The Law of Success by Napoleon HIlls.

This is probably my reading  magnum opus this year so far.

The Four Volumes

 

original cover

Many people know that Napoleon Hill was chosen by Andrew Carnegie to study the habits of the most wealthy and successful men of their era, and to document his findings so that future generations would be able to use this information as tools to reach their own endeavors. What you may not have heard is that The Law of Success was the original text which was written by Hill, and published in 1928. Think and Grow Rich, which is currently his most widely read book, was not published until 1937. Both books relay similar information, although The Law of Success is truly a more in-depth version, which acts as multiple courses of a class on achievement and prosperity. Think and Grow Rich, though, is about half as many pages and can be carried around more easily for quick reference. You must understand that these are books that you can read over and over, and always learn from.

Napolean Hills.

The Law of Success is organized into sixteen original principles, or lessons. All of them are listed below:


#1: The Master Mind- Telepathy, ether, vibration, and how it all is the basis for how the world functions. A master mind is the alliance of two minds joining in a harmonious way. The power that is formed from two or more minds coming together is more powerful than one alone. This is strictly for minds who trust each other and are interested in the good success of all parties involved.
 
#2: Your Definite Chief Aim- Do not underestimate the value of this due to its simplicity. You need to set an objective before you can achieve it. Not having a solid aim to focus on can not possibly get you to it. You have to know what you want so that you can start receiving it.
 
#3: Self Confidence- Believe that you are worthy of success and that you can attain it. Without this simple understanding- truly understanding it- you will probably get nowhere with most of your goals. If you are not confident, then you cannot sell yourself in life.
 
#4: The Habit of Saving- Stop trying to get a Cadillac if you feel more comfortable paying for a Ford. You are on the path to easily affording a Cadillac.
 
#5: Initiative and Leadership- Addresses the importance of leadership skills (yes, they can be habituated and you don't have to be a born leader). Here, Hill acknowledges the penalties of leadership. Leaders are not always spoken of sweetly. This should not deter you from becoming a leader. It is only "genius" that attracts the attention of critics. Nobody bothers slandering a person who isn't somewhere near the upper rings of the ladder of success.
 
#6: Imagination- Dream, and use your imagination to help lead you to the attainment of your goals. The making good decisions comes with use, and your intuition will always lead you toward your dream. Dreams and actions are closely related.
 
#7: Enthusiasm- Compels you to act. Mix enthusiasm with your work- do something you are enthusiastic about- and you will not get tired nearly as quickly. Hill explains the things that can contribute to enthusiasm, one being to wear nice clothes. Basically, if you look like a million bucks, you'll feel like a million bucks, and you will likely find yourself around a million bucks. The opposite is also true, and this is to be avoided. Feel good about your appearance, because it also affects the first impression of you on others who can be instrumental in your path to success.
 
#8: Self Control- Auto suggestion is like reprogramming your subconscious mind to believe what you want it to believe- to replace your old beliefs with new ones that will serve you better. This takes self control. Have you ever tried to change a habit? It makes sense. When you take control over the thoughts you are thinking, then you can take control of your success. Make these thoughts the ones you want to believe, and see yourself the way you want to see yourself.
 
#9: Habit Of Doing More Than Paid For- If you are going to whine about your work, then you are not going anywhere. Do the work you have in front of you, then ask what else you may do. By doing this, you make yourself valuable, and you will surely reach a point where you are being paid handsomely. Valuable employees are... valuable. This is also and especially true when you are working for yourself.
 
#10: Pleasing Personality- Have one. Don't point things out on people, don't hang your head and say "I'm tired". Mediocrity does not care if you are pleasant or not. Success does.

 
#11: Accurate Thought- Sort "facts" from "information", and use auto-suggestion in conjunction with focused thoughts.
 
#12: Concentration- "Concentration is the act of focusing the mind upon a given desire until ways and means for its realization have been worked out and successfully put into operation" (p 438). That about covers it.
 
#13: Cooperation- The implementing of cooperation between you and others who are going to help you get to your goal (the top of the ladder of success is never lonely, because you can't help but bring others with you). Cooperation must also exist between your conscious and subconscious mind so that they may work harmoniously in your favor.
 
