NAPOLEON HILL Was Born Into Poverty in 1883, and Achieved Great Success As an Attorney and Journalist
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From the Bestsell i ng Author of Think and Grow Rich! With Peace of Mind A PLUME BOOK GROW RICH! WITH PEACE OF MIND NAPOLEON HILL was born into poverty in 1883, and achieved great success as an attorney and journalist. He was an advisor to Andrew Carnegie and Franklin Roo sevelt. With Carnegie's help, he formulated a philosophy of success, drawing on the thoughts and experiences of a multitude of rags-to-riches tycoons. In recent years, the Napoleon Hill Foundation has published his bestselling writings worldwide, giving him an immense influence around the globe. Among his famous titles are Think and Grow Rich Action Pack, Napoleon Hill's A Year ofGrow ing Rich, and Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success. GROW RICH! WITH PEACE OF MIND Napoleon Hill @ A PLUME BOOK Preface Napoleon Hill as a youth was no different from most young people today. He associated success with money in his early career. He wanted to be important, with a display of opulence. People today tend to associate the popular book Think and Grow Rich in terms of money-but Hill's perspective was to change as he matured. Hill remarked in one of his papers that during his early career when he was receiving large sums of money, he be lieved it essential that he drive nothing less than a Rolls Royce. He purchased a large estate in New York; he had servants and a variety of other employees to tend to his wants. This extravagant spending prior to the Great De pression of 1929 led to Hill losing his possessions and, later on, his estate. When Grow Rich! with Peace ofMind was published in 1967, Hill was eighty-four years old. His message had changed. He was older, much wiser, and he wanted to por tray the importance of peace of mind. Hill in Grow Rich! with Peace ofMind states he is trying to help the reader avoid the mistakes he made. As you read the book, perhaps you can learn from Hill's life that many other things besides money and material items are needed in order to truly have peace of mind. You will read of learning from your past, developing a positive mental attitude, living life free of fear, and the importance of shar ing your wealth with others. Napoleon Hill had a very interesting life of research, in terviews, and writings as to what constitute success. This final book combines all of his knowledge on living a life with peace of mind. -Don M. Green Executive Director Napoleon Hill Foundation Foreword I began to plan this book in the closing years of the nine teenth century. It has thus been nearly seventy years in prepa ration. During those years I have witnessed more vital changes in the affairs of men than had taken place in all the previous years of the history of civilization. I have seen the advent of the automobile, the airplane, radio, television, atomic power, the age of space. I have seen electric power spread across the country, industry rise to levels of production beyond nineteenth-century dreams, science and technology enjoy an almost explosive development. I have seen old nations disappear, new nations arise, jungles give way to paved roads, cities burgeon where sleepy villages once stood. And I have seen people adapt themselves to all these changes and go right on being people, just as they have been for uncounted thousands of years. You will find this book takes cognizance of the changing world. In speaking of people, however, I speak of the forces which always have moved people and always will. We still see that without sufficient money our lives are mean and hemmed in, so we want success in earning money. And along with money-success we want to be free of fears, nervous tensions, self-induced illness, worries, unhappiness. That is, in addition to money-success we seek peace of mind to make our lives complete. While this book may help you win great wealth, it can help you win peace of mind in abounding measure. As you will see, when we speak of peace of mind we speak of more than peace as a restful state. Peace of mind is at the same time restful and dynamic, or, we might say, a restful base upon which your life-dynamism stands. It has been called the Foreword vii wealth without which you cannot really be wealthy. It mani fests itself in many ways: It is freedom from negative forces which may take posses sion of the mind, and from any such negative attitudes as worry and inferiority. It is freedom from any feeling of want. It is freedom from self-induced mental and physical ail ments of the kind which chronically degrade life. It is freedom from all fears, especially the seven basic fears we shall expose in all their ugliness. It is freedom from the common human weakness of seeking something for nothing. It is possession of the joy of work and accomplishment. It is the habit of being one's self and doing one's own thinking. It is the habit of checking one's attitudes toward life and toward one's fellow men, and always adjusting these atti tudes for the better. It is the habit of helping others to help themselves! It is freedom from anxiety over what may happen to you after you die. It is the habit of going the extra mile in all human relation ships. It is the habit of thinking in terms of what you wish to do, instead of thinking ofthe obstacles which may get in your way. It is the habit of laughing at the petty misfortunes which may overtake you. It is the habit of giving before trying to get. Peace of mind covers a surprisingly broad field, doesn't it? In every way you use it, it helps you win money-success-and more. Peace of mind helps you live your life on your own terms, in values of your own choosing, so that every day your life grows richer and greater. This volume is written by a man who has found peace of mind the hard way, by trial and error. Its purpose is to help others find their own peace of mind, along with money success, by a shorter and less costly route. If some of the VIl! Foreword episodes seem ultra-personal, please remember that it is the seemingly small events of a man's life which make up the greater portion of his experiences. In my own personal experiences you may see your own. Notice how small experiences conceal both success and failure. They are the first testing ground in which you are given the opportunity to prove that you are the master of your fate, you are the captain of your soul. I realize that nobody wishes to take medicine prescribed by a doctor who does not take it himself when seeking the benefits he proclaims. The "medicine" given herein is the "medicine" proved by its marvelous effect upon myself and thousands of others. Thanks to circumstances I have had the aid of more than five hundred of the most successful men in America. These men allowed me to go behind the curtains of their private lives and see for myself both their good qualities and their weaknesses; their successes and their failures; how they enjoyed or did not enjoy using their money; how this factor related itself to their possession or nonpossession of peace of mind. It was with the Science of Personal Achievement, built on my interviews and research, that I have helped thousands of men and women whip poverty, wipe out the effects of a nega tively conditioned childhood, solve problems, rise above cir cumstances which held them back. Let me say I did this many years after I myself had risen above a heritage of five evils-you may know some or all ofthem- Poverty Illiteracy Ignorance Hopelessness Fear As a youngster I was often hungry. There was a time when I ate bark I scraped off birch trees. Until I reached my teens I continued to be hungry. I am still hungry! Not for physical food, but for mental food; food for a searching mind which still seeks to know more about why some men succeed and some fail, some have inward peace and some have inward conflict. But I have left my childhood handicaps far behind. Foreword ix There came a time when one of the world's richest men, Andrew Carnegie, backed me in a plan to find the secrets of money-success and life-success. I have been an adviser to three United States Presidents, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and I helped the first Presi dent of the Philippines to attain freedom for his people. There was a period in which I courted fame. I craved for it, prayed for it and worked endlessly to achieve it. At long last my mail came from all over the world, sackfuls, more than I ever could read, let alone answer. Promoters looking for my co-operation came by the score, merchants offered me all kinds of credit and many offered to buy my endorsement of their wares. My tastes now are different. It was when I found that if I wanted any sleep I could not have a telephone registered in my name that I began to appreciate peace of mind. Yet while I courted fame I never stopped writing. Book fol lowed book in my effort to tell the world what I had learned about success, about the value of a positive state of mind, about human relations.