Think And Grow Rich – Concepts
Napoleon Hill
This article is the second in a three-part series on Think and Grow Rich. The previous blog explains what the book is. This blog is a Think and Grow Rich summary that details core concepts, and the next blog will provide actionable tips to help you apply these concepts to change your life. We’ve also written multiple blogs on two similar books, The Kybalion and The Science of Getting Rich.
At the core of Think and Grow Rich are thirteen principles, designed to help you unleash the power of your mind. By adopting and mastering these thirteen principles of Think and Grow Rich, you can tap into the divine power of the universe—what Napoleon Hill called “Infinite Intelligence.” That is the term Napoleon Hill uses to describe the Higher Power, Universal Mind, God Almighty, Jehovah, Yahweh, Holy Spirit or whatever phrase you choose. Once you tap into this power, you can start to use it to attract wealth and abundance.
Thirteen Principles of Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill lays out thirteen principles in Think and Grow Rich. In this Think and Grow Rich summary, we’ll lay out these 13 principles, as well as the true secret of Think and Grow Rich.
These principles are tools to hone and improve your mental faculties, and to help you connect to Infinite Intelligence. Once you learn to adopt the right frame of mind, you can receive insight and intuition from Infinite Intelligence. You can also learn to attract things, from wealth to a loving partner to more free time, using the power of your mind.
The core of Think and Grow Rich’s thirteen principles is that thoughts are things. Moreover, thinking in a certain way gives you the power to magnetize and attract anything you desire into your life. By applying the below thirteen principles, you can attract almost anything that you desire.
So, how do you train your mind so that you can start attracting the wealth and abundance that you want?
Are you looking for help getting in touch with Infinite Intelligence, and identifying an idea that can change your life? I used this exact concept to go from $250k in debt to being part of the top ½ of 1%, and I’d love to show you how I did it. Join the Wealth Creation Mastermind for FREE today.
Principle 1 – Desire
The first step in attracting what you want is to cultivate a desire for it. More specifically, a burning desire. You have to viscerally want it, and then create a vision of your life where you have it. The desire has to be strong enough to sustain you even when things get rough (see Principle 8). By coupling longing, vision, and persistence, you can start to attain your objective.
Principle 2 – Faith
Once you have your desire, you need to have faith in the process. Faith is what Napoleon Hill calls an ‘eternal elixir which gives life, power and action to the impulse of thought.’ It transforms your ordinary thoughts into a spiritual force, which powers your communion with Infinite Intelligence. A weak expression of faith holds little power. If you want to attract more wealth, but you only believe in yourself and this process a little bit, than Hill argues that you’ll only attract a little wealth.
As such, exercising this creative faculty requires closing your mind completely to all that may dim your vision, quench your belief, or cause you to doubt. Put simply, the more rock-solid faith you have in this process, the more quickly and powerfully you can manifest what you want.
Principle 3 – Self Suggestion
If you want to maximize your faith, then you need to monitor your self-talk. Self-talk is the words and mental scripts that you tell yourself, whether it’s, “I struggle for money and I’ll never be wealthy” or, “I attract plenty of money with ease.” Your self-talk starts in your conscious, thinking mind; but if you repeat a certain phrase in your head enough times, it seeps into your subconscious. Hill calls this process ‘autosuggestion’. The subconscious is the fertile, creative aspect of your brain; and the words that it uses to describe you affect how you see yourself. By consciously shaping our self-talk, we can control what transpires in our lives.
Principle 4 – Knowledge
The fourth of the thirteen principles of Think and Grow Rich is that, contrary to popular thought, knowledge is not power. Knowledge attracts abundance when it is organized and intelligently directed through practical plans of action. An action plan built on knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient. You also need to have faith that your plan will produce the outcome you desire. That is done by drawing on the accumulated experience of those who have already accomplished the success you desire.
Hill differentiates specialized knowledge (knowledge organized and used for action) from general knowledge (knowledge that’s not organized and used for action, essentially just trivia). Specialized knowledge can help you to become wealthy, whereas general knowledge is useless.
