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Book
Summary/Review: A Year Of Growing Rich
Printed
with permission from: 
The
following is a highlighted summary of the book, A Year of
Growing Rich, published by Plume.
The statements below are key points of the book as determined
by James Altfeld and have been made available at no charge
to the user.
Napoleon
Hill's
A Year of Growing Rich
52 Steps to Achieving Life's Rewards
Foreword by W. Clement Stone
"What
is your one definite purpose in life-and what plans have
you made to attain it?"
To be successful, you must at this moment decide exactly
what your goal is and lay out the steps by which you intend
to reach it.
The
person who acts with purpose and a plan attracts opportunities.
How can life give you
anything if you don't know what you want yourself? How can
other help you to succeed if
you haven't decided how to get there yourself? Only with
definiteness of purpose will you
be able to overcome the defeats and adversities that will
stand in your way.
Motivate
Yourself to Achieve Success
…there is a difference between merely wishing for something
and deciding definitely that
you are going to have it.
Some
Succeed, Others Fail…Why?
The successful person is open-minded and tolerant on all
subjects, toward all people. The
failure has a closed mind, steeped in intolerance, which
shuts her off from the recognition of
favorable opportunities and the friendly cooperation of
others.
The
successful person keeps abreast of the times and makes it
an important responsibility to know what is going on, not
only in her own business, profession or community but
throughout the entire world. The failure concerns herself
only with her immediate needs,
acquiring them by whatever means are available-fair or foul.
Strength
Grows Out of Struggle
My grandfather was a wagon maker. In clearing his land for
crop, he always left a few oak
trees standing in the open fields where they were exposed
to the full force of the blazing sun
and blasts of wind.
The
trees that strained against Nature were far stronger and
tougher than the protected oaks deep in the forest. It was
timber from the trees that had struggled that he used for
the wagon wheels, bending them into arc-shaped segments,
without fear that they would break. Because they had struggle,
they had grown strong enough to bear the heaviest loads.
Struggle
similarly toughens the human spirit.
I
received when I once asked one of Henry Ford's top aides
for his formula for success. "I
manage to get in the way of men like Mr. Ford," he
said, "and hope that when they want
something done they'll call on me."
By
running to embrace struggle, rather than trying to avoid
it, you too, can use it to help you
learn, grow-and succeed.
Sincerity
Ask yourself this question: "Granted I'm seeking personal
gain in what I'm about to do. But
am I giving fair value in service or goods for the profit
or wages I hope to make, or am I
hoping to get something for nothing?"
Flexibility
Flexibility means the ability to bend mentally and physically,
to adapt one's self to any
circumstances or environment while maintaining self-control
and composure.
Flexibility,
perhaps, can best be described as the ability to survey
and assess a given situation swiftly and react to it on
the basis of logic and reason with a minimum of emotion.
By developing flexibility you are prepared to take prompt
action in seizing opportunity or
solving problems. It can help you become decisive.
The
head of the Bank of America in San Francisco once said,
"When we hire men and
women, we rate them on four traits: loyalty, dependability,
flexibility and ability to do a
given job well,"
Enthusiasm
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great is ever achieved
without enthusiasm."
Use
Your Personal Initiative
…"Young man, there are two kinds of people who
never get ahead or amount to anything.
One is the fellow who will not do what he is told, and the
other is the fellow who will not do
anything more than he is told."
Get
a Promotion
The surest way to success is to render more and better service
than is expected of you.
Start with the philosophy that the boss isn't going to promote-you
are going to promote
yourself.
Begin
by seizing every opportunity to demonstrate your ability
to hold a higher position.
Instead of shirking responsibility, go out of your way to
seek it. When others pass the buck,
you be the one to make decisions. The most significant mark
of leadership is the willingness to make decisions and accept
responsibility for them.
How
One Man Won a Promotion
"What position higher than my present one am I qualified
to hold?"
Think
how the world would be transformed if each of us adopted
someone else to help
through life. In turn, each of us would be adopted and receive
help.
