Think and Grow Rich is probably one of THE most well-known Self Development books. It’s up there with How to Win Friends and Influence People. In this Think And Grow Rich summary I’m going to share the best ideas that I learned from the book.

Before I go into this anymore. I should say that some sections DO get a little bit weird. But I don’t recommend you ignore anything outright until you’ve tried it and see how it feels to you.

Think And Grow Rich Summary

One of the reasons this book is so great is because so many people had their part in creating the book. YES while it was Napoleon Hill that ACTUALLY wrote it. There were 500 successful men that told their story. Including the extremely successful Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. If the fact that you can learn the biggest ideas for success these men had doesn’t excite you. I don’t know what will.

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Taking Control Of Your Thoughts

If I had to tell you the one thing you can learn from this book. The most important piece of information that you can find dotted around the book. It’s mentioned time and time again in different ways and different stories. It’s that you have to take control of your own thoughts if you wish to be successful.

I’ve talked before about choosing your attitude towards life and why it’s so important. But in short, the only thing you get to control in your life is how you think. Unfortunately as hard as you try your circumstances are not in your control. Only your thoughts towards them can be. If someone sees defeat in the world that doesn’t matter. Not nearly as much as someone who sees defeat in their mind. When you see defeat in the world you can pick yourself up, brush yourself off and try again. But when you see defeat in your mind. You’ve already prophesied your own failure.

For example, think of a day where you’ve just been in the zone. For me, I have some days where I completely smash my blog out of the park. I write 2 or 3 articles, create some motivational quotes, read for a couple of hours and just completely tackle the day. And I bet you have days that are similar. Well, that drive doesn’t come from anywhere external but from your thoughts deep within you. And with the steps learned from this book you can start to make every day amazing

My Favourite Steps From Think And Grow Rich

Desire

Desire is the starting point. Without having something to want you’re not going to shoot for anything. While the book talks about the desire for money. In this Think and Grow Rich Summary I’m going to use these 12 steps for ANY wealth you desire. It definitely doesn’t have to be money! Napoleon Hill states:

“Only when a man or woman truly wants something does he or she act towards attaining that which is wanted. Where wishing is often undefined and non-committal, wanting is well-defined and commits to a course of action. When wanting something is fully developed and working for you subconsciously at all hours of the day, you have Desire”

Growing rich, getting healthier, being happier ALL start from desire. And more importantly your desire to make it happen. You need to have “an intense burning desire.” For what you want in life. It should be one thing you obsess about, dream about, talk about. Spend the majority of your day thinking about it. When you have this desire then you are on the right step to success.

I heard about this desire before and I did not believe it was possible. If you’re in the same place let me tell you it is. I feel that desire now. When you get to a point where you’re willing to spend the rest of your life working towards the attainment of your desire. Knowing you’ll never settle for anything else. Then you’ve got the desire that is going to make your dream become reality.

The 6 Steps Of Desire

There is a lot more detail to this Think and Grow Rich

Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire.

Determine exactly what you intend to give for this money.

Establish a definite date by which you intend to acquire this money.

Create a definite plan to acquire the money, and take the first step immediately.

Put the four items above into a clear, concise sentence describing each part.

Read the statement aloud twice daily, in the morning and at night.

but briefly the 6 steps you need to achieve what you desire are to:

Now it’s important to know that while Think and Grow Rich

is primarily about making money, you can substitute for anything it is that you desire. I want to change lives. So if I fix in my mind exactly how many I want to change. How I intend to do it. When I want to do it by etc. My desire will become reality.

The reason this works is that the subconscious works constantly behind the scenes. It is a success or failure mechanism depending on what you put into it. So by constantly thinking about your desire. Your subconscious will work to make it happen.

And as Tony Robbins says “We don’t get what we want, we get what we HAVE to have.”

If you like this Think And Grow Rich summary, check out my review of The Chimp Paradox.

Faith

You may not be religious. And neither am I. But I still have to include faith as the second step in this Think And Grow Rich summary. Because it is so vital to attaining your desire.

First, you must understand that this doesn’t mean faith in God. This can be faith in anything. For me personally, it’s the faith in myself that I can accomplish my dream if I work consistently toward it as hard as I can. For you, it might be faith in karma, the universe, a diving being. But the bottom line is you need an unnatural amount of confidence, that your desire can be achieved. You need to truly believe that your success will be inevitable. By doing this you deceive your subconscious. You can even program your subconscious to believe that you already have what you desire! Doing this causes you to act in the way you WOULD act if you had attained your dream, which in turn brings the result you want!

