|
|
The Achievement
Mindset
Kate Loving Shenk
Recently, after
going to an on-line business building "bootcamp," I made some
interesting observations when I returned to the work-a-day world, where
the time clock and hard work "by the sweat of your brow," sent me on an
odyssey that even Napoleon Hill would agree with, if I could have the
opportunity to sit with him, and discuss these musings.
Napoleon Hill was an American author who was one of the earliest
producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature.
His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling
books of all time.
Hill stated in his writings that people are free to believe what they
want to believe, and this is what sets the United States apart from all
other countries in the world. Hill's works examined the power of
personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success.
"What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" is one
of Hill's hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a
formula for it that puts success in reach for the average person, were
the promise of Hill's books.
Hill called his success teachings "The Philosophy of Achievement" and he
considered freedom, democracy, capitalism, and harmony to be important
contributing elements. For without these, Hill demonstrated throughout
his writings, personal beliefs are not possible.
He contrasted his philosophy with others, and thought Achievement was
superior and responsible for the success Americans enjoyed for the
better part of two centuries. Fear and selfishness had no part to play
in his philosophy. Hill considered them to be the source of failure for
unsuccessful people.
The secret of Achievement was tantalizingly offered to readers of Think
and Grow Rich. This secret was never named directly as Hill felt
discovering it for themselves would provide readers with the most
benefit.
Hill presented the idea of a "Definite Major Purpose" as a challenge to
his readers, to make them ask of themselves "in what do you truly
believe?" For according to Hill, most people had no firm beliefs,
putting true success firmly out of reach.
Hill's numerous books have sold millions of copies, proving that the
secret of Achievement is still highly sought-after by modern Americans.
Hill dealt with many controversial subjects through his writings
including racism, slavery, oppression, failure, revolution, war and
poverty. Persevering and then succeeding in spite of these obstacles
using the philosophy of Achievement, Hill stated, was the responsibility
of every American Hill's Life and Works
Hill was born into poverty in a two-room cabin in the town of Pound in
rural Wise County, Virginia. His mother died when he was ten years old.
His father remarried two years later.
At the age of thirteen he began writing as a "mountain reporter" for
small-town newspapers. He used his earnings as a reporter to enter law
school, but soon had to withdraw for financial reasons.
The turning point in his career is considered to have been in 1908 with
his assignment, as part of a series of articles about famous men, to
interview industrialist Andrew Carnegie, one of the most powerful men in
the world, at the time.
Hill discovered that Carnegie believed that the process of success could
be elaborated in a simple formula that could be duplicated by the
average person.
Impressed with Hill, Carnegie commissioned him to interview over 500
successful men and women, many of them millionaires, in order to
discover and publish this formula for success.
As part of his research, Hill interviewed many of the most famous people
of the time, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, George
Eastman, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Charles M.
Schwab, F.W. Woolworth, William Wrigley Jr., John Wanamaker, William
Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson,
Charles Allen Ward and Jennings Randolph.
The project lasted over twenty years, during which Hill became an
advisor to Carnegie. As a result of these studies, the Philosophy of
Achievement was offered as a formula for rags-to-riches success by Hill
and Carnegie, published initially in 1928 as the book The Law of
Success.
The Achievement formula was detailed further and published in home-study
courses, including the seventeen-volume "Mental Dynamite" series until
1941.
From 1919 to 1920 Hill was the editor and publisher of Hill's Golden
Rule magazine. It was during this time he wrote a letter to Charles F.
Haanel in which he praised his book The Master Key System.
In the letter he writes: "..I believe I ought to inform you that my
present success and the success which has followed my work as President
of the Napoleon Hill Institute is due largely to the principles laid
down in The Master Key System."
In 1930 he published The Ladder to Success. From 1933 to 1936 Hill was
an unpaid advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt.
In 1937 Hill distilled the Philosophy of Achievement and produced his
most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, which is still in print in
several versions, and has sold more than thirty million copies.
In 1960, Hill published an abridged version of the book, which for years
was the only one generally available. In 2004, Ross Cornwell published
Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised,
restoring the book to its original content, with slight revisions, and
added the first comprehensive endnotes, index, and appendix the book had
ever contained.
From 1952 to 1962 he worked with W. Clement Stone of the Combined
Insurance Company of America to teach Stone's "Philosophy of Personal
Achievement", and to lecture on the "Science of Success".
Partly as a result of his work with Stone, he published Success Through
a Positive Mental Attitude. He died in 1970 in South Carolina, and in
1971 his final work, You Can Work Your Own Miracles, was published
posthumously.
We learn from Napoleon Hill's famous books. By following the principles
included therein, undoubtedly the Achievement Mindset can be won.
Article Source:
www.articlerich.com
Kate Loving Shenk
is a writer, healer, musician and nurse. Click here to discover how you
can be involved in the NEW Napoleon Hill Movie called: Millionaire:
Awaken Your Secret
www.nursingcareertransformation.com/MillionaireSecret.html
|
