Riches begin with a STATE OF MIND. In order to attract money you must first become money conscious.The principal of subconscious mind- its application and its reward are at the heart of Think and Grow Rich. The main bottleneck between the conscious and subconscious is communication. Since, conscious – subconscious communication is constant. Therefore developing a dialogue actively in both directions is required for success.
To master emotional states we must first learn to create them or hijack them.
Creating emotional states
Emotional states and emotions are two different things. Emotions are color filters that alter that light. They twist and tint all that it shines on. One way to create strong emotional states (i.e., passion) is to consciously trigger strong emotions (e.g., happiness, faith, fear). It doesn’t matter if the trigger is external (e.g., events, images, objects, music) or internal (e.g., memories, affirmation, prayer, visualization). You just need to know what they are and how to find them.
We can also create emotional states without emotional triggers. We do this by altering our physical state and letting the emotional state follow. Common physical triggers include meditation, fasting, fatigue, stress, alcohol and drugs.
Hijacking emotional states
The way to master strong emotional states is to learn to hijack them through substitution and sublimation.
The first way to hijack existing emotional states is substitution. In substitution, we maintain an emotional state’s brightness while we alter its color at will by focusing intently on triggers that elicit a different, desired response. The second way to hijack existing emotional states is sublimation. In sublimation we maintain brightness and color but alter the focus of action. Like substitution, sublimation requires mastery of focus. First, we must override an emotion’s tendency to preserve and to focus on itself. Next, we must direct that energy externally and lastly refresh that energy by shifting repeatedly between trigger and target.
Emotional mastery
Substitution and sublimation are especially effective together. That’s why negative emotions, though powerful, tend to have negative effects on ourselves and the world around us. The most effective short-term approach to negative emotions is to substitute then sublimate. Doing so lets us consistently channel positive emotions into constructive outcomes.
Mastering creation, substitution and sublimation is the essence of emotional mastery.
Directing the subconscious
We use visualization to talk to the subconscious in a language it understands i.e sensation. Though visualization is a common technique in meditation and performance psychology, most of us are surprisingly bad at it. As your focus improves you’ll be able to maintain that visualization for longer and longer.
The keys to visualization are clarity, detail, and repetition. When you read the words aloud, you want to see their outcome, to touch it, to feel it. Feel your desire for that goal heighten your emotional state. Repeat the process again and again until you brand the image in your subconscious.
It puts the subconscious to work. It directs a subconscious that sees and acts with a subtlety our conscious mind can’t emulate. This half-humbling, half-liberating insight is at the heart of Think and Grow Rich’s power.
Seven ways the conscious mind can set the subconscious up for success:
1.Stepping back – Stepping back from the pointless chatter of the mind lets us work on our problems rather than in them. It gives the subconscious time and space to work.
2. Listening – The subconscious tells the conscious what it needs and thinks with emotion and inspiration.
3. Problem-solving – The conscious mind is excellent at organizing and re-organizing information in sequences and stories.
4. Learning – The conscious and subconscious both are bounded by knowledge. The subconscious learns effectively from sensation and emotion. Whereas the conscious gathers information coded in language and stored in stories and facts. This second type of knowledge is essential because it make us learn vicariously, transcending the boundaries of personal experience.
5.Training –The conscious breaks habits by repeatedly intervening in the gap between stimulus and response until a new pattern is trained. This intervention takes self-awareness, imagination and will-power.
6. Reassuring – Of all the negative emotions, none rules our subconscious like fear. According to Hill, we mainly fear poverty, criticism, and ill-health, loss of love, old age and death. The conscious mind reassures the subconscious, conquering fear through acceptance, belief and action.
7. Protecting – Our conscious constantly competes for emotional and subconscious control. Some external influences are positive, others negative. To protect the subconscious, the conscious mind must understand when and how the subconscious becomes vulnerable. To protect its control, it must then counter negative influences and eliminate their sources from the environment.
Hill’s full approach to financial success can be summarized in 10 steps
1. Decide on a definite purpose: Make it clear, specific and tangible.
2. Embed it in your subconscious and visualize this goal twice daily. Fan the flames of a burning desire to acquire it.
3. Have faith and develop self-confidence, trust and will power.
4. Make a plan and get started right away.
5. Learn what you need and identify the specific knowledge you need to acquire to achieve success.
6.Gather support by like-minded people to sympathize cooperate and share knowledge with.
