Napoleon Hill's Master Course

The Original Science of Success

Napoleon Hill

• Publisher: G&D Media
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781722524197
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

THE PHILOSOPHY FOR ACHIEVEMENT AMONG THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AND PROVEN WORKS THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN. Napoleon Hill's Master Course is his ultimate gift to mankind. It is the easiest, most direct path to fulfilling your greatest potential, and one of the most complete self-improvement books available today. These never before published, original copyrighted lectures given by Napoleon Hill himself for the Master Course were delivered in Chicago in the mid-1950s to individuals who were being trained to teach his philosophy to help others achieve their goals.Through this exclusive course designed to improve every facet of your lives and authorized by the Napoleon Hill Foundation, you will discover how to: • UNCOVER YOUR TRUE PURPOSE IN LIFE• ACHIEVE ANY GOAL YOU SET• DEVELOP A PLEASING PERSONALITY• STEP UP TO LEADERSHIP• ACQUIRE A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE• ATTRACT OPPORTUNITIES• DEVELOP ENTHUSIASM• LEARN THROUGH ADVERSITY• FOSTER CREATIVE VISION AND IMAGINATION• MAINTAIN SOUND HEALTH• BUDGET TIME AND MONEYNAPOLEON HILL was an American self-help author. He is best known for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937), which is among the 10 best-selling self-help books of all time. It offered his "secret" for achievement and insisted, like all his books, that fervid expectations are essential to achieving success and improving one's life. His Master Course was developed to help change the lives of people throughout the country.

1

The Definite Major Purpose

This philosophy is based on seven major premises.

The First Premise

The first premise is that definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement, because it is the starting point of all individual achievements. A definite purpose must be accompanied by a definite plan for implementation followed by appropriate action. You have to have a purpose, you have to have a plan, and you have to start putting that plan into action. It’s not too important that your plan be sound, because if you find that you have adopted a plan that’s not sound, you can always modify it. But it is very important to be definite about what you’re going after, what your purpose is. There can be no ifs or buts about it. Before you get through this lesson, you will see why it’s got to be definite.

Just to understand this philosophy, read it, or hear me talk about it, wouldn’t be of very much value to you. The value will come when you begin to form your own patterns out of this philosophy and put them into work in your daily life, your job, and your human relations. That’s where the benefits will really come.

The Second Premise

The second premise: all individual achievements are the results of a motive or a combination of motives. You have no right to ask anybody to do anything at any time without giving that person an adequate motive.

Incidentally, that’s the warp and the woof of all salesmanship: the ability to plant in the mind of the prospective buyer an adequate motive for his buying.

There are nine basic motives. Everything that people do or refrain from doing can be classified under these nine. Learn to deal with people by planting in their mind adequate motives for doing the things that you want them to do.

A lot of people who call themselves salesmen have never heard of the nine basic motives. They do not know that they have no right to ask for a sale until they have planted a motive in the mind of the buyer for buying. The nine basic motives are:

1. Self preservation

2. Financial gain

3. Love

4. Sexuality

5. Desire for power and fame

6. Fear

7. Revenge

8. Freedom of body and mind

9. Desire to create

The Third Premise

The third premise: any dominating idea, plan, or purpose held in the mind through repetition of thought and emotion, allied with a burning desire for its realization, is taken over by the subconscious section of the mind and is acted upon through whatever natural and logical means that may be available.

In that paragraph, you’ve got a tremendous lesson in psychology. If you want the mind to pick up an idea and to form a habit so that the mind will automatically act upon that idea, you’ve got to tell the mind what you want over and over and over again.

When Mr. Émile Coué came over here some years ago with his famous formula, “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better,” he cured thousands of people, but he didn’t cure a great number more than that, and I wonder if you would know why. There was no desire, no feeling put into that statement. You might just as well blow in the wind as to make a statement unless you put some feeling back of it.

Incidentally, if you tell yourself anything often enough, you’ll get to where you will believe it, even a lie. This is funny, isn’t it? But it happens to be true. There are people who tell little white lies (and sometimes they’re not so white as all that) until they get to where they believe in them themselves.

The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between right or wrong. It doesn’t know the difference between positive and negative. It doesn’t know the difference between a penny and a million dollars. It doesn’t know the difference between success and failure. It’ll accept any statement that you keep repeating to it in thoughts or words or any other means.

It’s up to you in the beginning to lay out your definite purpose, write it out so that it can be understood, memorize it, and start repeating it day in and day out until your subconscious mind picks it up and automatically acts upon it.

This is going to take a little time. You can’t expect to undo what you’ve been doing overnight. Your subconscious mind bounces back by allowing negative thoughts to get into it. You can’t expect that to change overnight. But you will find that if you emotionalize any plan that you send over to your subconscious mind and repeat it in a state of enthusiasm, backing it up with the spirit of faith, the subconscious mind not only acts more quickly, but it acts more definitely and more positively.