Principle 5 – Imagination
One of the most famous Napoleon Hill quotes is “whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” If you want to attract abundance, start with an idea. The ability to use your imagination to see a picture in your mind of what you want starts the process of creation. What you want can be anything, from a big house on the beach to a job that lights you up every morning. Go ahead and dream big and have complete faith that Infinite Intelligence will do everything possible to make manifest your most vivid imaginings.
I built my prosperity by applying the principles of Think and Grow Rich, going from $250k in debt to having plenty of money to travel the world. I’d love to show you step-by-step how I did it. Join the Wealth Creation Mastermind for FREE today.
Principle 6 – Planning
When you decide to take a road trip, the first thing you do is put your destination into the navigator system. Perhaps you’ll consult a map and decide on a route to follow to reach your destination. Having a well defined plan of how to achieve your goals is just as important as knowing what roads to take on your drive. But just like on a road trip, sometimes you’ll take a wrong turn and deviate from the right path. That’s why it’s important not just to make a plan before you begin, but also to course-correct when things go wrong. The sooner you course correct, the faster you reach your goal.
Principle 7 – Decision
A vague wish is the opposite of a definite decision. Everyone wishes to have more money, free time, and love. But when you only have a hazy idea of your desire, you can’t tap into the storehouse of power available from Infinite Intelligence. People without a clearly defined purpose procrastinate and put off achieving their goals, because you can’t hit a target you can’t even see.
Instead of making vague wishes, Napoleon Hill recommends that you make a conscious decision. Set a target—whether it’s $100,000 per year, enough money and free time to spend a week in the Bahamas, or something else—and make a decision to aim for that target. You’ll need a certain state of mind to employ this principle. One of the first decisions you’ll need to make is to be mindful of your thoughts and feelings. That is one of the requisites for benefitting from this philosophy.
Principle 8 – Persistence
Like a roller coaster ride, we all have ups and downs. Some days you’re flying high like a bird. Other days you’re the statue. Sometimes it seems like the latter is more common than the former. The easiest and most common thing to do when faced with difficulty, temporary setback, or rejection is to quit. Instead of giving up, when you’re feeling low is the time to double down and persevere. The most successful people aren’t the ones who never take a hit, they’re the ones who know how to take a hit without giving up.
Principle 9 – Mastermind
You must do it yourself, but you can’t do it alone. Sounds paradoxical doesn’t it? No-one ever scales the ladder of success without other people playing a role. If you want to succeed, then you’re going to need help. But you shouldn’t just ask for help from random people. Instead, Napoleon Hill recommends creating a mastermind with other talented entrepreneurs, so that you can work on problems together.
When two or more people join their talent, knowledge, and effort to achieve a definite purpose, Hill argues, it’s almost as though a third mind enters the room, one with more wisdom and experience than any individual member has. Almost all great achievement is the result of a group of dedicated individuals working together.
Principle 10 – Transmutation
Here lies another one of the secrets hidden within this success system. There are certain emotions that evoke a mental state that allows access to Infinite Intelligence. Every feeling has a vibration, and for you to come into harmony with the universal mind, you must be resonating on the same frequency as what you want to receive. That means that if you want the Infinite Intelligence to give you more money, start feeling abundant now. Use powerful positive emotions to make your mind oscillate on a higher frequency, so that you can be in a position to ask for and receive what you really want. Therefore, be aware of your mental, emotional state and choose to transform your thoughts and feelings, degree by degree, step by step into a higher (i.e. more positive) frequency.
Principle 11 – Subconscious Mind
The subconscious mind is the power center of your mental activity. It has dominion over every vital function taking place in your miraculous body and brain. Always on the job, the subconscious mind processes material, energy, and thought and transforms it into living tissue to maintain life. The subconscious is also the part of the mind that transmutes ideas, plans, dreams, and desires into material form. When you visualize abundance, your subconscious is the part of your mind that draws on the force of Infinite Intelligence and manifests abundance for you. This is probably the most complex of the thirteen principles of Think and Grow Rich, so to get a deeper understanding you can listen to Joseph Murphy’s The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind audiobook on YouTube.
