Napolean Hill
Biography and Author of “Think and Grow Rich”
Napoleon Hill, the renowned author of the best-selling book “Think and Grow Rich”, is regarded as a cult figure by any American writer involved in writing books on the subject of success in personal life. Napoleon Hill went through a tumultuous childhood – he was born in a small, one-room shanty in West Virginia in the year 1883. At the tender age of 10, his mother passed away, and by the time he was 13, circumstances had forced him to take up a job as a reporter for local and regional newspapers. When Napoleon turned 25, Lady Luck smiled widely at him – when during the course of a series of interviews on business magnates, he interviewed the distinguished industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie. At that time, Carnegie was a huge name and the media often used to measure his personal fortune as a percentage of the American GDP!
Carnegie had embraced the thought that with a little bit of endeavor even the common man could easily unlock the key to the secret of personal success – he considered that achieving personal success was quite simple and required primarily loads of common sense. During the interview with Napoleon Hill, Carnegie got so impressed by his hard work and commitment that he gave him an assignment – Napoleon was asked to interview 500 America’s rich and famous people and find out what was it about their personality that made them successful. Carnegie armed Napoleon with his personal letters of introduction to these rich and famous people. What followed was 20 years of interviewing, but it were these interviews and their analyses that changed the way Napoleon looked at life. Both he and Carnegie referred to the interviews’ results as the “Philosophy of Achievement”, and both men were of the opinion that even the common man, if he knew what it was about personality that made men successful, could easily find success on his own strength and by tweaking and fine-tuning his personality.
In the year 1928, the critical information from the “Philosophy of Achievement” was distilled into an epic masterpiece entitled “The Law of Success”. The book was a huge success and its doctrine was adopted by many home study courses, which included the Mental Dynamite series that was published in the midst of World War II. Napoleon Hill’s bestseller, “Think And Grow Rich”, was the outcome of putting together the thoughts and ideas from these two personality research works, “The Philosophy of Achievement” and “The Law Of Success”.
After the end of World War II, Hill authored a number of books dealing with sales techniques, and personal and professional growth. For almost 10 years, Hill was employed with the Combined Insurance Company of America as a paid instructor and motivational speaker. During the course of his job, Hill worked upon and developed further his theories for another book of his, “Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude”. This book was a collaborative effort by Hill and a self-made billionaire, W. Clement Stone, who too was of the opinion that personal success could be achieved by sporting a positive mental attitude.
Hill, who was a prolific writer, went on to author many motivational books that laid emphasis on strategizing and achieving personal goals, how to look ahead and secure a solid future for oneself and on his thirteen principles of success. Hill was also a publisher – his own media house published a few books written by him. In 1960, Hill released the second edition of his book “Think And Grow Rich”, which was a reworked and slimmed-down version of the original. Hill was a multifaceted man – a circumstantial entrepreneur who turned into a writer and then to an influential advisor to many American millionaires as well as to Presidents! He breathed his last in 1970, and his last book “You Can Work Your Own Miracles” was published after his death.
Hill, a self-made man, believed in the power of self-confidence and had an unwavering faith in religion. He drove home these qualities throughout his life in every role he played – writer, teacher and advisor. Hill was a religious man and his religious faith made a deep-rooted impact on him: He was of the opinion that only those people who firmly believed that there was a supreme power guiding them would be open to the thoughts and ideas propounded by “Philosophy of Achievement”. In fact, Hill very vaguely touched upon this “religion and faith” issue in many of his books, including his bestseller, “Think And Grow Rich”. His critics rejected this line of thinking and also dismissed his other belief that "only those who were ready for the “Law of Achievement” would be able to discern it".
Hill’s work is mostly about laying down personal targets and goals and about foreseeing success while being rooted in the present. Hill also believed that the positive attitude emanating from a group of positive-thinking individuals would be much greater than the sum of their individual positive attitudes. Hill had reached this conclusion after analyzing all the interviews he had conducted with American millionaires, most of whom were industrial tycoons – every millionaire that Hill interviewed stated that they tasted success only after they saw opportunities and found like-minded people who worked with them and helped them realize their goals. So, the millionaires did not become millionaires merely because they worked hard – they became millionaires only when they hooked up with people who thought on similar lines as they did. Associating with such people gave these millionaires the courage and inspiration to head boldly towards their goals.
Hill also places a lot of emphasis on the role of adversity in the path to glory. According to Hill, it is not possible to achieve greatness easily – you have to work hard at it along with right-minded people and eliminate the adversities that come in the way. Born to a poor family, Hill came up the hard way and fought his way up and that is why he did not have any sympathy for anyone who did not recognize opportunities and work towards grabbing them. He also believed that education and learning were different – he equated learning to “learning from real life”, and that if anyone has to learn from life then he has to go out and actually get going, make mistakes and come out trumps. Just like all the business magnates and millionaires that he interviewed did.
Hill’s work had an impact on many personal-success and motivational writers such as Zig Zeigler, Dale Carnegie and Harold Robbins. In fact, Hill’s body of work has been redeveloped by Bob Proctor and brought out as a DVD entitled “The Secret”. This work reformulates Hill’s “Law Of Success” as the “Law Of Attraction”. Proctor’s version of Hill’s work has once again caught the imagination of scores of Americans and has led to a renewed interest in Napoleon Hill’s original works.
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