Let
Others Help You Achieve Success
Success will come more quickly and surely if you learn how
to make use of the education,
experience, ability and influence of others.
Welcome
Help from Others
Clear thinking never comes from a worried mind.
Work
with your Team
When you get to the heart of any large, successful corporation,
you find that its every
heartbeat is teamwork, inspired from the top down.
"Whatsoever
a man soweth that shall he also reap," becomes crystal
clear. For it is true that whatever you do to or for another,
you do to or for yourself.
Work
well with your team-and your team will carry you to success.
Wake
up and Meet your Positive Self
You do not see your real self when you look into a mirror.
You see only see the house in
which your real self lives.
If
you aspire to the higher planes of success in life, you
should become better acquainted
with that great, powerful, positive self who lives in your
body.
Let
Habits Work for You
An oak grows from an acorn-always-and the pine grows from
the seed of its ancestor.
You know that Nature never makes a mistake and grows a pine
from an acorn and an oak
from the seed of a pine. These facts you can see. But do
you recognize that they do not just happen by chance? Something
has to make them happen! That something is the same power
that fixes habits and makes them permanent. The Creator
permits humanity alone the privilege of fixing their own
habits to suit their own desires.
The
habits of every living creature except humans are fixed
by what we call instinct.
Think
Accurately
James B. Duke had no formal schooling and never learned
to write, but he developed a keen
sense of accuracy in his thinking, which made him one of
the richest men in the world. He
didn't waste time debating with himself over trivialities
or unimportant facts. He reached
decisions quickly after he had the facts.
One
day he met an old friend who was shocked to hear that Duke
planned to open two
thousand tobacco stores. "My partner and I," said
the friend, "have enough trouble with just
two stores and you're thinking of opening two thousand.
It's a mistake, Duke."
"A
mistake!" Duke exclaimed. "I've made mistakes
all my life, and if there is one thing that
has helped me, it is the fact that when I make one, I never
stop to talk about it. I just go
ahead and make some more."
So
Duke went ahead with his chain of retain tobacco stores
which eventually did a weekly
business of millions. He left several million dollars to
build Duke University, and that was
only a small fraction of the wealth he accumulated by his
willingness to make quick, accurate decisions, some of which
were right.
Elbert
Hubbard once defined an executive as "a man who makes
a lot of decisions and some of them are right."
Progress
Call for an Open Mind
The human mentality withers unless it is in constant contact
with the stimulating influence of fresh thought.
The
Blessing of Failure
Watch your reaction to your failures and you will know if
you have the potential for
leadership. If you can keep on trying after three failures
in a given undertaking, you may
consider yourself a candidate for a leadership role in your
present occupation. If you can
keep on trying after a dozen failures, the seed of genius
is sprouting within you.
It
seems that Nature often knocks individuals down with adversity
in order to learn
who among them will get up and make another fight.
Learn
from Defeat
The truly great achievements were attained by men and women
past the age of fifty, and he
expressed the opinion that the most productive years of
men and women engaged in brain
work were from sixty to seventy.
Overcome
Fear to Reach Your Goal
As President Dwight Eisenhower said, "One can attain
a high degree of security in a prison
cell if that's all he wants out of life." The successful
person is one who is willing to take
risks when sound logic shows they are necessary.
Sorrow
Can Be a Blessing
A strong character is like fine steel that has undergone
repeated heating and chilling. Instead of breaking under
adversity, it becomes tempered to even greater toughness.
Your
Source of Power
I have observed two of the most important facts concerning
men and women who are
successful in their chosen occupations and those who are
not. The successes speak in the
future tense of yet unattained objectives which they intend
to achieve. The failures speak in
the past tense of their defeats and disappointments. I have
never know the rule to fail.
Remember, no one can make you angry or hurt your feelings
in any manner whatsoever
without your wiling cooperation. Your mind is your own.
You are the sole supervisor of its reactions to every circumstance
which affects your life.
The above summary has been provided to you compliments of
Altfeld, Inc.
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