Key insights
1. Desire is the starting point of all achievements
How often do you pause to truly reflect on what you desire? It’s easy to hop on Ubuy or AliExpress and find things we want, but mere wishing doesn’t equate to genuine desire. Wishing for certain items in your Ubuy cart, a house on Lake Lucerne, or a Lamborghini will get you nowhere. On the other hand, desire, which requires a more profound reflection, combined with action, can make your wildest dreams come true.
Hill emphasizes that the overarching key to success is defining a goal and pouring everything – your energy, thoughts, power, and effort – into it. Cultivating a desire through an obsessive goal, a precise plan, and a zero-tolerance-for-failure mindset will inevitably get you to your destination, even if it takes years to get there.
2. To be successful, set goals for yourself
The first insight in the book referenced goal-setting, and this second point expands on its significance. Goals take the chaotic galaxy of our lives, with all of its meteoric distractions and nebulous elements, and convert it into our guiding North Star.
Hill advocates for identifying your most important goal and dividing it into smaller sub-goals, making it more manageable to achieve. That said, regular self-assessment – be it weekly or monthly – is vital to monitor your progress. Yet, it’s important to remember that how you organize your goal-setting is far less important than actually taking any action toward it.
3. Decide to master procrastination
Hill spent decades interviewing individuals and analyzing the data accrued from over 25’000 interviews. One of his conclusions was that procrastination was the leading cause of failure and basically stood as the nemesis of success.
As it turns out, the jokes about procrastination that we heard in grade school and university come with a vicious bite in adulthood. Procrastination will eat away at your chances of success. Remarkably successful people, on the opposite, have all learned to make decisions quickly and definitively. Indecision breeds inaction, leaving room for external forces to sway your course.
The key is to learn to trust yourself. Hill writes that if one is easily persuadable, he lacks the desire, which will ultimately prevent him from reaching the established goals.
The world bends to those who act decisively, but making such decisions requires courage – so dare to be bold.
4. The subconscious mind is the connecting link
The subconscious mind is more receptive to thoughts entwined with emotion. This means emotionalized thoughts are much more likely to translate into action. With this in mind, it’s important to understand your feelings and what constitutes a negative or positive feeling for you.
Hill uses the metaphor of yeast inside a loaf of bread: positive emotions encourage action – they are akin to the yeast that causes the dough to rise. Channeling the right feeling, which starts with recognizing your emotions, will therefore determine whether the loaf of bread turns out delightful or disastrous.
5. “When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.”
In life, there will always be failures and obstacles that come your way. What ultimately determines your success is whether or not you take one more step beyond the point of defeat. By collecting data from over five hundred successful business people, Hill learned that, for the most part, their greatest accomplishments came just one step after what seemed to be their greatest failure.
“Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do.” — Napoleon Hill
