In this episode of his “Weekly Words of Wisdom” series, Paul H. Flowers Jr. explores the subconscious mind as the eleventh step in his adaptation of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich (renamed Act and Grow Rich). He explains that the subconscious operates continuously—during waking hours and sleep—and that it translates internal thoughts into external reality. Flowers contrasts conscious, visible thinking with the deeper, unseen subconscious that acts like a rolling snowball: once programmed, it gains momentum and shapes outcomes. He warns against negative self‑talk and excuses, arguing that they embed limiting beliefs into the subconscious, which then manifest as undesirable behaviors in work, relationships, and personal goals. The speaker outlines how to re‑program the subconscious through autosuggestion, persistent repetition, emotional intensity, and a supportive environment (mastermind groups). He shares a personal experiment where he altered his sleep pattern by repeatedly affirming a 5‑hour night and pairing the affirmation with excitement, eventually achieving the desired schedule without an alarm. Flowers emphasizes the need to examine past conditioning, discard childhood excuses, and deliberately feed the subconscious with positive, goal‑oriented input—whether through media, affirmations, or surrounding oneself with “no‑excuse” individuals. He concludes by urging viewers to revisit his earlier autosuggestion lesson, create a concrete plan to control their subconscious, and report back on results, promising that mastering this step will dramatically accelerate personal success.
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Welcome to Wednesday's Weekly Words of Wisdom. Paul H. Flowers Jr. here, looking at Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, our own take on it, which is Act and Grow Rich. And this week, stick around, we're going to talk about what goes down right here, or really right here, in your subconscious mind. Now the subconscious mind is a pretty interesting topic. It's the 11th step towards riches, and again, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. We'll talk about how to act on it later. One of the important pieces about the subconscious mind is this, is that it's acting all the time. Your subconscious mind, believe it or not, is gonna be moving now, it's gonna be moving later, and it's gonna be moving even when you're sleeping. So then if you've got this powerful tool that's able to affect your outer reality that's working with you all the time, wouldn't it make sense to know a little bit more about it? Absolutely. One of those things that don't necessarily get taught in school. We've got some fantastic people that add to the value of the education of young minds in America every single day. However, some of the curriculum could only help to be advanced if the children of today and tomorrow knew about that very thing that causes them to have the things that they want to have in their life, which is that subconscious piece in your mind. So what is the subconscious mind? Basically, it's another level. You've got your conscious thought, which is exactly what you see, what's out in front of you, what you know you're thinking about all the time. And then behind that is the subconscious. These are those things to see— excuse me, these are those things that you have going on in your mind that actually cause the things that come out of you later on. So another example of that would be like a snowball kind of going downhill. The snowball uses perpetual motion, uses kinetic energy. It's this little idea in essence that once it starts to rolling, it goes and it comes into this huge, huge thing that is right there in front of you, could essentially take out towns or what have you. That's how your subconscious mind acts. But that little snowball that is your subconscious mind is whatever you put within it prior to you seeing it outside of you, which is that big snowball that now is moving so fast that people can't stop. Now, all of the desires, all of the things that we see visibly, all of the tools, technology— I've talked about this before, uh, but just want to really drive home that it starts in here. It starts with something that you see with your mind, not with your eyes. Unfortunately, a lot of our people are kind of brainwashed or tricked into thinking that it won't exist, or it's not real if you can't see it, meaning here. But if you think about it, the only things that exist now are things that exist because they were seen here before they were seen here, before they were ever felt and touched here with these hands. So when you think about how our senses even work, it's from an internal perspective that then comes out. So when it comes to the mind, it would only make sense that if you act upon move and properly motivate the most internal parts of your mind, that the external parts of your mind will follow suit. For instance, putting the idea in there that you are successful, right? That you are a positive thinker, that you act, speak, and think in ways that move, that are beneficial to you, not in ways that are detrimental to you. Now unfortunately, a lot of us have this habit of negative self-talk, negative outward perceptions of reality in the world that we see, and that then causes more of that negative perception of reality that's outside of us and what we