The Fourth Premise

The fourth premise: any dominating desire, plan, or purpose which is backed by that state of mind known as faith is taken over by the subconscious section of the mind and acted upon immediately. That state of mind is the only state of mind that will produce immediate actions through the subconscious mind. When I say faith, I don’t have reference to wishing or hoping or mildly believing. I have reference to a state of mind wherein you can already see whatever you’re going to do as a finished act before you even begin it. Now, that’s pretty positive, isn’t it?

I can truthfully tell you that never in my whole life have I failed to do anything that I made up my mind to do unless I got careless in my desire to do it and backed away from it or changed my mind or my mental attitude. And I’ll tell you that you can put yourself in a frame of mind where you can do whatever you make up your mind to do, unless you weaken as you go along, as so many people do.

Again: any dominating desire plan or purpose which is backed by that state of mind known as faith is taken over by the subconscious section of the mind and acted upon immediately.

I suspect that only a relatively small number of people really understand the principle of faith and know how to apply it. Even if you do understand it, if you don’t back it up with action and make it a part of your habit life, you might just as well not understand it, because faith without deeds is dead, faith without action is dead, faith without absolute, positive belief is dead. I don’t know how you’re going to get any results through believing unless you put some action back of that belief.

Incidentally, if you tell your mind often enough that you have faith in anything, the time will come when your subconscious mind will accept that, even if you tell your mind often enough that you have faith in yourself. Have you ever thought what a nice thing it would be if you had such complete faith in yourself that you wouldn’t hesitate to undertake anything you wanted to do in life? Have you ever thought about what the benefits of that would be to you?

Many people sell themselves short all the way through life because they don’t have the right amount of confidence, let alone faith. They amount to somewhere between 98 and 100 percent of people. They never in their whole lives develop a sufficient amount of confidence in themselves to go out and undertake the things they want to do in life. They accept from life whatever life hands them.

I have never in my whole life accepted, from life or from anything else, anything I didn’t want. A lot of things were pushed over on my side of the street that I didn’t like, that didn’t smell so good, but I didn’t accept them; I didn’t become a part of them.

The greatest man I have ever known beyond any question of a doubt—and I have known many very great men—measured by his ability to apply this philosophy, was the late Mahatma Gandhi. Now there was a man who understood the principles of faith. He not only understood them, he freed India with them.

It’s a marvelous thing to learn the art of depending upon yourself and using your own mind. Isn’t it strange how nature works? She gives you a set of tools, everything that you need to attain all that you can use or aspire to have in this world. She gives you a set of tools adequate for your every need, and she rewards you bountifully for accepting those tools. That’s all you have to do: just accept them and use them.

Nature penalizes you beyond compare if you don’t accept them and use these gifts. Nature hates vacuums and idleness. She wants everything to be in action, and she especially wants the human mind to be in action. The mind is no different from many other parts of the body. If you don’t use it, if you don’t rely upon it, it atrophies and withers away and finally gets to where anybody can push you around. Oftentimes you don’t even have the willpower to resist or protest.

The Fifth Premise

The fifth premise: the power of thought is the only thing over which any human being has complete and unquestionable means of control. This fact is so astounding that it connotes a close relationship between the mind of man and infinite intelligence.

There are only five known things in the whole universe, and out of those five, nature has shaped everything that’s in existence, from the smallest electrons and protons of matter on up to the largest stones that float out there in the heavens, including you and me. Just five things: time, space, energy, and matter, and those four things would be no good without the fifth thing. Everything would be chaos. You and I never could have existed without that fifth thing.

It’s universal intelligence, and it reflects itself in every blade of grass, everything that grows out of the ground and all of the electrons and protons. It reflects itself in space and in time. In everything that is, there is intelligence, operating all the time. This intelligence permeates the whole universe; space, time, matter, energy, everything.

The person who is the most successful is the one who finds ways and means of appropriating the most of this intelligence through his brain and putting it into action. Every individual has the privilege of appropriating to his own use as much of this intelligence as he chooses. He can only appropriate it by using it. Just understanding it or believing in it is not enough. You’ve got to put it into specialized use in some form.

I believe in miracles. But I saw a lot of miracles fifty years ago that I can explain away very easily now: they’re not miracles anymore. In the final analysis, of course, there is no such thing as a miracle, because every effect has a natural cause. When we can’t discover that cause, oftentimes the effect is so astounding that we call it a miracle.

To me, the most outstanding miracle is the human mind. The mind of the humblest person is capable of extending itself into proportions beyond belief and imagination. Think of a man like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, starting out without education and building two great empires, Mr. Edison ushering in the great electrical age, Mr. Ford ushering in the great automotive age. And then think of Napoleon Hill in one lifetime, creating a philosophy that is benefiting millions of people and will benefit millions after he’s gone. How could he have done that if he hadn’t have made use of his mind?