#14: Failure:- Yes! Fail, and be happy that it is bringing you one step closer to success. Failure is inevitable, and it is a great step towards the right direction. Replace "failure" with "temporary defeat".
 
#15: Tolerance: Don't practice prejudice or racism. It is ignorance, and it is a barrier to success. Just see the best in people and situations, and focus only on your goal and the good for all.
 
#16: The Golden Rule- "Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you." Also, "Think of others as you wish them to think of you."

Now, although you could probably get much use from this list alone, it is such a small taste of what Hill has to say. His own enthusiasm for all of these principles, his examples, his in-depth explanations and clarity is fantastic.
Each and every lesson in this book is related to each other, and they are not kept separate except for the sake of organization of the text. All of these ideas are constantly relating to one another. It is impossible to address one lesson without involving another.
 
Even if you have read and practically memorized Think and Grow Rich, read The Law of Success just once and you will likely be happy you did. Rumor has it that the reason Think and Grow Rich was written is because the "authorities" felt that such an exact guide to success could be a threat to their roles in government and society. So, The Law of Success was taken off the shelves until it was replaced by Think and Grow Rich.

#17: this was added in later edition after his death. Cosmic Habitforce.

The Three Essentials of Cosmic Habitforce You are where you are and what you are because of your established habits. The aim of this book has been to force you to examine those habits and to teach you ways to change them. To do this, you need to understand and apply a universal principle I call cosmic habitforce. Cosmic habitforce is the law which makes every living creature, every particle of matter subject to the influence of its environment. It can work for you or against you. The choice is yours.

Using Natural Forces.The grandest example of cosmic habitforce is the operation of the heavens. Stars and planets move with clock like precision. They don’t collide; they don’t suddenly veer off course (at least, not without some major change in the

forces at work, like a supernova or a black hole, which are themselves just another example of matter behaving according to established patterns). A complex system of gravity and inertia, attraction and repulsion keeps things moving so precisely that for millennia human beings have been able to predict the position of the stars and

planets, the timing of eclipses, and the regularity of meteor showers.

Sunflowers don’t grow from turnip seeds; giraffes don’t give birth to tadpoles; clouds

don’t release milk. Everything does that which is its nature to do. All this is a reflection of universal order, which makes so much of the physical operation of the world understandable. Certainly we are still working to understand more than we already do, but science is based on the faith that there is universal order. All actions and reactions are fixed on the basis of this order. In the science of personal achievement you seek to take control of this order by taking control of your habits. You recognize that your thoughts and actions will become as much a part of your nature as Pluto’s orbit is a part of its nature. If your habits are positive, the seeds that the y plant will be, too.

 

summarised by hubpages and world class advisors.

The Grandest of all mysteries - We have to come and go. But how far do we go?

Probably, there has not been such a single moment where so wide were the gates of life’s mysteries - opened up to me - as the period my mother died in February 1998. She had lived some awesome eighty-nine years of great history.  It will be 20 years soon since she was interred.

I was 32 years old by the time my mother passed on. Interestingly, over the years I had grown up believing and knowing my mother was immortal. I cannot connect the genesis of this conviction, but probably like every child, my mum was forever my hero.  She would never die. Strangely – news of her death did not break me and I do recall making arrangements to travel for the preparation of her final rites without a heartbreak. She spoke as one who was in deep control and did everything within her ability to comfort me.

During this period, one of my elder sister was going through a depression and I made a point of visiting her to also find out how she was fairing and passively discuss burial arrangement. I was heartbroken when I saw her in a very sorry state. But things turned around. She actually took the role of comforting me with her deep talk.

Worth noting – my sister had been very close to me since childhood. She was like a mum to me and I recall many things in regards to our interaction. But one experience that has never left me – is our conversation this very day I visited her.

My sister told me, I was the last person she expected to believe our mum had died. That I should know better than anyone else, that our mother lives forever. That she will not attend our mother’s funeral because our mother’s forever spirit is still around and my sister can always talk to her wherever she wishes to. She, however, encouraged me to attend my mother funeral otherwise our relatives may never understand or forgive me if I did not. Kind of a PR request.