Principle 12 – The Brain
Hill asserts that the brain is similar to a radio. Just like a radio, your brain operates at specific set frequencies. In the case of your brain, these frequencies are emotions: love, hate, despair, fear, confidence, and more. A radio can only provide sound when the transmitter and receiver are set to the same frequency. In the same way, if you want your brain to provide wealth, then you have to make sure that your emotions reflect that frequency. If your brain is set to a frequency of despair and poverty, then that is all that you will be able to manifest via the Infinite Intelligence, because that’s the only signal that the Infinite Intelligence sends that you will be able to pick up. But when you set your brain to a frequency of love, confidence, and feeling abundant, then you will naturally manifest those things. When we adjust our mental frequency, we have the ability to communicate, not just from one finite brain to another, but to the mind of Infinite Intelligence as well.
Principle 13 – Sixth Sense
This is where the entire philosophy of Think and Grow Rich culminates. Achieving a complete understanding of the other twelve principles prepares you to receive guidance from an infallible source. Namely Infinite Intelligence. When you’re receiving guidance from this source, it’s almost as though you develop a sixth sense that guides you, with unerring accuracy, to take the steps needed to manifest your desires. Napoleon Hill introduces the idea of a “secret” in Think and Grow Rich, that once discovered and applied will literally sweep followers of this system on to success.
The Secret of Think and Grow Rich
The essential “secret” of Think and Grow Rich is that you are in total control of the one thing that enables you to have the life of your dreams. Whether that’s more free time with your loved ones, a 50 foot yacht, more respect from your co workers, or better, more fulfilling personal relations.
That one thing is your mindset. The secret of Think and Grow Rich is that your thoughts control your mindset, which creates your reality.
The technique to put your thoughts into the right mindset to influence the “creative method of thought” is modifying your emotional state. If you are experiencing a negative emotion, like jealousy, fear or anger, then you are creating a negative mental vibration. You are literally attracting more experiences that will make you resonate that same feeling. On the other hand, when you are in an emotional state of love, pleasure, laughter and happiness, just like a radio broadcasting set, you are sending out vibrational waves into the mind of infinite intelligence. The universal mind responds by sending back to you experiences and things that will make you resonate more of the same.
Monitor your thoughts and feelings. If you want to attract abundance, be certain you are broadcasting feelings of appreciation, fulfillment and joy. This is the mysterious secret of Think and Grow Rich.
Summary of Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill was a deep and complex thinker, but if you’re looking for a quick Think and Grow Rich summary, here it is.
Your mind is a tool that’s more powerful than you realize. You can use it to tap into Infinite Intelligence and manifest almost anything you want.
If you’re intrigued by this Think and Grow Rich summary are looking for a deeper analysis, then we recommend that you join our Mastermind where we discuss Napoleon Hill’s book and similar books in-depth.
Applying These Principles
The mission of the WCM is to help you harness the creative method of thought. We’ll help you cause the things you think about to be created. If you’re looking to tap into the hidden power of your mind and start living the abundant life that you’ve always wanted, then the best way to do that is to join a mastermind of entrepreneurs dedicated to this mission. We highly recommend that you fill out the Join The Mastermind form.
John Rogers is a former Wall Street portfolio manager and served as CEO of Premium Enterprises and President of The Colorado Tire Recycling Center. He transitioned to digital marketing, founding WealthCreationMastermind.com to empower home-based entrepreneurs with cutting-edge strategies. Creator of the “Mastering the Art of Wealth Creation” online course, John has driven significant growth in network marketing, achieving the Blue Diamond rank and earning the title of Univera Associate of the Year in 2015. His expertise in leveraging technology for financial success transforms how entrepreneurs achieve their business goals.