7. Get help from others and maintain perfect harmony within them.
8. Set your subconscious up for success.
9. Work on your character and develop traits like self-control, focus etc.
10. Never give up. There is no such thing as failure. Look for the opportunity in every setback and remember.
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
We Must Take Control over Our Thoughts
A good example for the power of thoughts is the placebo effect. If you are ill and take real medication (e.g. pills with actual painkillers), then of course you will get better. That’s to be expected, right? Yet, if you’re ill and get pseudo medication (e.g. pills with sugar and water), you will also get better. It’s because you THINK you got real medication. You THINK that this medication will help you and because you THINK that, it’s what actually happens.
If we think “failure”, then failure will be transmuted into reality But if we think “success”, then success will be transmuted into reality.
If we truly want to think and grow rich, we must start to take control over our thoughts, or in other words over our mind. We must take control over our own minds.
According to Hill, we need these two things for controlling the mind:
• A major definite purpose.
• A burning desire to achieve that major definite purpose.
The point is that if we focus on achieving only one thing, our odds of achieving it are greatly enhanced.
The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.
Here are the two things that define what a burning desire should look or feel like:
1. The burning desire makes up the dominating thoughts of our mind. We constantly think about it all day long. It’s what’s on our minds 24/7 from the minute we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. We possibly even dream about it in the night. And because we keep our desire constantly in mind, it will become a burning obsession.
2. The burning desire ensures that we will do whatever it takes to achieve what we desire. We will work hard, make sacrifices, be disciplined, and persistent. We will do almost anything.
Have Faith That You Will Succeed
We must develop the faith or belief that we will accomplish our major definite purpose. Hill states that the emotion of faith is what gives life, power and action to the impulse of thought. In other words, if we want to transmute our major definite purpose into physical reality, we must have faith. So we must believe, and we must be convinced that we will accomplish our major definite purpose.
How to Create Faith
Napoleon Hill says that making repeated affirmations or instructions to our subconscious mind is the only known method to develop faith. We must perceive this idea that we’ve already achieved our purpose. This way, over time, we can convince our subconscious mind that we believe in the achievement of our major definite purpose. The concept of visualizing our desired outcomes as already achieved is something we find in almost every self-help/success book: We must see our goal as already achieved in our mind first, before it can manifest itself in the real world. We must visualize our desired future as if it was already real.
By doing that we create the necessary feeling of faith that is needed to accomplish our goal. If we constantly tell our mind that we already have achieved our desired outcome, it will gradually start to believe that it’s true. It will slowly get convinced that we can actually accomplish our goal. This is the way through which we develop the faith or belief that we will succeed. The way to create faith is through making repeated affirmations and instructions to your subconscious mind.
Napoleon Hill tells us exactly how to make these affirmations and instructions to our subconscious mind.
6 steps to transmute our desires into their physical equivalents
1.Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. Be definite to the amount.
2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire.
3. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.
4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.
5. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire. Name the time limit for its acquisition.
6. Read your written statement aloud twice daily; once just before retiring at night and once after rising in the morning.
Once you’re obsessed with something, you will find ways to make it happen. Napoleon Hill emphasizes that these 6 steps must be executed persistently day in and day out. Only through persistent application can we successfully influence our mind, create faith, and let our desire develop into a burning obsession.
Create a Plan to Achieve Your Major Definite Purpose
Application of the 6 steps will kind of force your subconscious mind to hand over plans for you. It doesn’t matter if the first plan isn’t particularly good. Just get started. When the first plan fails, create a new plan. You can find out why this is important right now. Replace your first plan if it didn’t work out successfully. Keep replacing until you find a plan which does work because it is not the failure of a plan that drives failure but lack of persistence in creating new plans.
Think about Thomas Edison for example. He needed over 10,000 attempts to eventually create a functioning light bulb. In other words, he had to make over 10,000 new plans to achieve his goal. That’s persistence! After failing once, you are already in a much better position to succeed. It is because you already have feedback.
Persistence Is Key
With persistence, you will win. We can’t build muscle, lose weight, build a business or do anything else noteworthy from one day to the next. We need to be patient and persistent.
This means we must also be persistent when applying the principles of this book. We must apply these 6 steps consistently. Not just for a week or two… but consistently over a long period of time. Napoleon Hill says that this is crucial if we want to influence our subconscious mind and create a money/success consciousness. So, we must pay the price of persistence.
Create a master mind to help you achieve your one major definite purpose.
A Master Mind is a group of people who work together for the attainment of a definite purpose.
This is pretty simple and straightforward. A Master Mind brings a host of benefits that will help us in accomplishing our major definite purpose. If you want to build a business, a partner brings additional knowledge, effort, money. But that depends on the partnership. You and your partner can motivate each other when times are tough and each of you brings his or her own ideas to improve the business.
One of the most important things that a Master Mind can bring you is FAITH. If you have powerful people in your Master Mind, chances are that you’ll believe that with the cooperation of your Master Mind allies. Hence, you will achieve your definite purpose.