How to become successful: Think and Grow Rich

Summary

• Interviews of 500 most successful people in 1937 to find common behaviors and traits.

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Secrets to success

• DETERMINATION is key to success.
  • Persist when it gets tough.
  • Get good at making split-second decisions & firmly standing behind them.
  • Have unwavering faith in yourself. Place less importance on critical opinions.
• Plan your goals, prioritize them, decide how much you’re willing to sacrifice, outline each step of the path.
• Build a team of smart and diverse people. Delegate knowledge, sum is greater than the parts.

Other Tips

• Avoid negative emotions like rage, hate, revenge, pessimism. People will always offer their cheap opinions. Positive emotions are key to a successful life.
• Regularly persuade yourself subconsciously that you can do it, to boost determination. This is called auto-suggestion.
• Be willing to continue learning throughout your life.

Interesting ideas

• Creative imagination is coming up with completely new things. It’s how ingenious composers, visual artists, and writers create works unlike anything before.
• Synthetic imagination is rearranging old ideas into new combinations. See the big picture, and imagine how different or related ideas may combine to form something new.

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Additional Notes:

Why are determination and unwavering faith in yourself important?

• Setbacks and failures are inevitable for achieving great success. Thomas Edison failed 10,000 experiments before succeeding. Writer Fannie Hurst suffered 36 rejections before a single one of her short stories was published. In order to succeed, you must have a burning desire to realize your dreams.
• Our own faith in ourselves has enormous influence on our self-image and way of life. It can help move mountains.

Why are positive emotions important?

• Our subconscious constantly receives and stores both positive and negative sensory stimuli, feelings, and thoughts.
• “Feeding” more positive emotions helps you stay motivated & confident.

How do I properly continue learning?

• Develop ability to know where you can find knowledge. You should surround yourself with network of experts who share specialized knowledge.
• Focus on learning the right things. Leverage your own strengths to fully exploit your potential.
• Examples: take classes & acquire practical experiences.