorable privilege of controlling every thought you release. This control dictates whether you experience success or failure, physical health or ailment, and peace of mind or misery. Thomas A. Edison utilized a positive mental attitude through more than ten thousand failures to discover the incandescent electric light.
Every failure, defeat, adversity, or unpleasant experience carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit. A positive mental attitude enables you to search actively for the lesson or benefit hidden within every misfortune and cause that seed to germinate. Instead of reacting with fear or rebellion, you use adversity as a stepping stone of progress. Milo C. Jones used a small farm in Wisconsin to make himself a millionaire after being stricken with double paralysis.
Mental attitude can be systematically influenced and controlled through six specific practical factors. Control over the mental attitude does not happen by chance; it requires deliberate methods ranging from burning desires and auto-suggestion to the deliberate choice of positive associates. Henry Ford maintained a positive mental attitude that kept him afloat during early struggles and built an industrial empire providing employment for over ten million people. Mahatma Gandhi gathered a Master Mind alliance of two hundred million fellowmen to free India without firing a gun.
You can direct and control your mind through these specific methods:
- By a BURNING DESIRE for the attainment of a definite purpose based upon one or more of the nine basic motives
- By conditioning the mind to automatically choose and carry out definite positive objectives with the aid of the EIGHT GUIDING PRINCES
- By close association with people who inspire active engagement in positive purposes, and refusal to be influenced by negative-minded people
- By auto-suggestion through which the mind is constantly given positive directives
- By a profound recognition of your exclusive privilege of controlling and directing your own mind
- By the aid of a machine by which the subconscious mind can be given definite directives while you sleep
2. Law of Change and Unseen Guides
Eternal change forces growth, and you can engage unseen guides and subconscious treatments to master fear.
Eternal change is nature's inexorable law and the primary tool of human progress. It forces individuals and institutions to grow or perish. Failure to understand and adapt to continuous change is the major cause of personal failure. When an individual, business, or nation settles into routine habits and complacency, nature breaks up the setup through stress, adversity, or revolution to compel adaptation and growth.
The Ford Motor Company nearly wrecked on two occasions because founder Henry Ford's flexibility did not keep up with his years. His grandson took over and successfully transformed the empire by inviting change.
Throughout this process, the entire physical body of man undergoes a complete change and replacement of all physical cells every seven months. Thomas A. Edison spent only three months in a graded school before his teacher sent him home with a note saying he lacked the capacity to take an education. Napoleon Hill endured forty years of continuous and drastic changes while researching and preparing his philosophy through the University of Hard Knocks.
Mastery of the seven basic fears is an absolute necessity in any personal rebuilding program aimed at achieving a well-balanced life and peace of mind. Human beings are where they are because of daily habits shaped by thinking. To progress, you must systematically eradicate the seven core fears that bind you to penury, ill health, and self-imposed limitations:
- Conquer the Fear of POVERTY
- Conquer the Fear of CRITICISM
- Conquer the Fear of ILL HEALTH and PHYSICAL PAIN
- Conquer the Fear of the LOSS of LOVE
- Conquer the Fear of the LOSS of LIBERTY
- Conquer the Fear of OLD AGE
- Conquer the Fear of DEATH
Napoleon Hill had to cure his own habit of selling himself short, yielding to the seven basic fears, and expecting to reap before sowing during his decades of self-rebuilding.
You can engage a personal team of imaginary unseen guides to assist with financial prosperity, health, and peace of mind.
You can maintain eight guiding entities as products of your imagination, treating them like real people to command their services. These guides help tap into inner sources of power and Infinite Intelligence.
The author engaged eight specific guides including the Prince of Financial Prosperity and the Prince of Sound Physical Health. Great minds like Thomas A. Edison, Henry Ford, and Alexander Graham Bell relied on similar invisible sources of aid.
Your interaction with these entities follows a precise method:
- Express gratitude for the services of unseen guides
- Follow their guidance to the letter
The conscious section of the mind stands guard as a cynic full of fear and doubt. Directives are best given to the subconscious when the conscious mind is off duty during sleep, utilizing special recording playbacks.
An experimental setup involves a specially built phonograph playing scientific treatments every fifteen minutes through a time clock after the person is asleep. This mechanism reaches the other self and the subconscious mind for character development and healing.
