Imagine a deity, whom it would be rational to give credibility in their prescience. It could alternatively be a respectable figure in real life, or an alien, does not matter, and they give you the precise actions to take to get you to prosperity. The almighty awareness dissects your mental emotional preferences and caters the actions to give you decent happiness as well. Execute, your footprints on society and humanity would be markedly engraved.
This is one of my hypothetical daydreaming excursions. I reduce life into planning and executing. I assume the external delegation of the planning part, and try to imagine the marginal difference in overall happiness in life. Is happiness more about figuring out the strategy? Or is it more about executing and witnessing the effects take place? I would guess the nature of the two are intertwined, affecting the course of one another. Still, I learn more about myself thinking “How would my life be if there were no Elon Musk in this world, arguably the most successful person right now, and a deity gives minute-by-minute instructions that would lead me to be like him?”
Although this is not the topic of the book, I find the framework of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill to be in sync with the framework of my hypothetical – planning and executing. The saying may make life seem easy. “Life is a choice between birth and death”. All you have to do is make a good succession of choices. Contrary to the simplicity of the game, many would struggle, for understandable and commonly shared reasons. Lack of self-belief or worries of the more efficient unknown alternatives may hinder one from devising plans, constantly second-guessing whatever blueprint they have devised. Second nature to browse smartphones, perhaps flicking through short form videos also deters whatever productive self that is in charge of the bulldozing execution of tasks.
Hill’s Thirteen-step Proposition
Napoleon Hill further breaks down the planning and execution. The thirteen steps are designed to help any aspirer of success to navigate well, not lose belief and hone the subconsciousness to be an ally of the consciousness during the conquest. BURNING DESIRE and FAITH forms the foundation of this approach – the framework of planning and execution. So long as I desire with such burningness and have faith, PERSISTENCE of execution would indeed yield the planned outcomes. AUTOSUGGEST yourself repeated stimuli to engrave the burning desire and the need for action to your subconscious so that when you are awake, you are indeed “awake”. Obtain SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE and utilize your IMAGINATION to find niches that your values can penetrate the status quo. Subsequently make a resolute DECISION based on your plan. Leverage on your MASTER MIND alliance, your comrades, throughout the ORGANIZED PLANNING process as well as have them as witnesses of your journey. Channel the sexual drive towards your goal thereby achieving SEX TRANSMUTION to better execute plans with PERSISTENCE. Henceforth would be a virtuous cycle, unlocking THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND, THE BRAIN, and THE SIXTH SENSE bringing you closer to the ether of infinite intelligence.
Burning desire is at the inception. The absence of a desperate yearning could render all subsequent planning and executing flimsy. But when does anyone really develop such an intense desire? I would like to have 10 million dollars. But I’d be more or less equally happy to have 9 or 11 million dollars. If I project a certain route to yield 10 million dollars, I am sure there are hundreds of other ways to get there as well. A mother would look out for a newborn’s best interests including safety, enabling extraordinary power and agility in dire situations. However, it is not like the mother would be paranoid with utmost safety at all possible times, say even in the cozy haven of their premises. What makes it possible for one to be crazy about something? Edwin C. Barnes had a burning desire, an obsession, to be Thomas Edison’s business partner when he was a nobody. How and when does one get into something that specific?
This part the book does not cover. You are expected to have a burning desire for something and follow on with the rest. My guess is that the incubation of a burning desire, is to some degree, a mindset. It is a mindset in two regards. The first is that you must tolerate some arbitrariness. The thought of leaving life up to a coin-toss is uncomfortable. Imagine a gelato store with a million different flavors. Of course in this shop it would be infeasible to try out all the flavors. The size of stomach aside, the whole process would take a full week and as much as ice creams are important, it is not important enough to devote 7 days to decide on a flavor. We could try out a few near the entrance, or be clever and decide to sample some subset and choose one out of them. Deciding on the annual budget of a nation is for sure more important than this silly hypothetical, but this does not mean the decision making process could go on forever. For starters, it should be well below one year. Similarly, the contemplation of how to live life should take well below hundred years. It all goes to say there is a sensible time horizon to make a decision, and during that time you would not be able to go over all possible scenarios. You simply have to live with the fact that there could and frankly would be a universe where you are happier. You also can only test out a handful of options that happen to be conveniently positioned within the boundaries of your perception.
The second reason why burningness is a mindset is because sometimes it has to be synthesized artificially. In some lucky cases, say when you meet a love at first sight, the burning desire is summoned naturally. However, by default, no one’s longing for winning a beer pong match would be equivalent to the desire to protect their child. In fact, I believe that all longings, besides the apparently nontrival ones, perhaps only presented by destiny, are more or less trivial. Adding on to the first notion of accepting the arbitrariness in life, we sometimes just need to “decide to embark” on a game using best available information and intuition. Using the method of autosuggestion mentioned in this book, artificial desires could be internalized and consequently be made indistinguishable to a real one.
Then, how is this mindset any better than testing one flavor followed by the other indefinitely? Throughout my life’s share of downswings and upswings in mood, I have observed that it is at those periods where I do not have anything that I am crazy about, that I go crazy. Hence, there may indeed exist value in hypnotizing myself that I really really want this. At least I’ll get to somewhere else, and there I might meet destiny. This is different from the linear testing of ice cream flavors. First, there is room for intuitive decision making at every turn. Also, at the end of every turn you are presented a horizon that you did not have access to in the first place.
This book reminds me of religious texts. You either believe it or you don’t. Here is a sentence from chapter 14 – The Sixth Sense. “You will never know whether or not this is a statement of truth, except by following the instructions described in the pages of this book, or some similar procedure.” Starting from chapter 12, the narrative takes a rather metaphysical turn. I am talking about words like ether, infinite intelligence, and telepathy. Although the book lost me at this point, I appreciate the audacity of the author’s philosophy. After all, everything is an interpretation. If this is the culmination of a life-long analysis on successful people, a subjectively sound perspective of viewing the world, I will take that. What is amusing is that the unwavering definitiveness that is required to be successful is demonstrated in the sheer confidence in his assertions that convince the readers! The boldness of statements inspires me, scares me and makes me chuckle.
I am doubtful how many would end up following the step-by-step daily routines suggested by him. In fact, there is also an annual checklist as well as several post-reading to-dos. I enjoyed the book overall though. It deeply resonated with the thoughts I am having – being a person who quit his job two weeks ago after reading Shoedog. Stories of successful people were oddly consoling, not that I am upset these days. It was also good to know that I am not alone in walking my path. I could sense homogenous ideology and inspiration present in these historical figures. On a side note, while reading I wondered why anecdotes in the book hit me differently. For example, I have previously seen a clip saying we should accredit MJ’s practices as much as his talents. All notions covered here are by no means novel. Everyone must have heard something similar somewhere. Those random encounters were not life changing. Would this book be any different? Would my receptive readiness while reading this book make a difference?
Written from scratch by Meston Ecoa
No assistance was received from any form of Artificial Intelligence.
No assistance was received from any grammar or vocabulary enhancing software.
