The principles of success

One of the most compelling books I have read in my life is Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. It was written after more than 20 years of research, after interviewing 500 of the most successful people in America, between 1908 and 1928. The foundation of the principles described in the book were laid by Andrew Carnegie. He was the the person who assigned Hill to write a philosophy of personal achievement.

The 14 Principles

The so-called principles of personal achievement, which Napoleon Hill describes in detail in the book, are the following:

1. Desire – This is the starting point of all achievement. Clearly defining the purpose you are pursuing is the first step towards getting there.
2. Faith – The confidence that you can do something (reach your goal, that you desire) on a subconscious level. You should believe and visualize that you reach your goal and feel the success.
3. Autosuggestion – The means to influence the subconscious, through positive affirmations. You should create your own affirmations and make them specific to your goal. You should use these repetitively, multiple times each day, with faith and conviction, visualizing your goal in your mind.
4. Specialized knowledge – Use your personal experiences and observations to your advantage. Make use of the specific knowledge of others in various fields (like law, accounting, marketing, production etc.) to build a group of experts that will help you reach your goals.
5. Imagination – Focus your mind on the objective and come up with ideas on how to reach it. You must develop ideas to reach your goals as this is essential to your success. You can do this either by improving on other people’s ideas (called synthesized imagination), or by coming up with totally new ideas on your own (creative imagination). The best ideas usually come from creative imagination.
6. Organized planning – This principle focuses on the transformation of desire into action. Having clear goals is not enough. You must create a plan and put the plan to action immediately, if you want to reach your goals. Your plans may not be perfect, but it does not matter. What matters is that you take action towards the goals, making the necessary adjustments along the way. Use the specialized knowledge of other people and your own imagination to improve your plans as you execute them.
7. Decision – The most important principle when it comes to avoiding procrastination. You should make it a habit to reach decisions quickly and don’t change your mind easily. For example, it took Napoleon Hill 29 seconds to make the decision that would fundamentally change his life – accepting Andrew Carnegie’s proposal to research and write the philosophy of personal achievement.
8. Persistence – the sustained effort needed for success. Have faith in your goals and close your mind to negative and discouraging influences. Temporary failure must not make you abandon the goals – A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.
9. Building a mastermind group – This is one of the most important of the principles of success. It refers to an alliance of 2 or more minds working together in perfect harmony toward the attaining of a definite purpose. This should be your “dream team“.  Associate with people who share common values, goals and interests but have also a strong desire to contribute to the overall effort.
10. Sexuality transmutation – Also known as personal charisma. You can transmit this to the people around you in many forms: hand shake, tone of voice, posture, personality, clothing and style. You should work to develop an attractive personality, through self-control and will power.
11. The subconscious mind – In order to develop faith that you can reach your goals, you must internalize them at a subconscious level. You can achieve this by formulating and writing your goals, repetition of positive affirmations, visualization of your goals, acting as though you have already attained your goal.
12. The brain is an input / output relay for thoughts. Your conscious mind sends thoughts to your subconscious as well as receives them from the subconscious, in the form of imagination. The capability of the brain to send and receive thoughts is largely influenced by emotions. When under the influence of strong emotions, imagination is either amplified (by positive emotions like love, passion, desire, enthusiasm), or reduced (by negative emotions like fear, hatred, revenge, anger, superstitions). That is why self-control is so important.
13. The 6th sense – intuition, hunches, deja-vu. Through this, you will be warned of impending dangers in time to avoid them, and notified of opportunities in time to embrace them. You can develop it through creative imagination (for instance, imagine what great people would say to you in regard to your current situation. How would they feel about your actions? Build yourself a council of imaginary mentors).
14. Mastering the 6 major fears – You must clear several enemies in your route to success: indecision, doubt and fear. Indecision repeated becomes doubt. The indecision and doubt blending together become fear. The major fears are: poverty, criticism, bad health, loss of love, old age, death. When you learn to get over these fears, your attitude towards life will change fundamentally.

These principles were tested and put to work many times by many people who became successful at their business and brought much value to the world.

The most important fact to remember – you have absolute control of only one thing: your thought. All the principles described here  begin with thought.