3. Mastery of Pain, Poverty, and Failure
Physical pain and temporary defeats serve as nature's warnings and carry seeds of equivalent benefits.
Physical pain operates as a vital universal language through which nature forces compliance with self-preservation. Intelligent people look for the root cause of pain rather than merely masking the symptom with medication. Masking bypasses the warning system and leads to severe illness when nature finally forces a complete rest. Heeding pain makes possible the customary lifespan of three score and ten years.
A widow who lost her husband and underwent three major surgeries without financial support used the adversity to discover her own invincible soul. The President of the United States later appointed her to a high government position.
You can apply specific practices to handle physical pain:
- Look for the root cause of physical pain instead of masking it with drugs
- Send congratulatory cards focusing on the healing power of Doctor Time instead of sympathy cards to sick friends
Poverty remains primarily a negative state of mind and the first of the seven basic fears. The Creator uses poverty as a testing device to separate the weak from the strong. Those who accept poverty as unavoidable remain trapped while those who fight it develop strong faith, personal initiative, and mental self-mastery.
Napoleon Hill's stepmother transformed their impoverished home by refusing to accept poverty as irrevocable. She later used life insurance funds to send her family to college and placed Hill in a position to collaborate with Andrew Carnegie.
True riches consist of the Twelve Great Riches of Life, where eleven elements are spiritual and internal, paving the way for the twelfth element of material economic security. Andrew Carnegie gave away almost a billion dollars of his fortune, noting that the know-how of success he left behind as a legacy far outweighed the monetary value.
The complete inventory covers these domains:
- A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE
- SOUND PHYSICAL HEALTH
- HARMONY IN HUMAN RELATIONS
- FREEDOM FROM FEAR
- THE HOPE OF FUTURE ACHIEVEMENT
- CAPACITY FOR FAITH
- WILLINGNESS TO SHARE ONE'S BLESSINGS
- A LABOR OF LOVE
- AN OPEN MIND ON ALL SUBJECTS
- SELF-DISCIPLINE
- THE CAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND PEOPLE
- ECONOMIC SECURITY
Every failure carries within it the seed of an equivalent benefit that must be discovered and developed through personal initiative.
Failure serves as a measuring device for weaknesses and redirects you away from destructive paths. Quitting stands as the only true failure, while temporary defeats provide valuable lessons. Milo C. Jones was stricken with paralysis and lost the use of his body. This forced him to discover his mind's power, leading him to invent Little Pig Sausage and become a multimillionaire.
Most personal failures stem from the Fifty-Four Major Causes of Failure, ranging from lack of a definite major purpose to overcaution and procrastination.
You can protect your mental state against these pitfalls by checking yourself directly:
- Check yourself carefully by these fifty-four causes of failure.
- Have some other person rate you on each of these causes of failure who knows you well.
Sorrow acts as the master-key to the gateway of one's soul, softening human nature and breaking complacency. Napoleon Hill experienced his own University of Sorrow at the age of fifty regarding unrequited love. That one year spent living alone in Clinton, South Carolina, drove him to rewrite the Science of Success.
4. The Limitless Power of the Mind
You can harness your mind's nine departments and direct your subconscious through definite autosuggestion.
The human mind is the most powerful gift from the Creator. It operates through nine distinct departments that must be supervised by reason and will. These functional operations include Will, Reason, Emotions, Imagination, Conscience, the Five Physical Senses, Memory, the Sixth Sense, and the Subconscious section. The subconscious section accepts thoughts without distinguishing right from wrong.
To make the subconscious work for constructive ends, you must give it definite, highly emotionalized written orders. Because the subconscious mind accepts both positive and negative instructions indiscriminately, you must write down clear statements of desire, memorize them, and repeat them with intense emotional enthusiasm and belief, especially before sleep.
- Write out a clear statement of that which you wish your subconscious mind to act upon, and set a definite time within which you wish action. Memorize this statement and repeat it to yourself, orally, hundreds of times daily, especially just before going to sleep.
- When you repeat your statement BELIEVE that it will be acted upon by your subconscious mind, and see yourself already in possession of that which your statement calls for. Close your statement by expressing gratitude for having received what you asked for.
- Before repeating your statement to your subconscious, work yourself into a high, intense state of emotional enthusiasm and joy because of your inner feeling that your request will be fulfilled.
