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    Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement
    Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement
    Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement
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    Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement

    By Napoleon Hill

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    Napoleon Hill summed up his philosophy of success in Think and Grow Rich!, one of the bestselling inspirational business books ever. A recent USA Today survey of business leaders named it one of the five most influential books in its field, more than 40 years after it was first published. Now, in Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success, his broadly outlined principles are expanded in detail for the first time, with concrete advice on their use and implementation. Compiled from Hill's teaching materials, lectures, and articles, Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success provides mental exercises, self-analysis techniques, powerful encouragement, and straightforward advice to anyone seeking personal and financial improvement. In addition to Hill's many personal true-life examples of the principles in action, there are also contemporary illustrations featuring dynamos like Bill Gates, Peter Lynch, and Donna Karan. No other Napoleon Hill book has addressed these 17 principles so completely and in such precise detail. For the millions of loyal Napoleon Hill fans and for those who discover him each year, Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success promises to be a valuable and important guide on the road to riches.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 1, 1997
    ISBN9781440673702
    Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement
    Author

    Napoleon Hill

    Napoleon Hill was born in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. He is the author of the motivational classic The Laws of Success and Think and Grow Rich. Hill died in 1970 after a long and successful career writing, teaching and lecturing about the principles of success. His lifework continues under the direction of the Napoleon Hill Foundation.

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      Book preview

      Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success - Napoleon Hill

      001

      A PLUME BOOK

      NAPOLEON HILL’S KEYS TO SUCCESS

      NAPOLEON HILL was born into poverty in 1883, and achieved great success as an attorney and journalist. He was an advisor to Andrew Carnegie and Franklin Roosevelt. With Carnegie’s help, he formulated a philosophy of success, drawing on the thoughts and experiences of a multitude of rags-to-riches tycoons. In recent years, the Napoleon Hill Foundation has published his bestselling writings worldwide, giving him an immense influence around the globe. Among his famous titles are Think and Grow Rich Action Pack (Plume), Napoleon Hill’s A Year of Growing Rich (Plume), and Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion (Signet).

      FULFILL YOUR AMBITIONS

      Why have Napoleon Hill’s guides to success sold millions of copies all over the world—and today are selling better than ever?

      The answer is simple. These books work. In this companion guide to the bestselling Think and Grow Rich!, Napoleon Hill shares seventeen essential principles that will spur your efforts, steel your strength, and make your dreams come true. They include:

      • Using the Mastermind Principle

      • Focusing Your Attention

      • Learning from Defeat

      • Going the Extra Mile

      • Improving Your Mental Attitude

      For anyone seeking personal and financial stability, Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success promises to be a valuable and important guide on the road to riches.

      001

      PLUME

      Published by Penguin Group

      Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

      Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

      Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

      Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

      Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

      Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

      Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

      Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

      Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

      New Delhi—110 017, India

      Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745,

      Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

      Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

      Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

      Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

      Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a

      Dutton edition.

      First Plume Printing, October 1997

      First Plume Printing (Green Preface), July 2007

      Copyright © Napoleon Hill Foundation, 1994, 2007

      All rights reserved

      002

      REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

      The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows:

      Hill, Napoleon, 1883-1970.

      [Keys to success]

      Napoleon Hill’s keys to success : the 17 principles of personal

      achievement / edited by Matthew Sartwell.

      p. cm.

      eISBN: 9781440673702

      1. Success in business. 2. Success. 3. Self-actualization

      (Psychology) I. Sartwell, Matthew. II. Title.