see. So when you think about what you want to see in terms of your life, in terms of a business, in terms of a relationship, you got to think about what you're looking at and how you're relating to that on the inside first. So how do you think about relationships, right? Are they great? Are they not so great? How do you think about work, whatever the work is that you do, whether it's working for yourself, whether it's working for someone else? What do you think about work in general? See, those subconscious thoughts that are kind of the basis, the underlying thoughts of how you think and move, are gonna end up coming out and showing themselves in what it is that you do on a daily basis. So if you're working for someone else, "Oh, you know, I hate this job, I hate this job." Well, if that's the thought that's gonna act inside of you, that's what's gonna show up outside of you. If you work for yourself and have thoughts like, oh, you know, I just, I hate working in general, or I'm lazy, or I can never do this, guess what? Whatever that thing is that's outside of you, it's not gonna come to fruition because you've yet to properly motivate your internal thoughts, your subconscious mind, and reprogram yourself such that you're not actually carrying on ideas and beliefs of the past. Now, what do I mean by that? So again, not a psychologist, psychiatrist, I'm not able to diagnose or cure any of this stuff. However, it would make sense if you just take a little listen and think about it. Most of us from childhood are told quite a few things, and a lot of those things end up helping us define who we shape ourselves to be as an adult, along with the things that we continuously tell ourselves. Once we start realizing that we can talk to ourselves, those things that we tell ourselves continue to shape and mold who we are as adults in the future, not just in the now, which is a really important part to think about. So your subconscious mind and how this all kind of comes into part, you have to look back and see what has been acting upon me. What thoughts, what repetitive ways of being, what belief systems have been put into me that I then, as an adult that could actually control my mind and, and reprogram my subconscious, what of these have I continued to act upon. Because see, sometimes we'll say, oh well, it was my mom, or it was my dad, or my school, or my teacher, or they made me do this, and that's the reason I'm like this today. Well, if there is any adult out there right now using that as an excuse, sorry, gotta hang it up, because it's just that, an excuse. As a child, it's understandable, and even as adults, we can look back and think of when we were children and when those things did in fact have an impact on us. However, as you grow into adult, there's a phrase that paraphrase says something like, as a child I act like a child, I spoke like a child, but as a man I put away childish things and started to do as a man would, right? So as an adult, male or female, you put away these things that you say were the reasons that made you the way you are as a child. Yes, they help to guide you in a certain direction. Whether or not you think that's good or bad now is almost irrelevant. The fact that you can look back on it and say that this is something that I think I should or could have as an impact on my life says that you can make it an impact on your life if you choose to. So your subconscious mind, in essence, is that little piece of you that's down, down deep, almost kind of like the childhood version of you, that if you act on it now as an adult, modify it now as an adult, then as it grows up and continues to sprout itself out in the real world, in the external world that you can see as an adult, the results that you look for will actually come about. But you have to know that it's there. You have to go back and understand how to program— or excuse me, how to unprogram some things, then reprogram it with the program that's gonna work for you, not just today, but for your future self. And then, and only then, mm, excuse me, can you say that you've actually taken control of your mind and practiced what it is that's gonna help you to earn that success that you want in the future. So again, this is the 11th week now, the 11th step towards success, which is the subconscious mind. We've looked at desire, Faith, autosuggestion, and that third one is really important. So how to actually have and control that subconscious mind, we talked about a bit in the third week, which is again the autosuggestion piece. Uh, specialized knowledge and imagination are the fourth and fifth. Afterwards, there's organized planning. You have to have a plan in place that actually makes sense in order to achieve the things that you want. Then next, there was decision, that ability to decide to cut off all other options to say that this is the way that I want to go and that's it. I made a reference to Will Smith's conversation in the video again. Go back and take a look at that one on decision. Persistence, persistence, persistence. You have to persist in the programming of your subconscious mind until it becomes something that's an involuntary reaction, meaning that it moves regardless of whether you're trying to stop it or not. There was a time and point where I used to always wake up late and I say, well, wait a second, I can actually I could actually do something about