To have this level of faith, you need to be able to see past your failures. You need to know no matter what, success is guaranteed to you.

“I believe that every failure carries within it—in the circumstances of the failure itself—the seed of an equivalent advantage. If you examine the lives of truly great leaders, you will discover that their success is in exact proportion to their mastery of failures. Life has a way of developing strength and wisdom in individuals through temporary defeat.” – Napoleon Hill

Auto Suggestion

Out of all the points in this Think And Grow Rich summary, this is my favorite. I’ve written before about the power of auto-suggestion. And if you’re not aware of what it is OR not practicing it every day. Then you are really missing out.

Auto suggestion is a way for you to use your conscious mind to communicate with your subconscious mind. If you want to find out exactly how to do this I HIGHLY recommend checking out my article on it here. The faith talks about above can be attained through repeated auto suggestion and reprogramming of the subconscious mind.

Why Am I Making Such A Big Deal About Auto Suggestion?

The reason why auto suggestion is so important is that 95% of your thoughts are on a subconscious level. These thoughts that you aren’t even aware you’re having are what cause your actions. If you’re having negative thoughts you’re going to have negative actions. However, through auto suggestion, you can change the thoughts you aren’t aware you’re having and replace them with positive ones. Which in turn create positive actions.

Don’t believe me?

Right now strike the most confident body language pose you can and hold it. And watch how quickly your confidence rises. Now try to do the opposite. Sink into yourself and make a body language pose that lacks confidence. And watch how quickly you’ll lose belief in yourself.

So How Does It Work?

When you combine your desire with faith, and consistently auto suggest to your subconscious the end result that you want. Your subconscious has NO choice but to work out how to make it happen. Because your subconscious is like a machine that gives you exactly what you want. The only problem is it considers what you want as what you think about most. So if you’re always thinking you don’t have enough money going to give you exactly what you’re thinking about. Not having enough money.

This Think And Grow Rich Summary would be too long if I tried to teach you how to auto suggest properly. However, I do have an article on Auto Suggestion or you can also read about it in Think and Grow Rich

Specialised Knowledge

General knowledge is worthless when it comes to achieving your dreams. Everyone has general knowledge. You learn general knowledge at school for free. To start to grow rich you need to have specialized knowledge. Think of any professional, they paid the price of learning specialized knowledge through time and sometimes money. If you’re not willing to take the time to learn some kind of specialized knowledge, then this Think And Grow Rich Summary isn’t for you. Because without specialized knowledge. You’re not going to have any sort of edge over anybody else.

If you don’t have any specialized knowledge yet that’s fine. There are still steps you can take to acquire it. You can either:

Decide on the specialized knowledge you need, find it and learn it.

OR

You can find a group of people you can call upon when necessary that already know the knowledge. This is exactly what Henry Ford did. He didn’t have much knowledge and barely an education. But because he was able to place himself with people who could answer any question he asked. He was able to become highly successful.

Also be aware that all knowledge is useless without practical application of what you know.

Imagination

The next step in this Think And Grow Rich Summary is imagination. Imagination is CRUCIAL if you want to succeed in life. Without imagination how are you going to auto suggest to your mind? Or see yourself in a place where you’ve already succeeded.

Because whatever you’re going to bring into this world you need to see it in your own mind first. And the more clearly you see it and envision it. The better you bring it into reality. As Napoleon Hill says “Where desire is the catalyst for achievement, imagination is necessary to give it physical form.”

Organised Planning

What plan do you have for your life? Do you know where you want to be in 1 month, 3 months or a year? Without a plan, you don’t have a destination. You could end up heading in any direction.

Or maybe you do have a plan and it’s been the same plan you’ve had for a year. The only problem is, it’s not getting you where you want to go. If you want to be successful the key is to always adapt and improve your plans. As time goes by things change. And you have to be ready to adapt to this. As Napoleon Hill says:

“When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.”

Start thinking of questions you can ask yourself on a weekly or monthly basis, to make sure that your plans are in check. Because as Napoleon Hill believes “Faultless plans are essential for the growth of riches.”