      HF5386.H548 1994

      650.1—dc20 94-15286

      Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      PUBLISHER’S NOTE

      The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

      BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

      penguin.com

      Version_2

      Table of Contents

      About the Author

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      PREFACE

      Introduction

      Chapter 1 - DEVELOP DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE

      Chapter 2 - ESTABLISH A MASTERMIND ALLIANCE

      Chapter 3 - ASSEMBLE AN ATTRACTIVE PERSONALITY

      Chapter 4 - USE APPLIED FAITH

      Chapter 5 - GO THE EXTRA MILE

      Chapter 6 - CREATE PERSONAL INITIATIVE

      Chapter 7 - BUILD A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE

      Chapter 8 - CONTROL YOUR ENTHUSIASM

      Chapter 9 - ENFORCE SELF-DISCIPLINE

      Chapter 10 - THINK ACCURATELY

      Chapter 11 - CONTROL YOUR ATTENTION

      Chapter 12 - INSPIRE TEAMWORK

      Chapter 13 - LEARN FROM ADVERSITY AND DEFEAT

      Chapter 14 - CULTIVATE CREATIVE VISION

      Chapter 15 - MAINTAIN SOUND HEALTH

      Chapter 16 - BUDGET YOUR TIME AND MONEY

      Chapter 17 - USE COSMIC HABITFORCE

      Chapter 18 - THE SEVENTEEN PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS

      Acknowledgements

      INDEX

      PREFACE

      The title Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success should get one’s attention—if how to be successful happens to be of interest to the reader.

      The principles of success that are described in Keys to Success are not only written about, but also explained so the reader can understand and apply the principles in their lives.

      Hill’s books are sold worldwide and are more popular than ever because of the principles of success and their universal appeal.

      You have the same book in your hands that has been used in major universities and is still being taught today as a three-hour college course.

      Napoleon Hill was born in the rugged mountains of Southwest Virginia in 1883, into what Hill described as for three generations ... his people had been born, lived, struggled ignorance, illiteracy and poverty, and died without having been outside the mountains of that section. They made their living from the soil. Whatever money they procured was from the sale of corn converted into moonshine. There were no railroads, telephones, electric lights, or passable public highways.

      Hill’s mother died when he was only nine years old, which could have added to his chances of ever being successful, but his father married a young widow who was educated. Hill described her as a blessing. His stepmother was a constant source of encouragement. She helped Napoleon obtain a typewriter, and he was writing stories by the age of fourteen.

      Like millions of other Americans born into modest or impoverished means, Hill was destined to admire the likes of Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and many other self-made men with passion that bordered on worship. Today, a very similar situation exists where the rich and famous are treated as gods. Like millions of other Americans, Hill would be consumed with interest about people who succeed where others fail, why, and how to structure his own life to take place among the rich and powerful. Hill would dream of meeting these giants, impressing them, and harvesting the wisdom that produced their incredible accomplishments.

      But unlike most of those other millions of admirers and wonderers, Napoleon Hill was destined to fulfill his dreams. Not only did Hill meet and impress America’s greatest achievers of his day, but he would spend his entire adult-hood studying and learning their secrets to success and communicating them to the world.

      Fate would have Napoleon Hill meet his mentor Andrew Carnegie, whom he set out to interview in 1908. Carnegie was seventy-four years old and resided in a sixty-four-room mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Hill admired him because he knew that Carnegie, a poor immigrant boy from Scotland with very little education, had started working at the age of twelve. By the age of thirty-five, Carnegie had created America’s steel industry and had amassed a fortune. Not only did Carnegie personify the American Dream come true, but he also left such an impression on Hill that the words of wisdom from Carnegie would become the cornerstone for Hill’s philosophy of success. He would spend a lifetime developing the success principles.

      As a student of Hill’s philosophy, which is as relevant today as when Hill was doing his studies, you can benefit from the experiences of others, which will save you time and help you avoid errors that others have made. You can learn the principles of success and how to apply them.

      As you read, pay particular attention to the principles, starting with Definiteness of Purpose, which is the starting point of all achievement. You must define your goals, and then develop plans for reaching those goals. Napoleon Hill states that drifting through life without aim or purpose is the first cause of failure.

      Once you have defined your Definiteness of Purpose, reading and studying the other sixteen principles will help you to reach goals that only a very small group of people will ever achieve. The choice is yours and the time is now.

      —Don M. Green Executive Director Napoleon Hill Foundation

      INTRODUCTION

      You can achieve success in anything you do, and this book will show you how to do it.

      Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success is the most practical and revealing examination of the Seventeen Principles of Success that Napoleon Hill ever wrote. These seventeen principles are the essence of the action and attitudes of everyone who has ever had a lasting accomplishment. If you make them your actions and attitudes, you will realize every one of your worthwhile goals.