that once I started learning about how the whole subconscious mind works. And I said, "Well, I sleep 5 hours a night. I do 20-hour days— excuse me, 19-hour days." So, 5 hours a night, 19-hour days. And I just kept saying it over and over and over, over and over and over. I then started to mix it with emotion. So during the daytime, I would actually move around, right? Start doing jumping jacks, putting some energy and excitement into it, talking about how excited I was to actually do these 19-hour days. And then rest for 5 hours a night. And guess what happened? Within a matter of weeks, I got to a point where I would literally sleep for 5 hours a night regardless of what time I went to sleep. Meaning that without an alarm clock, if I lay down at 12:45, took me on average 10 to 15 minutes to actually fall asleep, sleep by 1, I'm up at 6 o'clock without an alarm. Now that's the idea of actually programming your subconscious mind to work in a way that you want it to work. I also had on my screen as a screensaver No excuses, no excuses, no excuses, no excuses. So on my screen, the only thing that I would see when it would stop moving was no excuses. In other words, I wouldn't make excuses for the way I was today, for the way I was yesterday, for the way I'll be tomorrow. There were no excuses that I can come up with because as I realized that as an adult I actually controlled every single piece of my life, then what excuse could I logically make that would actually make sense? Now it only makes sense to people that allow excuses. But if you're around company of persons that don't allow excuses to actually stand in front of what it is that they want to accept or be or however it is, whatever it is they want to accomplish, you know, that's good company, needless to say. But more importantly, that's a great way to actually be and move for yourself, meaning that you don't allow excuses in your space. You don't allow reasons to take up and say, well, this is why I am, or this is why I'm gonna be. So again, we talked about that in persistence. Mastermind group, just made a mention to the people that are surrounding you. Surround yourself with people who don't allow for your excuses, who don't allow for your lack of ambition or wanting to do something, or your negativity. If you have people that support your negative mindset, you might want to consider who you're surrounding yourself with, right? And that's that mastermind principle, really important. Go back a couple of videos and watch that one for a refresher. Last week we actually talked about sexual transmutation. Had a lot of really interesting phone calls, texts, and commentary on that particular video. Just a little caveat to remind those, and I should have mentioned in the video, that the author was specifically referring to how it acted upon men, not necessarily women. But I would like to have a little bit of feedback from both parties on last week's session, bringing us to this week, the subconscious mind. It acts upon us all the time regardless of whether or not we want it to, regardless of whether or not we think it does, and regardless of whether or not we try to stop it. The only thing that you can do is put that subconscious mind to work for you by what it is you consistently and continuously put your— put inside of your mind. Because a really important thing, I wrote this down to actually make sure to mention, your subconscious mind keeps up what you keep in, right? It keeps up what you keep in. In other words, what you keep putting in and and also what you keep internally repeating to yourself through autosuggestion. So if you want that subconscious mind to work for you, keep looking at what you keep putting into it, whether it's dramatic television, whether it's news, or whether it's positive motivational media, speakers, these types of things. It's what you keep putting inside you that's what's gonna keep up outside of you. That's your subconscious mind. That's the main point of why it's so important. So for this week, I'd say this, if nothing else, revisit that piece on autosuggestion. That was actually the third week, the third step towards riches, really short video, about 15, 16 minutes, to talk about what we talk about when we're talking to ourselves. Revisit that piece on autosuggestion and then plan out and take control of your subconscious mind. I promise you, it'll be the best step that you ever took in your life. It'll be one of the most exciting things to actually realize that you then create who you are in the future, not what happened in your past, right? Once you realize that you put that stuff behind you, behind you, and only look and be able to focus forward on what's taking you to that next place in life, which a lot of it has to do with your subconscious programming. When you realize that, when you put it in yourself, because only you can do it, I promise you, your life is gonna take off in ways in which you haven't imagined. So again, let me know your results. Paul H. Flowers Jr. It's been a fantastic week thus far in my personal life. I hope the same has been there for you. Look forward to actually hearing some of the successes that you guys have been experiencing by utilizing this information. Check back in, take a look at the other videos, and again, it's been an absolute plum pleasing pleasure. Thank you for tuning in. See you next week. Bye for now.