Another benefit which is spoken about briefly in Think and Grow Rich

Mastery of Procrastination

is that when you have sound plans that you know you can follow. Then, in turn, you become less indecisive and more of a leader. With sound planning, you know exactly what you should do in your life and making decisions becomes a lot easier.

I think I speak for the majority of us when I say we all need this one. If you never procrastinate in your life then YOU have to teach me. But if you’re like the majority of people, you find yourself procrastinating from time to time as well. Napoleon Hill understood that one trait above all others that caused people to fail to succeed was procrastination.

Napoleon Hill declared that the trait that all successful people have in common is decisiveness. You must learn to make decisions quickly and then change them slowly. Once you made up your mind that you’re following a positive path and asserted it in a short amount of time. Don’t become fickle. Stick to your goal and see it through.

The Power of Persistence

In a previous article, I’ve mentioned how important constant persistence and consistency is. So I won’t go into too much detail of what Napoleon Hill said in this Think And Grow Rich summary. But in short, he believes “Persistence is a state of mind that can be cultivated by having a definiteness of purpose, desire, self-reliance, definiteness of plans, accurate knowledge, cooperation, willpower, and habit.” So you should do everything in your power to attain these traits and become persistent.

The Mastermind

This is another one of my favorite principles that I want to talk about in this Think And Grow Rich summary. I mentioned earlier how Henry Ford didn’t have much specialized knowledge but instead had a group of people around him who could answer any question. Well, that was his mastermind.

Because when two or more minds come together you can think bigger ideas that you may not have come up with yourself. You LITERALLY have more brain power than just one person on their own. Sure you may have to share what you earn with other people. But what you earn will be far greater and in more abundance than a person that goes it alone. If you don’t believe in the power of a mastermind think about the founding fathers of America. Together they managed to write a whole declaration that has been followed for years since.

Remember everybody experiences a different life. Therefore they will come up with new ideas and think in different ways to you. If you want to get ahead in the world you will get a lot further AND have more fun when you go forward WITH people.

Sex Transmutation

This is where it gets a little bit weird. But stick with me because it’s also a very interesting concept. In Think and Grow Rich

Napoleon Hill states that the sex drive is the most important drive in a human being. And by using the willpower to redirect that energy into building something positive and following your creative purpose, the energy will be put to better use.

“When driven by this desire, men develop keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times.” – Napoleon Hill

Hill also claims this is why men are rarely successful until their forties. Because at this point they become less preoccupied with chasing women and more interested in creative endeavors.

Maybe there is some sound logic in utilizing sexual energy and instead focusing it on something creative and important. Remember, this book came out around 70 years ago. And now there are whole communities that dedicate themselves to the belief that you can use that energy for something more creative.

This may sound a bit voodoo, but maybe you should give it a try to see what happens.

Subconscious Mind

This is a fact. You can only ever have a positive emotion or a negative emotion in your head at one time. Whichever emotion you have in your head is going to be what speaks to your subconscious. So if you want to fill your subconscious with positive you need to think and more importantly FEEL positive. Because faith cannot exist in your mind when you are dwelling on negative emotions like fear and anger.

Your attitude towards life is the only thing you get to choose and it is your responsibility to choose whether your subconscious will be filled with positivity or negativity. But remember it can only be filled with one. So make sure you always fill your mind up with desirable emotions such as love, faith, and happiness. Rather than negative ones such as fear, anger or jealousy.

Now there are a couple more steps that are mentioned in Think and Grow Rich. However, the points I’ve addressed above can give you a solid foundation that you can start to work on in your life. And if you don’t like reading or simply don’t have the time, then get a Free Audible Trial and receive one FREE Audiobook.

What Wasn’t Covered In This Think And Grow Rich Summary

While I did talk about a lot of amazing points in this summary. I have left out ideas about how your brain is a broadcasting system and “the door to the temple of wisdom.” This Think And Grow Rich summary was already reaching 3000 words and I wanted to give the most important information without fluffing it up too much.

So if you are interested, definitely buy Think and Grow Rich

because it is an inspirational and amazing book to read. Otherwise, don’t forget to leave a comment and subscribe to my emails if you want more great content. And you can also find me on all social platforms.

If you liked my Think And Grow Rich Summary you should also check out my summaries of

‘The Four Hour Work Week‘

‘How To Win Friends And Influence People‘

‘The Chimp Paradox‘.

‘The Power of Habit

Psycho Cybernetics Summary