Truly “thoughts are things,” and powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and burning desire for their translation into riches, and other material objects.

Sly Disguises of Opportunity

When the opportunity arrives, it will appear in different forms and from different directions which is one of the tricks of opportunity. It has a sly habit of slipping in through the back door, and often it comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. Perhaps this is why so many fail to recognize an opportunity.

Three Feet From Gold

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.

Before success comes in any person’s life, they are sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps some failure. When defeat overtakes a person, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is what the majority of people do.

More than 500 hundred of the most successful people this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.

When riches begin to come they come so quickly, in such great abundance, that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.

When we take into consideration the popular belief that riches come only to those who work hard and long it is an astounding statement. When you begin to think and grow rich, you will observe that riches begin with a state of mind, with definiteness of purpose, with little or no hard work. You, and every other person ought to be interested in knowing how to acquire the state of mind which will attract riches. Observe very carefully, as soon as you master the principles of this philosophy, and begin to follow the instructions for applying those principles, your financial status will start to improve, and everything you touch will begin to transmute itself into an asset for your benefit. Impossible? Not at all. One of the main weaknesses of humanity is the average man’s familiarity with the word “impossible “. We know all the rules that will not work. We know all the things that can not be done amd you have to be willing to stake everything on those rules.

Success comes to those who become success conscious. Failure comes to those who indifferently allow themselves to become failure aware. We have to learn to develop our minds from failure consciousness to success consciousness. We refuse to believe that which we do not understand. We foolishly believe that our limitations are the measure of limitations. Why You are “The Master of Your Fate.” When Henry Ford wrote the prophetic lines “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” he should have informed us that we are the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls because we have the power to control our thoughts. He should have told us that our brains become magnetized with the dominating thoughts that we hold in our minds, and, by means with which no person is familiar, these “magnets “attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.

He should have told us that before we can accumulate riches in great abundance, we must magnetize our minds with intense desire for riches, that we must become” money conscious “until the desire for money drives us to create definite plans for acquiring it.

Reprinted from” Think & Grow Rich” – Napoleon Hill