The Secret Action Required to Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill And The Mind Hack To Achieving It
The secret action required to Think & Grow Rich or to accomplish anything you desire is persistence. “The achievement of what you desire requires a consistent persistent effort.” There is a brief summary of persistence using Napoleon Hills words in an article at:
These words in bold and in quotes are coped directly from that article on Think & Grow Rich
Persistence
“Persistence is simply the power of will. Willpower and desire, when properly combined, make an irresistible pair. Persistence is to an individual what carbon is to steel. In uncounted thousands of cases, persistence has stood as the difference between success and failure. It is the lack of this quality more than any other that keeps the majority from great accomplishment. As soon as the going gets tough, they fold.”
“If you’re to accomplish the goal you set for yourself, you must form the habit of persistence. Things will get difficult. It will seem as though there’s no longer any reason to continue. Everything in you will tell you to give up, to quit trying. It is right here that if you’ll go that extra mile and keep going the skies will clear and you’ll begin to see the first signs of the abundance that is to be yours because you had the courage to persist. With persistence will come success.”
If one was to take the time to write down all the successful people that come to mind and then ask the question of each one if they were persistent it would quickly be discovered that all the successful people on the page had this quality. People that do not succeed exercise the opposite of persistence which is stubbornness. It is the stubbornness to not do what is needed to succeed that leads to a lack of success. An example is the stubbornness to not take action.
The Mind Hack To Achieving Persistence
Now we know what is required to succeed, It takes a consistent persistent effort to create a positive result just as it takes a consistent and persistent effort to create a negative result. The question is how do we turn on persistence and keep it on? For over a year I struggled with this as my desire was to establish an exercise routine that was once a habit in my life. However, my mind remembered those grueling workouts I participated in while in deep study of the martial arts. As I would think about the physical torture I put myself through my mind kept saying no to establishing a work out routine. I also knew that hard physically demanding work outs are difficult to maintain consistently. This is why most martial arts students never make to the higher levels.
While participating in learning and growing I came upon a Japanese concept called Kaizen. Kaizen is simply small continuous improvement over time. This concept gets around the fear response in our brain and gets us to take action because we are now only making a small effort each day to improve. “Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of kaizen disarm the brains fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.” (Robert Maurer Ph.D.)
Shortly after learning about this I took action by starting to workout just 5-7 minutes per evening on a consistent basis. I found that it was much easier to persist with this approach as week after week went by and I was working out everyday. As time went on I also found that I was working out longer and longer with greater intensity. Baby steps lead to taking bigger and bigger steps. As I did this and established a habit the power of persistence took over. After 30 days I was already seeing and feeling the positive results that come from exercise.
Persistence is a “burning desire” in action. “Back of all this demand for new and better things, there is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose , the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” (Napoleon Hill). The problem is we can have desire and fear at the same time. The power of desire is only realized through persistence and to take action and persist we must overcome fear. “Improve by 1% each dyad in 70 days you’re twice as good.” (Alan Weiss, Ph.D.). Goals can trigger fear and this triggers our fight or flight response.
Once our fight or flight response is triggered we seek comfort. Kaizen allows you to start and persist because it makes what you want to do much easier. However, over time these small consistent and persistent baby steps towards continual improvement add up to make a huge difference.
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