Time acts as the great healer of physical and mental wounds. It transforms causes into effects and serves as the master manipulator of habits. Time trades youth for wisdom, cools hotheads, and helps humans discover natural laws through trial and error. Because time is limited and precious, the author outlines a daily resolution to budget every waking second for self-improvement and constructive thought.
- Time is my greatest asset, and I shall relate myself to it on a budget system which provides that every second not devoted to sleep shall be used for self-improvement.
- In the future I shall regard the loss, through neglect, of any portion of my Time as a sin, for which I must atone by the better use in the future of an equivalent amount of it.
- Recognizing that I shall reap that which I sow, I shall sow only the seeds of service which may benefit others as well as myself, and thereby throw myself in the way of the great Law of Compensation.
- I shall so use my Time in the future that each day will bring me some measure of peace of mind, in the absence of which I shall recognize that the seed I have been sowing needs reexamination.
- Knowing that my habits of thought become the patterns which attract all the circumstances affecting my life through the lapse of Time, I shall keep my mind so busy in connection with the circumstances I desire that no Time will be left to devote to fears and frustrations, and the things I do not desire.
- Recognizing that, at best, my allotted Time on the earth plane is indefinite and limited, I shall endeavor in all ways possible to use my portion of it so that those nearest me will benefit by my influence, and be inspired by my example to make the best possible use of their own Time.
- Finally, when my allotment of Time shall have expired, I hope I may leave behind me a monument to my name—not a monument in stone, but in the hearts of my fellowmen—a monument whose marking will testify that the world was made a little better because of my having passed this way.
A supervised total fast combined with hourly autosuggestion allows you to condition your mind to master fear and physical pain during dental or surgical procedures. Fasting rests the physical body and makes the subconscious mind exceptionally sensitive and receptive to autosuggestion. By following a strict dietary preparation, fasting schedule, and repeating specific autosuggestion formulas, you can undergo dental surgery completely free of discomfort.
Napoleon Hill successfully had nine teeth extracted without anesthesia while his mind was completely disassociated and focused on broadcasting a radio rehearsal.
- Two days prior to the beginning of the fast eat nothing but fresh fruits and drink only fruit juices, also omit smoking and coffee.
- Begin your fast and take nothing into your system except water with two or three drops of lemon juice added to each glass, drinking as many as a dozen or more glasses each day under physician supervision.
- When the fast ends eat nothing the first day but one bowl of vegetable soup with no fat in it, and one slice of whole wheat bread, or toast.
- On the second day eat two bowls of vegetable soup and two slices of bread—one bowl in the forenoon and one in the afternoon. Starting the third day eat whatever you please as long as you eat sparingly.
- Beginning on the first day of your fast, repeat the prescribed autosuggestion instruction to your subconscious mind at least once every hour except when asleep.
10 Key Ideas
- Napoleon Hill shows that you possess complete, unchallengeable personal control over your mental attitude, which serves as the single aspect of life over which you hold absolute dominion.
- Every failure, defeat, adversity, or unpleasant experience carries with it the seed of an equivalent benefit that a positive mental attitude enables you to discover and develop.
- Eternal change is nature's inexorable law and the primary tool of human progress that forces individuals and institutions to grow or perish through continuous adaptation.
- You can maintain eight guiding entities as products of your imagination, treating them like real people to command their services and help tap into inner sources of power and Infinite Intelligence.
- Physical pain operates as a vital universal language through which nature forces compliance with self-preservation, requiring intelligent people to look for root causes rather than merely masking symptoms.
- Poverty remains primarily a negative state of mind used by the Creator as a testing device to separate the weak from the strong, while true riches consist of the Twelve Great Riches of Life.
- Quitting stands as the only true failure, while temporary defeats act as measuring devices for weaknesses and provide valuable lessons that direct you away from destructive paths.
- Sorrow acts as the master-key to the gateway of one's soul by softening human nature and breaking complacency to drive personal transformation.
- To make the subconscious work for constructive ends, you must supervise its nine departments by reason and will and give it definite, highly emotionalized written orders.
- Time acts as the great healer of physical and mental wounds, the master manipulator of habits, and a precious asset that must be budgeted entirely for self-improvement and constructive thought.