Episode 129: Larry's Daily Reflections on Winning - You Can't Just Think and Grow Rich

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidell and let's get started. This episode is another idea I'm sharing with you from my own personal daily reflections on winning. Let's talk about Napoleon Hill and the book Think and Grow Rich. Have you heard of that one? I think you probably have because I think that if you go to Wikipedia you'll find out that's one of the top 10 best selling self help books of all time. And I know some really super successful people that will quote from that book all the time. And so let me be a heretic here and tell you that I think that Napoleon Hill has kind of misled people over the years. Now, I don't think he did it intentionally. Most of these guys who write these books, oh, they really believe it. Oh, they really believe it in their mind. This is exactly how you do it. And supposedly he was a guy who. Andrew Carnegie, the great steel magnet, the guy who funded most of the many of the original public libraries all over the country and, you know, big philanthropists and industrialists. But he supposedly hired Napoleon Hill to go out there and interview successful people and see what makes some people successful and other people not. So by his own admission, Napoleon Hill was an interviewer. In other words, he did not come to the table and say, I've used these principles and these insights to build something big myself. He came to the table and said, here's what I think. All of these successful people that I've interviewed, here's what I think they did. And so, you know, he got his material that way. He's an interviewer. Right now in the world there are probably millions of self help books written by interviewers. Interviewers. And an extension of that is the professors never really done anything themselves, but they've studied people who do. And in their mind that's exactly. They got it worked out. This is exactly how things are. And they're very convincing. The thing is, they're amazingly convincing. And it's not that everything they say is wrong. In fact, they say a lot of the right things because, you know, most of the stuff is out there in public anyway. And they kind of compile it in a certain way. But what they can't do and they don't do is tell you exactly. They're kind of around, they're like throwing darts at the target. But they rarely hit the bullseye because they've never been there. You know, they've never done it themselves. So they can't tell you. It's like Somebody's going to guide you to an address in Verona, Italy. But they've never been there. Now they could get on Google, they give you the directions out of the Internet. They can do things like that, but they can't tell you like somebody who's actually lived on the street, who grew up in Verona. And that might not even be true anymore, the way Google Maps and the pictures of everything. But you get the idea, right? So Napoleon Hill, what does he say? Think and grow rich. Everybody loves this book. This title is so misleading. It's right in front of you. In my humble opinion, because everybody wants to do wants the is attracted to the idea of sitting on a log thinking, I'm gonna think myself. I'm gonna think, you know, I'm gonna be like, yeah, I'm gonna put the mental energy in. Most people don't think about that. I'm gonna think and then I'm gonna grow rich. You know what? Napoleon left out the biggest piece of the puzzle. And you know it and I know it. And everybody knows it's got to happen. And that is work. It's almost like think, work like a dog for an extended period of time and then grow rich. He almost got it right now in his mind, of course he got it right. And he's had a best selling book and he's helped a lot of people get bits and pieces of things. But in terms of giving you the overall mindset, if you miss the subconscious message is that work, in other words, grinding it out is not really key to success. You know, as long as you're thinking right, that's like quality and quantity things. You know, people say this thing about quality and quantity. Which one is it? It's both, you idiot. It's like if I, you know, should I spend quality time with my kids or quantity time with my kids? Both. It's both. You should be thinking, you should be working, and then you put yourself in position to maybe grow rich. But as a catchy title that implies work is not really that important. He had a best seller. But don't be, don't let that be in your subconscious. And you know, there is a thing to be successful, you've got to study success. You got to study success and you got to steal success stories, you know, or steal successful principles, concepts and ideas, stealing meaning. Use them yourself. Because no one owns the good ideas. There's no patent on wisdom. And if you're stealing quote unquote, great ideas, those are wisdom applied to a certain situation. And these are ideas really are a Dime a dozen. Where it's priceless is the people who use the ideas and make something incredible happen. So what ideas are you going to use? Well, you study successful people and see exactly what they did, how they explained it, what, what they said about themselves, not what some interviewer said about themselves. Then you take those ideas and you take the ones that fit your situations, but you plug them in as you're working. See, studying success is not going to do anything for you unless you get those ideas that fit your situation in the right time. Right now, they jump out to you, that, that'll work for me. And then you use them. You apply them to what you're doing to increase your productivity, to get more done, increase your efficiency quicker, faster, better, because that's how you elevate yourself in the world. You get more things done than most people you're able to figure out and work your way through tougher situations. You keep bouncing back. You stay on track quicker, faster, better. You're not just sitting over here thinking about it when a problem comes up or you're launching a project or whatever state you're in as you get ready, close to the finish line. You're not thinking about it as you grow it. No, you're working your way there. And we all think it's some kind of genius. These guys are geniuses. They come up with stuff that has never been thought of before. But Ecclesiastes tells us there's nothing new under the sun. The ideas are all out there. The answers are all out there. The question is, are you going to dig down and find them? Or find people who can give you those answers or find those success stories that can give you the clues to what you need to do next? And are you going to use them once you get them? Are you going to apply them, make them your own? Through sweat, through grinding it out and moving up? You know, it's no good to find the staircase if you're not going to climb the stairs. That's not going to get you to the top. And thinking about climbing the stairs, it's not going to put you at the top. You had to climb the stairs. So Picasso and don't feel like you're, you know, if you get these ideas that they're golden. No, everybody uses ideas they pick up from everybody else. Successful people are people that instinctive. Geniuses, they just kind of come up with this stuff. They'll come even you. You'll come up with things that a new slant or an idea in a situation that maybe nobody else has thought of. But by and large, the bulk of what you do and what everybody does to be successful is all this stuff is out there for the taking. If you want to take these ideas and put them to work in your life. Picasso. It's easy to look at artists and say, these guys just geniuses. But Picasso said about himself, he said everything is inspired by something else, see? Everything, Even the great art you see. And of course it takes skill to develop these ideas and everything. But the inspiration comes from other people. So think, study, figure out what people are doing, ask questions, but then use the darn things because only by using it will you develop the skill and create the accomplishments and produce things that are only yours. So anyway, Napoleon Hill got a lot of it right. He didn't get the whole thing. And it turned out a lot of people think he never even met Andrew Carnegie, met all that up. He made all that up, you know, to, for credibility. He probably didn't. He probably, you know, the story's probably true. But I do know there's something, for some reason he missed the real message. And so maybe he didn't interview all those people. He said he did. But he did miss the major point. The most important thing. You go ask yourself, any super successful person you know, and they'll tell you the main thing that separated them is they worked. And like they, it's like you want to learn skill. I mean, play golf, learn how to play a musical instrument. Remember this? This is where they tell the students on their way up. Nobody escapes the repetition. The tennis great Bjorn Borg retired from tennis. He run like six or seven Wimbledons in a row. And then at age 29, he retired. Everybody was shocked. He said, he said, oh, I love to play the tournaments. I love winning, I love the success. He said, I just can't get myself to practice six hours every day, which is what's necessary for me to play in those major tournaments and win. So I'm gone. And he never came, you know, he never really came back because he knew he was done, you know. And so the thing is, whatever you're locked in on, do it with everything you've got so you can achieve something. Then if you decide, I don't want to do this anymore, you've earned the right to make that decision.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind with me, Larry Wydell. If I've helped you in any way, leave us a five star rating review on Apple podcasts. For more information like this, listen to our other Million Dollar Mastermind. Episodes. And check out my Wydell Academy YouTube channel. And visit us on widel on winning.com I'm the million dollar mastermind. And until next time, go, go.