Think And Grow Rich Summary & Review [13 Steps To Wealth]

In this Think and Grow Rich summary and review, we’ll discuss the 13 steps you need to take to achieve wealth and richness in your life.

Together with Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich is one of the most influential books that I’ve read.

Think and Grow Rich, written by Napoleon Hill, is probably the #1 famous book on getting rich and successful. Of all time. It was originally published in 1937 with over 100 million copies sold. I can tell you that the lessons from this book still hold true today. 

Wouldn’t it be amazing (and convenient) if you can get what you want, by adjusting your thought pattern? Well, you can! 

Think and grow rich is a powerful book mostly focused on the power of your subconscious mind – by following the laws of success. Riches are a state of mind. Napoleon Hill literally says that we must THINK ourselves rich. Getting rich is not only a matter of how big your house is, how many cars you have, or how much money you can have in your bank account. It’s about who you become in the process.  

“Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds” – Napoleon Hill

In Think & Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill outlines 13 steps to success that he outlined by interviewing over 500 people on how they created the life they wanted. A life of wealth, health, success, and love. The secret to mastering your thought and intention is laid out throughout the book. To get you to that stage asap, let’s dive straight in the think and grow rich summary and review!

Think And Grow Rich – 13 Steps To Wealth

“We are the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls because we have the power to control our thoughts” – Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill starts by stating that thought will become our physical reality. If you follow the steps in his book, your thoughts will transmute into reality. 

A good example to demonstrate the power of thought can be the placebo effect we see in medicine. You’re sick and you get actual medicine, meaning that your symptoms will fade. That’s expected, right? Yet there are people who get better with placebo medication, aka ‘fake’ medication with only sugar and water.

Why is that? Because they THINK they got real medication. You think this medication is helping you, which results in it actually helping you. 

If we think we will get better, we will.

Similarly, if we think about ‘failure’, it will become your reality. If we think about ‘success’, it will become your reality. 

This is the cornerstone of the philosophy in Think and Grow Rich – if you want to think and grow rich, you must take control of your thoughts. If you control your thoughts, you control what will happen in your life. 

The rest of the book is basically focused on the how – HOW can we control our thoughts to attract wealth and richness into our lives?

The Five General Ideas In Think And Grow Rich

1. You start all achievement by desire
2. You have the power to determine your destiny
3. When you are faced with defeat, that means that your plan doesn’t work. Rebuild your plan and try again
4. Your great success will come just one step after complete defeat
5. Set your mind on a definite goal and you’ll achieve your one definite purpose

With the five general ideas in mind; let’s dive straight into how to think & grow rich by discussing the 13 steps to wealth and richness!

1. Have A Burning Desire

The first – and most important – step is to determine a burning desire for where you want to go in life. A crucial step here is to only focus on ONE thing at a time – also called your ‘one definite purpose’. 

When you have too many goals that are not in line with each other, your energy will go to waste there. It’s easier to have one goal at a time – in order to stay motivated and find enough time to do all of them. Life gets easier when you only focus on one thing at a time. 

This is the #1 most important step, without desire you will not get anywhere. It should not just be any desire, it should be a BURNING desire. It should be an obsession. 

What defines a burning desire? You will do whatever it takes, you think about it all day long, you work hard, are disciplined, and persistent. 

“The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. If you find yourself lacking persistence, this weakness may be remedied by building a stronger fire under your desires.” – Napoleon Hill

2. Have Faith That You Will Succeed

You must develop the faith you will accomplish your one definite purpose. You have to believe that you will accomplish your one definite purpose. 

Hill is not the only one who thinks so:

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. – Henry Ford

Believe you can succeed, and you will. – David J. Schwartz

Believe you can and you’re halfway there. – Theodore Roosevelt

This is linked to the placebo effect you get in medical studies – think you will get better and you will. If you think you will achieve your goal, you will. 

It’s all about acting as if what you desire is already in your reality. Meaning that if you want to be wealthy, start acting like you are. Not in terms of spending all your money. More in terms of your behavior: be generous, believe that money will come to you, spend only money on things you value, and more.

3. Auto Suggestion – To Create Faith

How will you create faith? Through autosuggestion.

What the heck is autosuggestion? You need to constantly tell your mind that you are already what you want to become. 

How can you do that? Through the power of visualizations or affirmations. Affirmations are statements that you repeat to yourself to align your beliefs and your desires, to influence your subconscious mind. You will believe that you can achieve wealth, that money comes easy to you, and more.

I personally use affirmations daily. Every day when I wake up at 6 am to jumpstart my day and write on my blog, I say my affirmation. I’ve written down for you what affirmations I personally use to attract wealth and abundance. 

As is noted in many self-help books focused on making you successful, Napoleon Hill also puts emphasis on visualizing your outcome. You must see our goal in our mind as if we’ve already achieved it before it can manifest in the physical world. 

4. Specialized Knowledge

In think and grow rich, there is a distinction between general knowledge and specialized knowledge. Where teachers have general knowledge and neurosurgeons have specialized knowledge.

The emphasis is placed on specialized knowledge.

Why? If general knowledge would mean success, professors would be the wealthiest on this planet. Simply gathering information is not enough these days, as it’s available to anyone at any time. 

Determine what is the knowledge is that you need for your one definite purpose. Use that knowledge that will make your desire come true and give you richness. 

5. Imagination

Imagination is also called ‘the workshop of the mind’ – which makes it sounds very mysterious and cool. 