And so I traveled to Nyahururu with my family where my Mother was interred. I was in high spirit and very jovial which was a contrast to everyone else. There were many heartbroken people and this touched me a great deal. At some point – I could not hold it and I equally broke down. Not because of my mum but more because of the pain everyone else was experiencing. Then one interesting thing happened.

Pamela – my young niece at the age of twenty years approached me to solely comfort me. She Held me by the shoulders and looked directly into my eyes. Her eyes turned into those of a senior adult. She told me to calm down and pay attention to her grandmother. She is not going anywhere yet, but she would eventually. She went on to explain to me that death does not exist in the absolute sense. It is the mysteries of death that we should reflect and pay attention to more than we should the mysteries of birth. That, her grandmother’s spirit is hovering around to comfort us. Pamela took me through several other stages of the connection between the soul personality and that of the greater whole – merging and emerging. it was a very deep conversation coming from a child who never went to school or interacted with free thinkers in city life.

Ultimately while at the burial, the words of Pamela and those of my sister Waveroni uttered two days earlier, indeed combined into a great torrent.

To cut the story short – both sister Waveroni and my niece Pamela passed on but my experience and the conversation has never left me. What did Waveroni and Pamela know that I did not know? My experience with them gives me a window to understanding the so- called prodigies.  Indeed scientists themselves recognize that genetics and heredity cannot entirely explain the extraordinary faculties of such individual.

But something major continued to happen for a while and several years later. My mother seemed to have taken a while to leave. For several years she remained earthbound for no any other reason but watch her last born son (that is me) she was so attached to at the material plane. She appeared to me even in broad daylight. I once told my wife that Cucu Wa Pamela (My mother that is), keeps on coming and even right now she is at the doorstep. Well, my wife, Sezi could not see her, but I could. I do remember several years’ later pleading with Cucu Wa Pamela to continue with her forever journey – and that I would be fine. She never appeared again. Until one day in a helpless situation, I asked for her help – and I surely got it.  That was in 2016 in the streets of Nairobi.

By writing this piece today – I’m persuaded to urge the reader to reflect more into the mysteries of death. Death probably holds the key to life. The mystery of death is so profound that, despite the millennia of religious doctrine, mythology, scientific research, and the many theories and explanations that exist on the subject, people today are more confused than ever about it. Even within individual religious groups there is often a stark difference of opinion on the nature of death.

Something has to die for new to come. Our bodies are just temporary vehicle housing something permanent and spiritual that is subjectively less restricted. Universal soul infuses all creation and so gradually evolves towards the perfection of its own nature. We are in essence pure spirit of the universal whole, connected to everything and each other.  Through experience over the years, it is clear to me – silence, an attitude devoid of anger does open one to unlimited listening and conversation of the greater whole.

Science has looked deep into the single-celled organism with the detailed glare. It does seem a cell has a mandate to survive and self-preservation – but comes that one call – it stop receiving vitality and withers off communicating to the next neighboring cell. They all start to die in unison. Like everything is over for the moment. In other words, it appears that death is a natural part of life where everything on earth eventually dies.

Let me end this my quoting some writing by a great Persian poet, Jalaluddin Rumi. He was a 13th-century Persian poet, an Islamic dervish, and a Sufi mystic. He is regarded as one of the greatest spiritual masters and poetical intellects. Born in 1207 AD, he belonged to a family of learned theologians.

“I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was human,
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.
As a human, I will die once more,
Reborn, I will with the angels soar.
And when I let my angel body go,
I shall be more than mortal mind can know.”

Let me sum it by saying - Earthly life is simply one of two phases of cosmic life, these two phases succeeding one another indefinitely in the eternal cycle of immortality.

Do Good things, and good things will come your way!

It is impossible to master karma if we deny its reality and if we do not understand how it applies to life of each person.

The best way to avoid karmic trails consist in adopting behavior that is as positive as possible. In other words, we must take care that our thoughts, words, and action are always in accordance with the good.

There is a collective karma for every community sharing the same history, culture, traditions, and even the same religion. By extension, there is one for every family, region, country, and race.