Think and Grow Rich has been called the “Granddaddy of All Motivational Literature.” It was the first book to boldly ask, “What makes a winner?” The man who asked and listened for the answer, Napoleon Hill, is now counted in the top ranks of the world’s winners himself. The most famous of all teachers of success spent “a fortune and the better part of a lifetime of effort” to produce the “Law of Success” philosophy that forms the basis of his books and that is so powerfully summarized in this one.
Day 10 of the 28 Day Self-Growth Plan
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
I like this one. I’ve always liked this one. There is something about understanding the power and importance of positive thinking that has always appealed to me. Probably because I think I am allergic to negativity. That shit gets on me and it messes me up. I just can’t live there.
Seriously, there have been folks that deserve to have negative shit about them in my brain. I just don’t do it well (or at least for very long). I LOVE laughing at petty memes and WISH I could be that person, but I can’t.
Alright, not all of that last paragraph is totally true, and that’s kind of how I feel about the entirety of Think and Grow Rich – any idea can be taken into absurdity, throwing the whole idea away because it doesn’t always work is also absurd, and sometimes mostly true is true enough. This isn’t math we are talking about here.
The truth is that I don’t have a lot of negative shit about other people in my head. And I am a little petty. And I don’t really wish I was edgy enough to be really petty. And while that is more true, unless we are being super literal, the way it was stated the first time is pretty true as well.
And that is the way I have begun to change my approach positive thinking. I am naturally an optimist…ugh…this may get long because I feel like that statement just needs more, I need a bit more, to flesh it out.
It is no secret I have an unhealthy relationship with fear. I have discussed it ad nauseum. I am proud that it is getting better. I am honest enough to admit that it is still a thing.
When I scorched the earth that was my life 4 years ago, let me try to explain what that looks like. You know how when a building gets demolished and one second everything is the place it belongs – Company A’s desks are on their floor, in their space, Company B has their file cabinets in their space, Company C’s computers are in their office, the coffee shop has its cups on its shelves. Then BOOM! Demolished. Now there is just shit everywhere and it is a mess. You can walk through the rubble and see pieces of a desk, a file cabinet, a computer, a coffee cup. But which piece belongs to which desk and is that the coffee shop’s cup or somebody that worked in Company B, and this hard drive somehow made it through so it’s a good hard drive but is it Company C’s hard drive? You just don’t know.
That’s how it feels to shift through the rubble when you blow up your life. The pieces all look like they belong to you because you have stored them for so long. But they don’t. Some of the pieces are from other people’s shit that they put on you, shit you picked up on the side of the road that you should have just left where it lay, baggage that looked like yours when you claimed it but actually had a whole wardrobe that was not your size. But it’s all a big heap of mess and it is so hard to tell. So, I had to start sifting through the rubble trying to figure out how to sort it into what was mine and what isn’t.
The positive thinking is all mine. I am certain that one of my core beliefs is life is too short to spend time on nasty. I am certain that I let go of grudges easily, find the good intentionally, and move past situations better than some because that is who I am as a person.
The optimism, on the other hand, is only partially mine. I do assume good. However, if I am not careful, I will irrationally assume good because I am afraid of what it means if it is or gets bad – think head in sand. That is not productive – that’s delusion.
So now I work on being a real optimist. Not a realist optimist. But a real to the philosophical definition of optimist:
a person who believes that this world is the best of all possible worlds or that good must ultimately prevail over evil. – Oxford Dictionary
There is piece here that is super important to me – the acknowledgment of evil. Bad things are just an “is” thing. They will happen. They have happened. Looking for and hoping for the good does not allow me the ability to ignore that bad or the possibility of bad simply because it makes me uncomfortable and afraid.
This is important for a whole lot of reasons. Specific to this topic is the idea of positive thinking. If we take Napoleon Hill literally (which he may have intended and some may do), there is nothing we can’t do if we believe it hard enough.
Once you believe in an idea, keep don’t give up when things inevitably get a little tough.
If you give up, how can you be sure that you didn’t miss out on something amazing?
Autosuggestion can help you program your brain to believe whatever you want to become true.
This may all be literally true. I don’t know. I don’t have the time or patience to test it. Maybe I actually could believe hard enough and develop a divaesque singing voice (before you encourage that, you need to hear me sing – it’s really bad). Maybe I could slam dunk a basketball. Maybe I could memorize the Oxford dictionary (that would be soooooo cool). But I don’t have it in me to test it because I am not willing to give up all the other things I would have to sacrifice to devote that time to it.
I know for as many “didn’t give up and break through was right around the corner” stories, there are equal numbers of “it never happened.” That’s because the “just when I was about to give up, I succeeded” stories are only cool because it worked out that way. The lost item is always the last place you look. That’s just how life works.
Positive thinking isn’t about being blindly (or fearfully) optimistic. It’s not about beating your head up against a nearly impossible goal at the expense of everything else. It’s not about taking fiction and repeating it like a mantra so that it becomes true.
It is about believing that the greater good, the strength, the worthiness is available to you if you know where to look.
Napoleon Hill said, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartbreak, carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” THAT is positive thinking. THAT is the money shot. THAT Is the one idea that, if you can repeat it often enough until you believe it, makes you, makes me, unstoppable.
In case you are wondering, I believe it most of the time, so I am still somewhat stoppable. I do not expect it to be that way for long so if you are looking to take your shot, you should probably hurry 😊