      The Work of a Lifetime

      Andrew Carnegie, the founder of a steel corporation that later helped form U.S. Steel and a great philanthropist, charged the young Napoleon Hill with what was to be his life’s work: the assembling and analyzing of the qualities that had allowed the great figures of the early United States to achieve their lasting success. Armed only with introductions from Carnegie and a fierce determination, Hill set out to interview more than five hundred of these titans and distill their philosophies into a logical framework.

      From men such as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Woodrow Wilson, and later Franklin Roosevelt, Hill gained invaluable insights. He also learned about the limitations each faced: He found Ford personally insufferable; he encountered and understood Edison’s struggles with near deafness; and though he worked hard for FDR during the Great Depression to combat the national malaise, he disagreed strongly with many of the President’s programs. Hill believed they placed too little emphasis on individual effort and lured Americans into relying on others, instead of on themselves. But by observing, working, and talking with these people, Hill learned priceless lessons that were much greater than the sum of his subjects’ accomplishments.

      Though Hill had already published a number of books which revealed his findings in broad detail and enjoyed commercial success, his crowning achievement was the publication of the all-time best-selling business inspirational book Think and Grow Rich in 1937.

      This clear, concise elucidation of the way to success was an immediate sensation. It lays out the techniques of personal achievement in everyday language, full of examples and exhortations. More than fifty years later, supported by the work of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, Napoleon Hill’s masterwork still finds thousands of new admirers every year, people whose lives are infinitely changed for the better.

      Hill continued to refine his philosophy, sharpening his focus as his wisdom grew and as he met even more people whose lives had been built on the ideas he had outlined. The major outlet for his new knowledge was a veritable whirl-wind of speeches, lectures, and articles he prepared over the next thirty years. He spent his life spreading the gospel of success as directly and as personally as he could.

      Unfortunately so much of the additional intelligence that Napoleon Hill developed was not published in book form. While he persisted in speaking all through his vigorous retirement, the hundreds of thousands of people who discovered Think and Grow Rich after Hill’s death in 1970 have not had the advantage of his guidance on the many more practical points he pursued after the book was written.

      With this in mind, the trustees of the Napoleon Hill Foundation directed that the key elements of Hill’s later inspiration be set forth in this book.

      A New Work

      Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success gives you direct, simple, even brilliant advice on implementing the Seventeen Principles of Success, the major idea behind Think and Grow Rich and the focus of Hill’s lifetime of study. With it you will see how to focus your ideas and enthusiasm into a coherent, comprehensive plan for prosperity.

      The techniques for applying the seventeen principles, the methods by which you can develop them, and the practical insight into their influence on your life all are here just as Napoleon Hill laid them out.

      The text of the book is Hill’s own, compiled from manuscripts, lectures, and college course materials he wrote. The only addition to Hill’s work is the inclusion of some contemporary examples of the seventeen principles in action. Because Hill’s wisdom was so universal and enduring, the benefits of following his advice are just as easily demonstrated in your lifetime as they were in Hill’s. The hazards of ignoring the seventeen principles are also still all too easy to see. They’re included, too.

      Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success then, is vintage Napoleon Hill, direct, straight-talking advice in the manner of the back-woods Virginia boy who became a confidant of Presidents and the prophet of a uniquely American philosophy of achievement.

      It will offer you lucid instruction, keen insight, and a host of opportunities to improve your situation and become a better, more valuable person as you do so. As you read, keep ever in your mind Napoleon Hill’s fundamental maxim, the keystone of all his thought, and you will experience the rewards of success as surely as millions have before you:

      WHATEVER YOUR MIND CAN CONCEIVE AND BELIEVE,

      YOUR MIND CAN ACHIEVE.

      —W. Clement Stone

      1

      DEVELOP DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE

      A Valuable Secret

      ◆

      The Advantages of Definiteness of Purpose

      ◆

      The Power of the Subconscious

      ◆

      Putting Definiteness of Purpose to Work

      ◆

      Creating a Plan

      ◆

      Success Is a Worthy Goal

      ◆

      Creating Opportunity

      Your progress toward success begins with a fundamental question: Where are you going?

      Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement, and its lack is the stumbling block for ninety-eight out of every hundred people simply because they never really define their goals and start toward them.

      Study every person you can think of who has achieved lasting success, and you will find that each one has had a definite major purpose. Each had a plan for reaching that goal, and each devoted the greatest part of his or her thoughts and efforts to that end.

      Andrew Carnegie was the man who led me to formulate my definite major purpose: assembling and publicizing the principles by which great individuals achieve enduring success. Carnegie started work as a laborer in a steel mill. Because of his definite major purpose to make and market better-quality steel than anyone else, he became one of the wealthiest men in the country and was able to endow libraries in small towns all across America. His definite major goal was more than a wish; it was a burning desire. Only by finding your own burning desire will you achieve success.

      The difference between a wish and a burning desire is crucial. Everyone wants the better things in life—money, fame, respect—but most people never go beyond just wishing for them. If you know what you want from life, if you are determined to get it to the point that it becomes an obsession, and you back that obsession with continuous effort and sound planning, then you have awakened and developed definiteness of purpose.

      A Valuable Secret

      The most important part of this book is not written on its pages but is already in your own mind. Once you learn how to harness the tremendous potential of your mind and how to organize the knowledge you already have, you can turn them into the power necessary for attaining your definite major purpose.

      There is a proverb which says:

      "If you would plant for days, plant flowers.

      If you would plant for years, plant trees.

      If you would plant for eternity, plant ideas!"

      This book has been written to induce a flow of ideas through your mind. It will introduce you to your other self, the self which has a vision of your innate spiritual powers and will not accept or recognize failure. It will arouse your determination to go forth and claim the things which are rightfully yours.

      As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, One single idea may have greater weight than the labor of all the men, animals and engines for a century. Put ideas and your definiteness of purpose to work.

      The Advantages of Definiteness of Purpose

      Definiteness of purpose develops self-reliance, personal initiative, imagination, enthusiasm, self-discipline, and concentrated effort. All these are required for success. Throughout this book you will learn in greater detail just what these qualities entail and how they are acquired, developed, and incorporated into your plan for success.

      Definiteness of purpose also brings a host of other advantages.

      Specialization

      Definiteness of purpose encourages you to specialize, and specialization leads to perfection. Your success in life will depend a great deal on your ability to know much about a specific area and to perform exceptionally within it. General education is important because by pursuing it, you will discover your basic aptitudes and desires. Once you have discerned them, however, you should immediately begin to acquire specialized knowledge in your major interest. Definiteness of purpose will act as a magnet to attract to you the specialized knowledge necessary for success.

      Budgeting Time and Money

      Once you have determined your definite major purpose, you will begin to budget your time and your money and all your day-to-day endeavors so that they will lead to the attainment of your major purpose. Time budgeting always pays dividends because each moment is made to progress toward your goal. Money is also used to its best advantage, ensuring that you pass the mileposts along the road to success.

      Alertness to Opportunity

      Definiteness of purpose makes you aware of opportunities related to your major purpose, and it inspires the courage to act on them.

      Edward Bok was an immigrant to this country who set out to make his living by writing. He began a flourishing business writing short biographies, which employed six people. One evening at the theater he noticed that the programs were large and cumbersome, poorly printed, and unattractive. On the spot he conceived the idea of producing a smaller program, easier to hold, better-looking, and including appealing reading matter. The next morning he prepared a sample copy of his proposed program and presented it to the theater manager. Not only would he provide the theater with a better program, but he would do it free in exchange for the exclusive rights. Advertising would pay his costs and bring him profit. The theater agreed, and Bok went into partnership with a friend more experienced than he in publishing and advertising. They quickly signed up all the other theaters in town to avoid competition. The business thrived and eventually expanded to create several other magazines, while Bok became the editor of the Ladies’ Home journal.

      If you can see an opportunity as quickly as you can see the faults of others, you will soon succeed.

      Decision-Making Capability

      Successful people make decisions quickly (as soon as all the facts are available) and firmly. Unsuccessful people make decisions slowly, and they change them often. Remember that ninety-eight out of a hundred people never make up their mind about

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