Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

This review is actually based on the Blinkist summary of the book....and should be read as such. I’ve not done the author the respect due by reading the whole book. But, Hey! life is short and if the Blinikist version inspires me, I’ll try and read the full book. However, I have found, where I HAVE been able to make the comparison, that the Blinkist summary is pretty good at drawing out the main issues of a book. With those provisos, I’ve made a few selections from the suimmary that rather appealed to me and added some personal observations at the end.
If we want to get rich and realize our dreams, we need to recognize a burning desire within us...You should start by defining your own personal goal as precisely as you can. For show more example, if you want to get rich, you should decide precisely how much money you want to make....It’s also important to come up with a plan that outlines every step you’ll need to take until the realization of your goal.
First, write down your goal and your detailed plan for achieving it. Then, read it aloud twice every.....You can only achieve success if it’s based on self-confidence and an unwavering faith in yourself:
In general, auto-suggestion consists of persuading yourself that: you can reach your goals; your thoughts can be transformed into reality and; you must go your own way with confidence.
If you want to be successful, you don’t need to stuff your head with too many facts–it is far more important to acquire the right experiences and knowledge, use your own strengths and fully exploit your own potential.
The most important basis is a willingness to continue learning throughout your life.
you don’t need to know everything yourself. Instead, you need to know who you can ask if you need to know something. It’s usually more practical and productive to be surrounded by a network of experts
Imaginative ability has two different forms: the creative imagination and the synthetic imagination.....By using our creative imagination, we are able to come up with completely new things. Ingenious composers, visual artists and writers use this function to create works unlike anything made before......The synthetic imagination, by contrast, rearranges old ideas into new combinations.
If you want to keep your imagination from getting sluggish, you need to challenge and encourage it.
In order to be able to figure out exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are, it’s advisable to perform a thorough and honest self-analysis....It’s more than enough if you go through a checklist of questions, which should include: Have I achieved my aim for this year?; Was I always friendly, courteous and cooperative?; Did I make all decisions promptly and firmly?
if we want our subconscious to help us realize our desires and goals, we have to make sure that positive feelings play a leading role in our lives. We must, therefore, “feed” our subconscious positive things.....Avoid contact with doom-saying windbags and pay no heed to their discouraging remarks.
The analysis of over 25,000 life stories of people who failed to achieve professional success shows that a lack of determination is the main reason for their failure.
The analysis of the success stories of multimillionaires revealed, by contrast, that they all had two characteristics in common: they were used to making split-second decisions and, once they made them, they stood firmly behind their decisions.
Persistence and endurance are key. That means, above all, that we work constantly on the realization of our goals and don’t lose sight of them. However, obstinacy and inveteracy should be avoided at all costs:
Here are four simple yet crucial rules:
You must have a concrete goal and develop a burning desire to achieve it.
You need a thorough and precise plan
You may not allow yourself to be influenced by negative and disheartening opinions.
You need an intimate, trusting relationship to a person or a group that provides you with support and assistance.
This mutual backing works best in the form of a brain trust–a select group of intelligent people.
The main message of this book is: Wealth– in whatever form– is seldom the result of luck or coincidence. Far from that, it’s almost always the result of different traits and skills that anyone can learn and acquire.
I read the full book years ago...can’t remember how many but it was at least 30 years ago and I remember being rather let down at the time. I feel similarly let down. Yes, I’m ready to read the book ..do a bit of thinking....maybe (with the help of the book) come up with a great idea ...and bingo! I’ll be rich. Well. No it’s not like that. It’s really just a variation on the power of positive thinking with a dash of Bernie Cornfield’s [the Fund of Funds] mantra...”Do you sincerely want to be rich”. And it’s kind of: Set a goal and work hard towards that goal. Be imaginative about it, don’t let doomsayers distract you etc. In other words...positive thinking. And I guess, you probably won’t get rich, in most circumstances, without that sort of focus and drive. But I think the title is deliberately misleading and it doesn’t deliver on the implied promise. Two stars from me. show less

A book that was absolute required reading by the owner of a company I worked at for several years right after getting my first graduate degree. It wasn't bad, necessarily, but even though a "classic," I found it to be - like all such books to me - a lightweight, idealistic, unrealistic pep talk with little tangible value, especially when perceived as such to succeed in business. Because I've read many "business" books that provided a great more practical value than this one did...

I enjoyed the first few sections of the book the most that overviewed the broad messages. The subsequent details were not as compelling. The 1930s perspective on success and wealth was quiet a shock at times, humorous at other times, and all together a forceful message of taking control of ones life and following desires.

think and grow rich is a powerful motivational book that inspires readers to achieve success through positive thinking and goal setting.

Great book for personal development. All the principles route to help build one's confidence from themselves, not from any external forces. It is very true. And whoever undertands it can be a powerful one.
- One of the blessings of maturity is that it sometimes brings one greater courage to be truthful, regardless of what those who do not understand, may think or say.

OK. They said this was a classic book, and that might be evident, because you will realize that the popular book 'The Secret' also shares some common topics with it (borrowed maybe?). It's supposed to be a motivator. Well, I didn't enjoy it that much. To be honest, I even skipped the last 50 pages just to finish it!

I'm not saying the principles included here are wrong; they might be great! But they seemed kinda old and obvious to me, so I didn't get much out of it. I did, however, get a good grasp on the author's idea.