It wasn’t my education that permitted me to do such a gigantic thing, because I had very little. It wasn’t my financial backing because of that I had none. Even Mr. Carnegie refused to subsidize me, which was one of the finest things I’ve ever came across, although I didn’t think so at the time.

Honestly, the things that have happened are so fantastic that when my business associate Mr. W. Clement Stone and I go out to make speeches, we have to tone down the facts. If we told all of them, they would seem so fantastic, so impossible, that people who do not know of my background wouldn’t believe them. Sometimes I wonder if I believe them myself.

I started with a tremendous handicap, one that I brought over with me from the previous plane as well as that which I found awaiting me when I got here. With all of that, by a series of manipulations, based upon the use of my own mind, I was able to enter, penetrate, examine, and take out the sum and the substance of what five hundred of the smartest men in this country gained by a lifetime of effort. I have put it in a shape so that the humblest person not only can understand it but can embrace it, apply it, and use it to his own benefit. Never in the history of the world has an achievement like this been produced in the life of one author. Never in the history of the world has any other author produced in simple terms a philosophy that you can live by day in and day out, wherever you are, whoever you are, and whatever you’re doing.

All this goes back to the miraculous power of the human mind, but that power is going to do you no good unless you recognize it, embrace it, and use it. The main responsibility of this course is to give you a pattern, a blueprint, by which you can take possession of your own mind and put it into operation. All you have to do is to follow the blueprint. Don’t just pick out the part of it that you like best and discard the others. Take it all as is.

I met a man not long ago who had made quite a huge fortune. He’d made it in a very few years, and he made it honestly. He said, “Napoleon Hill, I want to tell you something that may astound you. When I got hold of one of your books, my wife and I read the book together. My wife pooh-poohed it and didn’t accept it. I wasn’t as smart as she was, but I accepted it, and I became immensely wealthy.”

You will find people who are very much smarter than you. They know all the answers, and they’ll be reluctant to accept this philosophy. They just know it can’t work for them. You will find people like that. Don’t be too disturbed.

I used to become disturbed when not everyone would accept and embrace this philosophy. I got a lesson some years ago that did me more good than anything that had happened up to that time. I was complaining about the ingratitude of one of my students when a man very much older than myself said, “Look here, Napoleon Hill, about nineteen hundred years ago, a very fine man came to this world, and he had a very fine philosophy to live by. And would you believe it, sir? He didn’t get a 100 percent following either. As a matter of fact, you’re doing much better than he did. He only had twelve disciples, and one of them went sour on him. What does it matter if a few go sour on you? Who are you to expect that some of them won’t go sour? If they do, it’s their misfortune, not yours; just remember that.”

Don’t let people disturb you because they disbelieve. You can’t expect all people to believe. If all people had the capacity to believe that you’re going to have when you assimilate this philosophy, this would be a utopia. You won’t be afraid of the H-bomb or of any other kind of a bomb.

The Sixth Premise

The sixth premise: the subconscious section of the mind appears to be the only doorway of individual approach to infinite intelligence. I want you to study that language carefully. I said it “appears to be.” I don’t know if it is. I doubt if you do, and I doubt if anyone knows it definitely. A lot of people have a lot of different ideas about it, but from the best observations that I have been able to make through thousands of experiments, it appears to be true that the subconscious section of the mind is the only doorway of individual approach to infinite intelligence, and it is capable of being influenced by the individual through the means described in this and subsequent lessons.

The basis of approach is faith based upon definiteness of purpose. That one sentence gives you the whole key to that paragraph. Faith based upon definiteness of purpose. Do you have any idea why you don’t have as much confidence in yourself as you should have? Have you ever stopped to think about that? Have you ever stopped to think about why it is, when you see an opportunity coming along or what you believe to be an opportunity, you begin to question your ability to embrace it and use it? Haven’t you had that happen to you many times?

If you’ve had a chance to be closely associated with people who are very successful, you’ll know that that is one thing that they are not bothered by. If they want to do something, it never occurs to them that they can’t do it.

I hope that in your association...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. The Definite Major Purpose
• 2. Applying the Principle of Definite Major Purpose
• 3. The Master Mind
• 4. Applied Faith
• 5. Going the Extra Mile
• 6. A Pleasing Personality
• 7. Leadership and Initiative
• 8. Positive Mental Attitude
• 9. Self-Discipline
• 10. Developing Enthusiasm
• 11. Accurate Thinking
• 12. Concentration
• 13. Learning from Adversity
• 14. Creative Vision and Imagination
• 15. Maintaining Sound Health
• 16. Cosmic Habit Force
• 17. Budgeting Time and Money