Everyone wants to achieve success in life, yet very few people manage to do
so!
Managing to live a ‘successful’, rewarding, and enriching life isn’t a
simple or fast process.
But, Napoleon Hill does a superb job in guiding you to live a meaningful and
rewarding life within his 17 Principles of Success.
A Quick Background: Who was Napoleon Hill and Why Should YOU follow his advice?
Napoleon Hill (1883 - 1970) was an American author in the self-help and
personal-success genres (and he was one of the first people to write about
such genres).
He dedicated his whole life to uncovering how people became successful, and he
strived to identify the characteristics of success and
achievement.
Napoleon Hill's most noteworthy book, Think and Grow Rich (1937), is one of
the top 10 best selling self-help books of all time and is arguably one of the
best self-help books ever written.
The extent of his research being
this book is incredible.
He interviewed over 500 self-made
millionaires over the course of 20 years and he identified many
key characteristics between these people.
The 17 Principles of Success
Napoleon Hill’s 17 Principles of Success are based upon the concepts from two
of his best-seller books Law of Success (1929) and Think and Grow Rich
(1937).
These principles provide a mind opening summary of the key characteristics
that make people successful.
Principle 1: Definiteness of Purpose
For every action that you take, having a purpose is vital.
Your purpose may change as your life unfolds, but to truly feel a sense of
purpose in your life, you must ask yourself questions rather than limiting
yourself to conclusions. Ask yourself: What am I motivated by? What are my passions? Would I enjoy doing this? But most importantly: Why?
A purpose provides your life with a precise focal point to be successful, it gives meaningfulness to your everyday actions.
Principle 2: Mastermind Alliance
The chances of success are improved through the combination of two or more
minds that are able to work together in perfect harmony towards a specifically
shared goal.
To be successful, cooperation with others is essential. You should surround
yourself with like minded people and use the knowledge and advice that these
people can offer to your advantage.
Principle 3: Applied Faith
Applied faith is your mental perspective and approach which focuses on
physically applying your knowledge and intelligence to your underlying
objectives and purposes.
To be successful and reach you objectives in life you have to maintain build
upon your internal desires by making them a reality through your day-to-day
actions.
Principle 4: Going the Extra Mile
This principle speaks for itself. Effectively the more effort you put towards
achieving an objective, the faster and easier it will be to achieve.
This is what is known as the Law of Compensation which highlights that you
will always be compensated for your contribution and efforts regardless of
what they are.
Principle 5: Pleasing Personality
A pleasing personality is simply the total quantity of likeable qualities that
someone has.
These qualities can be both mental and physical and help to distinguish
between different people. Personality traits can determine whether or not
people like you and are a way for people to recognize you, so your personality
plays a key role in determining your success because having a pleasing
personality means people will be more likely to want to work with you.
Napoleon Hill suggests that there are 25 key characteristics of our
personalities that you are able to improve.
Principle 6: Personal Initiative
Your Personal initiative is the desire and inspiration that you have to
complete a task once you have started it.
Being aware of your ability to think independently and work alone is vital,
but having a strong personal initiative gives you the intrinsic motivation
needed to complete tasks on your journey to being successful.
Principle 7: Positive Mental Attitude
The concept of having a positive mental attitude is the idea that having an
optimistic outlook in every situation is capable of guiding you to positive
changes and greater success.
Having this kind of attitude not only allows you as an individual to maintain
focus and inspiration, but being positive around other people also motivates
them too.
So, a positive attitude isn’t just limited to you as an individual through its
application to our peers via the law of influence.
Principle 8: Enthusiasm
Having enthusiasm is where you are strongly excited about something and
overall experience the powerful emotion that we refer to as burning
desire.
Enthusiasm is initiated in our mentality through the way we think which then
becomes a part of our voice and characteristics.
So, having an enthusiastic mindset towards your life purpose or objectives
helps to promote greater overall success through the passion that you have to
achieve.
Principle 9: Self-Discipline
Having greater control over your thoughts means that you are able to increase
the control over your actions.
Self-discipline is how we control our thoughts and feelings, and the way in
which we work to eliminate negative and unnecessary thoughts.
This principle may be one of the hardest to achieve in our modern way of life.
There are endless distractions through technology being all around us.
Yet, if you can truly master the principle of self-discipline in our modern
society, then you are one step of many ahead of the crowd.
Principle 10: Accurate Thinking
Accurate thinking is how you identify and recognise facts from fiction.
This allows you to solely focus on relevant and necessary information to aid
the achievement of your purpose or objectives.
Thinking accurately allows us to improve our time management skills, meaning
we can get more done in less time.
Principle 11: Controlled Attention
Focusing all of your energy and mind power upon the attainment of a definite
goal or objective allows you to stay on a clear course to success.
When we are able to focus our attention upon solely achieving success, we
don’t waste any of our time or energy on unnecessary thoughts, actions or
feelings that can hinder our progress.
Principle 12: Teamwork
The collaboration of effort to complete a task or achieve a common goal is
what we refer to as teamwork.
Whenever a team of people working together have strong task cohesiveness (or a
shared common objective) a synergic relationship can occur.
This is where the combined productivity of people working in a team is greater
than the sum of the productivity of each individual person.
Principle 13: Adversity and Defeat
Many of the greatest success stories are formed through the lessons that
people have learned from failure and defeat Some examples include:
- The iconic children’s author Dr Seuss had his first book rejected by 27 different publishers
- Sir James Dyson created 5,126 prototypes that failed in the process of his iconic Dyson vacuum brand.
- Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first Television job.
- Stephen King’s first book: Carrie, was rejected by publishers 30 times.
- Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
To many people like those above, failures are only a temporary defeat.
Those who have the determination and grit to bounce back and learn lessons
from their failures prove to have very strong mindsets and an urging drive for
success.
Principle 14: Creative Vision
Imagination is the start of every success story, unique invention, or business
idea.
Your imagination needs to be open and bold so that your mind can explore all
the creative possibilities that could soon become a reality.
Through having an open and transparent mind you can explore ideas that others
wouldn’t dare to think of and develop a more creative approach to
thinking.
Principle 15: Health
While striving to obtain your purpose and to be successful in life is
important, you shouldn't be compromising your health to do so.
Your general health can shape who you are as a person which can therefore
affect how you see and interact with the world around you.
Make sure to eat a healthy balanced diet and exercise regularly so that your
mind and body function in a state of optimal performance.
Principle 16: Budgeting Time and Money
Budgeting is vital in order to sustain a happy life. Keeping close control
over your finances and time in both the present and future allows you to
manage your time, income, and expenses so that you can successfully achieve
your objectives efficiently.
Closely managing your time and money is also crucial in decision making and
future predictions. You need to create a strategy that works best for you to
achieve your goals successfully.
Principle 17: Habits
We all have habits, both good and bad.
To achieve
success you must develop and embrace yourself with positive habits that will
make a difference in your life. Every positive habit combined can have a huge
impact overall.
So, if you’ve decided to binge watch your favourite
tv series or stay in bed until midday, you should be questioning the
significant negative impacts these poor habits can have on your day to day
life and therefore your overall ability to be successful.
Conclusion
I’m a big fan of Napoleon Hill’s work.
The way in which he derives his 17 principles of success (amongst many other
ideologies) from real-life case studies is fascinating and truly inspiring.
It’s also amazing to see how all of these 17 principles of success are still
extremely relevant nowadays, yet they were pieced together almost a century
ago!
What do you think of these principles of success?
Is there anything you’d do differently?
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