I also felt that the book deviated a little from its main course; not at all what I expected from the title. Perhaps I'm being a little too harsh, but the book might be good for you if you're not too much into motivators show more and stuff.

I gave the book 2 stars because I still got some ideas and tips from it nonetheless. In terms of content, it might get a 3 from me.

Goal setting, desire and persistence will lead to a fortune ... Sorry Napoleon, but I already knew that!

And yeah, the whole book can be summarized into one statement: Believe .. and you WILL achieve .. ! show less

This book was recommended to my by my grandfather when I was less than 10 yrs old. This grandfather also told me that the Billionaires (or millionaires he may have said) started wars at will and created the necessary ruckus in Congress and in the Press after the fact to get what they want. They made huge fortunes off World War I, and even if they did have to pay income taxes for the first time to fight that kind of war, they got a substantial share of the national tax bill back for themselves into few pockets. The architectural record all over the Industrial Midwest attests to those profits. That game persists very well today with 50% of income tax going into military coffers. Less and less of that is going into the hands of military show more personnel and their families. There are plenty of lobbyists working on reducing even that share. Our family have deep roots in Industrial America. My grandparents' grandparents and great aunts and great uncles families played in the same sandbox with Carnegie, Mellon, Frick, Schwab, Ford, Goodyear, etc etc. since before the Civil War.

Mark Booth in his book "The Secret History of the World: As laid down by Secret Societies", which I may also have reviewed on Amazon, summed up the 2000s of years history of Neo-Platonism, or Freemasonry, or whatever other esoterica Napoleon Hill over-simplifies and sugar coats in this book. He says something like "the biggest error in the Western esoteric movement was to focus on materialism and individualism, instead of interconnectedness, spirituality, and sustainability". I couldn't have agreed with him more as I read Think and Grow Rich decades after Grandpa recommended it. It seems a classic left brain, whole brain dichotomy which impacts are now painfully evident on our planet, in our cell tissue, and imprinted on our own psyches, and those of our beloved offspring who inherited their psyches from ours.

Hill is a journalist. We can tell from our own world today where journos take official word from politicians as the explanation for things, that similar errors will arise from a generalist journo like Hill taking the word of Plutocrats about how to succeed in business. They need to cover their trails. Our family has plenty of dirt on Carnegie. It is not mentioned in the book, that Charles Schwab is cited as a huge success for envisaging the US Steel Trust, which became a monopoly, with all associated ills, that Teddy Roosevelt had to bust up so that our economy could continue to function. Said bust up resulted in the creation of rival Bethlehem Steel under Schwab and also a generous shareholding for the forebears of our current Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. No mention of the fact that Schwab died alone in one of his many over-sized white elephant houses and estranged from his wife and children. But, we know because he grew up in the next village from where my grandmother grew up. He like them was from humble German Catholic origins. She spoke of him always as "Charlie Schwab", and they were all very familiar with his many foibles and sources of his business success.

The last remark would be about Asa Candler and his Coca-Cola. Whatever the origins of cocaine in that stuff, today the high fructose corn syrup is the leading cause of diabetes and obesity in our children. The advertising is relentless, manipulative, and plays on deep identity fears. I should know because I once worked at the advertising agency that handled the account for about 50 years. These brands invented the sophisticated advertising techniques that seduce subconsciously and play on fears. The soft drink industry, with their once dependency on sugar from plantations in Cuba, and their political brethren, are now being implicated by declassified documents and the dharma work of investigative journalists who love America, in the assassination of JFK. They are also implicated in the failed attempt at the theatrical event designed to trigger the press ruckus Grandpa said they'd need to get the American people to back an invasion of Cuba. An invasion JFK refused to his demise, whose real purpose was to get nationalized plantations (and workers) back into the hands of dynastic American Yankee families who had owned them since we were a British Colony probably.

Soft drinks bottling was also the way this same crowd established their tentacles in the resource rich third-world by awarding franchises to their clone oligarchs and cement the interdependency on sugar, money, arms, coercion, "free markets" which means no trade unions or democracy in those countries ever. It is also the permanent money maker in countries where there is no investment in anything else to advance the people's lives. The impacts of this kind of business are terrible. Asa of course didn't know any of this would happen, but the stuff was clearly of no nutritional value, but rather another American "tonic" with dubious and impossible to measure psychological claims.

These are hardly the attributes of people who claim to have higher moral principles, or spiritually inspired gifts. The whole thing was a project to culturally invade a nation of people into thinking and believing that they too could become rich, without the benefits of monopolies, private Pinkerton Police forces, bought legislatures, public land grants, tax breaks, stacked courts...the list goes on. It speaks of a kind of Lucifer or Ahriman reconstitution to appear to the uninitiated (pun fully intended) that which it isn't, shrouding pure evil in goodness and light. The purveyors of this over simplified stuff do a great disservice to readers. They also do a great disservice to esoterica and Neo-Platonism.

At least now the cover is blowing, and more mirrors are appearing in the hallway. So we're now seeing more of these hidden angles! I would recommend Paulo Freire "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" to really learn about how one really does becomes rich, just like Grandpa said and with depth of historic evidence, and more importantly how we all could become more prosperous together as a whole world! show less