LN#8 :Think and Grow Rich is the best book you can lay your hands on.

If there was a list of books that would actually change your life, “Think and Grow Rich” would top the list.

I read this marvelous piece of writing twelve years back when I was in college. I didn’t understand it then. I bought the book at the end because I had finished reading nearly every self-help book on the shelf of that book shop.

At that time I was an avid book reader and I was reading everything I could lay my hands on. I was at the prime of my young age. A carefree happy young man who didn’t care about tomorrow.

I didn’t understand the book. I didn’t get what points he was trying to make but I finished it nonetheless.

Eight years later I picked it again.

This time, the time wasn’t the same.

I wasn’t the same boy I was in college. I was out in the real world and I had to run my life. The life which was contradictory in every sense. I ran by the rules of life and still, success eluded me.

For some unknown reason, I was failing at every endeavor of mine. It wasn’t easy. Then came a time when I broke down and I was left with no hope. There was no energy left in me to move forward. The future was a blank canvas for me.

But here is the thing. Whenever I have been at the low points of my life, it had always been books that helped me.

Every answer to my questions was hidden in some book. The game was to find the right book.

As the saying goes, “what you seek, is what you find.”

You seek despair and you will find it.

You seek happiness and you will find it.

I sought change in my life and answers to my questions that why was I constantly failing in everything I was doing.

I found the answer in “Think and Grow Rich”.

The book is a result of meticulous research and efforts of Napoleon Hill. It started when 26 years old Hill met the highly successful Andrew Carnegie who was the richest man on Earth at that time.

As a part of his journalistic assignment, he asked Carnegie the secret of his success. A very cliched question I must say, but Carnegie gave him a unique reply.

Carnegie put forth a condition. He gave Hill an option.

He told him that he will reveal the secrets to his success, only when he will devote twenty years of his life to know about it.

And there will be no pay involved in it.

Napoleon Hill thought for a moment and was about to decline the offer when curiosity took over reasoning. He took the job without pay.

For the next twenty years, Andrew Carnegie helped him meet more than 500 billionaires and millionaires. Those people involved stalwarts like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. People who were impossible to meet at that time.

After years of interviews and research, Finally, Napoleon Hill complied his studies and research in a very entertaining manner.

The result was “Think and Grow Rich.”

The name may sound like a scam for people. Some easy trick or hacks to lure people to buy books. Tricks that sound good but won’t work in real life.

But it was not so.

The people who religiously read and followed the book turn their life around.

The blockbuster documentary “The Secret” was a direct result of this book. Well, there was another book involved called “The Science of Getting Rich” By Walter Wallace. I will discuss that book in a separate article.

The main theme of the book, as evident from the name, is “Thinking”.

Now you might question — How can anyone get rich just by thinking?

Haven’t we heard so many stories about lazy daydreamers who think the whole day and die in poverty?

Hasn’t this been the thing our parents warned us about?

Isn’t hard work and God gifted talent are the only requisites of success?

As hard as it will be to digest for you, everything that you knew until now about success is a myth.

After you read this book, your perception of life will change forever.

People do not get successful because of hard work. People get successful because of right thinking.

But how do you generate the right thinking?

Well, it is very easy.

By having Goals.

Cliched. Isn’t it?

How many people till now have told you to have goals?

Myriads.

But did you ever do it?

I doubt so?

Someone said this, I don’t know whom but “ Most important things in life are free.”

The advice of writing goals was simple, so so simple that you refused to believe it.

We want to believe that success is hard earned. But why?

Because that is what is told to us.

If you are not successful, analyse every thought that you have.

Try to find out the source of information for it.

After a while, you will be surprised to know that without knowing you have been a victim of conformity.

Everything you know was once told to you by someone else. You took it for granted at that time. Slowly with time, you started believing in it so much that you refused to believe in anything that countered that belief.

You don’t need to do hard work to gets successful. It is a Myth.

Doesn’t that line give you a headache and don’t you find it hard to digest?

It is not because it is true or false. It is because of the belief system that you have which has engraved a few things so hard in your mind that any theory that contradicts it makes you feel angry about it.

Why do you think extremists exist in every country who kill people over the petite contradiction of their own belief?

It is because of belief.

“Think and Grow Rich” is a book which will cleanse your belief system.

Thinking is important but thinking anything in the name of thinking and not doing anything is waste of time.

You have to channelize your thinking.

This book will teach you that.

Also, the most important thing that this book teaches you is the power of burning desire.

People desire things all the time. But they don’t get it. Do they?

Why?

Because they don’t want it bad enough.

People change their desire more frequently than stocks change their value.

If you stick to one desire and keep on chasing it, you tend to get it in its physical form.

Having great desires, big desires, too many desires is not a problem. Changing desires is.

There is one place where change is a not welcome then it should be in your desires.

But one thing that has helped me more than any other thing in this book was the concept of Auto-suggestion.

émile Coué, a French psychologist is considered a pioneer in bringing the concept of Auto-Suggestion to common people.

Of course, like other brilliant people, his theories were also rejected and looked down. But soon people understood the importance of it and accepted it.

According to Wikipedia :

“Autosuggestion is a psychological technique related to the placebo effect, developed by apothecary émile Coué at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a form of self-induced suggestion in which individuals guide their own thoughts, feelings, or behavior. The technique is often used in self-hypnosis.”

This is one of the techniques that helped me get better health, wealth and as they say prosperity.

This is a must-read book and you should check it out right now. There are no two ways about it.

Don’t wait, just buy it.