There are two types of imagination defined in think and grow rich:

• Synthetic imagination – increasing efficiency on tasks you already know
• Creative imagination –  taking inspiration to create and manifest new things

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or do anything extraordinary to become wealthy. When you master the power of imagination, you will be one step closer to fulfilling your definite purpose.

How do you do this? You could start to imagine how it would feel to have monthly passive income coming in. How would you feel when you see the money in your bank account? How would you feel when you see your passive income sources growing and thriving?

6. Organized Planning

If you want to achieve what you desire, you need a concrete plan. 

When you’re going to place A to place B by car, for example from Amsterdam to Paris. When you have a GPS (= a plan), it’s easy, right? You just follow the GPS. 

Without your GPS (= without your plan) you will be less likely to get there. You will take the quickest and most efficient road there, meaning you will waste a lot of gas (resources) and time. Without your GPS you will arrive at your destination a bit later.

The same applies to your goals: without a plan, we waste a lot of time and resources, and we will reach our goal later.  

Take your time to make a plan and write it down – if you write it down it comes into reality sooner. 

Write down your plan and divide them into workable goals – that you really have something to strive towards. 

7. Decision

Hill believes that in order to achieve what you desire, you need to be able to make decisions. He calls decision-making ‘the mastery of procrastination’ – meaning that procrastination is something that everyone will encounter. It’s important to know how to overcome procrastination.

By making decisions.

You need to believe in your decision, and once you’ve made it you must follow through. This doesn’t mean you cannot change your decisions, just be aware that changing your decisions all the time will not be optimal for achieving your one definite purpose.

Take resolute decisions and see them through. 

8. Persistence

“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. More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.” – Napoleon Hill

You might fail when you try for the first time. Or when they try for the 100th time. The 100th time failed proves they’re dedicated and they have a strong desire to succeed. 

Reformulated: When a plan fails, create a new plan.

You can’t give up immediately. If you always create a new plan upon failure, you know one thing for sure: you will succeed sooner or later. I’m 100% sure that there will be a plan that works.

In order to succeed, you need to want it and do anything to make your desire a reality. 

An example of this is Thomas Edison, who needed to try over 10,000 times before he created a functioning lightbulb. He made 10,000 new plans and he succeeded eventually. That’s really persistence!

What helps me in this is to remind myself that everything fails the first time. Not in a negative way, just to accept that failure will be part of the process. To not give up, to not stop trying.

What is the most important ingredient in this? Right, your desire. Once you have a burning desire to accomplish your one definite purpose, you will do whatever it takes. You will be PERSISTENT until you succeed.

9. Power of the Master Mind

A mastermind is a group of people who want to reach similar goals as you do. 

Choose your company wisely, to surround yourself with motivation to keep going. People that will inspire you.

If you’re in the right mastermind with the right people, you will get one major thing from your mastermind: faith. Faith that you will reach your definite purpose.

By surrounding yourself with people who motivate you, you will reach more. 

10. Transmutation

Transmutation refers to the sexual energy that we all have in ourselves. It’s one of the most powerful energies and emotions that we have in our bodies.

It’s not about the physical expression of this energy, rather it’s about redirecting this energy for willpower to achieve your one definite purpose.

Meaning that when you use your sexual energy to direct your mind towards your goals, you will put more energy towards your goal, and therefore it will come true easier and quicker.

11. The Subconscious Mind

Often enough, we want something but we are held back by our beliefs. You can overcome that by quieting your conscious mind through meditation. Another way to align your subconscious mind with your goals is through affirmations, as referred to in step 3.

Once you’re able to influence your subconscious mind, this will help you reach your one definite purpose.

Your subconscious is the part of us that decides what will and will not manifest. 

12. The Brain

When you visualize something, your subconscious mind cannot see the difference between imagination and reality. Meaning that if you put your positive thoughts out, you will get positive things back in your life.

Napoleon Hill refers in Think and Grow Rich to your brain as a ‘sending station’, which can be compared to a radio. You can pick up vibrations of other minds, which have similar frequencies.

13. The Sixth Sense

This is your gut feeling, which becomes more developed when you start implementing the other steps into your life.

Once you have mastered all of the previous principles, you will understand the principles of the sixth sense.

You tune into your subconscious mind, which is your connection with the infinite wisdom of the universe. 

6 Steps To Take To Transform Your Desire Into Richness

1. Think about the exact amount of money you desire. It is not enough to say, “I want plenty of money”. Define an exact amount

2. Decide what you want to give in return for the money you desire

3. Establish an exact date when you want to have the money you desire

4. Create a plan for carrying out your desire, and begin to put this plan into action – whether you’re ready or not

5. Write down how much money you want to get when you want to get it, what you will give in return, and what your plan is

6. Read your written statement twice per day, once in the morning and once at night

AS YOU READ, SEE AND FEEL AND BELIEVE YOURSELF ALREADY IN POSSESSION OF THE MONEY

Conclusion – Think And Grow Rich Summary & Review

Despite what the title suggests, it’s not all about being wealthy.

It’s about achieving what you’re ultimate goal is, whether this is to be wealthy, successful, free, healthy, happy, or another goal. Napoleon Hill shows you through the 13 steps how you can achieve any goal you set your mind to.

This powerful book by Napoleon Hill is hard to capture in a short summary – it cannot make up for the effect the book has. Everyone should read the book at least once in their life. 

Get Think & Grow Rich now and start your journey to acquire riches and wealth!

Did you read think and grow rich? How did you experience the book?