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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hill, Napoleon, 1883-1970, author.
Title: How to own your own mind / by Napoleon Hill.
Description: New York, New York : TarcherPerigee, [2017] | “A TarcherPerigee book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2017004367 (print) | LCCN 2017023688 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101992838 | ISBN 9780143111528
Subjects: LCSH: Success—Psychological aspects. | Knowledge. | Opportunity. | Psychology, Applied.
Classification: LCC BF637.S8 (ebook) | LCC BF637.S8 H485 2017 (print) | DDC 158.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004367
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
INTRODUCTION by Don Green
Epigraph
CHAPTER ONE: Creative Vision
Analysis of Chapter One
Introduction to Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO: Organized Thought
Andrew Carnegie’s Views on Organized Thinking
CHAPTER THREE: Controlled Attention
Andrew Carnegie’s Analysis of Controlled Attention
How to Own Your Own Mind
About the Author
Introduction to How to Own Your Own
Mind, by Don Green,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NAPOLEON HILL FOUNDATION
I
N 1941, NAPOLEON HILL created and published seventeen booklets, each one
setting forth an explanation of the principles of personal achievement Mr. Hill
had developed from studying great American success stories for twenty years.
He was inspired to do so when, as a fledgling reporter, he interviewed the great
steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who outlined the principles of success and
commissioned young Napoleon to commence an intense study of how these
principles contributed to the success of the great men of the time, and of earlier
times. He called the series of booklets Mental Dynamite, a phrase Mr. Carnegie
had used to describe the seventeen principles.
Very shortly after the booklets were published, Pearl Harbor was attacked and
America entered World War II. In preparing for and ultimately winning that war,
Mental Dynamite, with so many other things of significance but less importance
than the war, was set aside by the American public. It laid gathering dust in the
archives of the Napoleon Hill Foundation until recently it was rediscovered, and
it is now being reprinted by the foundation in book form.
This book was created by our foundation putting together three related
chapters of the Mental Dynamite masterpiece. Each deals with how to think
before acting, and thereby how to recognize opportunities, define one’s Definite
Major Purpose, and refine it until it is time to take action. When these chapters
have been mastered, you will know how to own your own mind.
The first chapter sets forth the principle of Creative Vision. Andrew Carnegie
explains to young Napoleon in Mr. Carnegie’s study in 1908 that imagination is
a primary component of it, and Mr. Carnegie provides examples of how
imagination enables people to be successful in such apparently diverse activities
as inventing and sales. But imagination has to be applied. “Fleeting thoughts”
and “mere wishes” are not enough to create inventions and make sales,
and “mere wishes” are not enough to create inventions and make sales,
according to Mr. Carnegie; one must recognize opportunities, and act upon them.
This is the essence of Creative Vision. Mr. Carnegie also details the ten
principles of success that are used by all people who successfully apply Creative
Vision.
Dr. Hill follows the extensive quotations from his interview of Mr. Carnegie
with his own commentary, written some thirty-three years later. He suggests a
number of ideas for improving society and industry that could benefit from the
use of Creative Vision, and many are amazingly ahead of their time. He then
provides a number of examples of people of the then present day who had used
Creative Vision to succeed.
Considered together, the insights of Andrew Carnegie and Napoleon Hill
provide a compelling lesson on how all of us can use our Creative Vision to
recognize opportunities and attain our goals.
Chapter Two discusses the importance of the principle of Organized Thought.
Through the use of three charts, Dr. Hill explains how one can attain and then
use Organized Thought to succeed in controlling one’s destiny. I believe you
will realize, as I have, that these three charts deserve repeated study, and that
each reading of them reveals something new. They disclose how Organized
Thought, willpower, and self-discipline interact with the faculties of the mind,
the five senses, the basic human motives, and other success principles to produce
results when—and this is essential—action is taken. Thoughts without action are
ineffective.
Dr. Hill explains how inductive and deductive reasoning and social heredity
contribute to the development of Organized Thought. He explains the
importance of habits, both good and bad, in influencing one’s ability to achieve
Organized Thought. The chapter concludes with excerpts from young
Napoleon’s 1908 interview with Andrew Carnegie, in which Mr. Carnegie
details the positive things which can be accomplished by Organized Thought,
and how its use by evil men is doomed to fail.
Chapter Three is devoted to the success principle of Controlled Attention.
Controlled Attention is concentration, and more. It is the means by which one’s
plans are impressed on the subconscious mind. It is the process of controlling all
the activities of the mind and directing them to a given end. It is essential to the
implementation of Creative Vision and Organized Thought.
Dr. Hill explains how the use of other success principles, such as Going the
Extra Mile, the Master Mind, and faith, can intensify the ability to develop
Controlled Attention and bolster one’s confidence. He provides examples of
people who have combined many of the success principles with Controlled
Attention to develop previously unknown solutions to problems. Dr. Hill also
sets forth testimonials from many famous and successful people about how
important Controlled Attention was to their lives. A common theme is that one
should control attention by focusing it on one major purpose rather than many.
The chapter concludes with a further interview with Mr. Carnegie about the
effects of the use of Controlled Attention. Controlled Attention leads to
specialization in one’s life, which produces greater rewards than a generalized
approach to a business or profession. It is essential to advancement and
promotion in employment. And, when employed by the citizenry, it leads to the
success of free enterprise and democracy, in contrast to a Socialist society, in
which Controlled Attention, if utilized at all, ultimately withers and dies.
Napoleon Hill’s best-known book is Think and Grow Rich. The chapters in
the book before you help explain the reasoning behind that title. As Dr. Hill
repeatedly emphasized, action is critical to success. But you must think before
you act or your actions will be wasted.
These timeless chapters about the importance of thought before action will
prove to be very instructive in helping you attain your own Definite Major
Purpose. To do so, you must learn how to own your own mind, and this book
will tell you how to do it.
THE power with which we think is “mental dynamite,” and it can be
organized and used constructively for the attainment of definite ends. If
it is not organized and used through controlled habits, it may become a
“mental explosive” that will literally blast one’s hopes of achievement
and lead to inevitable failure.
—Andrew Carnegie
CHAPTER ONE
Creative Vision
A
PHILOSOPHER SAID, “The imagination is the workshop of man wherein is
fashioned the pattern of all his achievements.” Another thinker described it
as “the workshop of the soul wherein man’s hopes and desires are made ready
for material expression.”
This chapter describes the methods by which some of the great leaders of
America have, through the application of Creative Vision, made the American
way of life the envy of the world.
This chapter begins in the private study of Andrew Carnegie in 1908, with
me, Napoleon Hill, as the student and reporter.
HILL:
Mr. Carnegie, you have said that Creative Vision is one of the principles of
individual achievement. Will you analyze this principle and describe how one
may make practical use of it?
CARNEGIE:
First of all, let us have a clear understanding of the meaning of the term
“Creative Vision,” as we are here using it, by explaining that this is not merely
another name for imagination. It is the ability to recognize opportunities and take
action to benefit from them. An important element of Creative Vision is the use
of the imagination.
There are two types of imagination. One is known as synthetic imagination
and the other as creative imagination.
Synthetic imagination consists of the act of combining recognized ideas,
concepts, plans, facts, and principles in new arrangements. The old axiom
“There is nothing new under the sun” grew out of the fact that the majority of
things which seem to be new are nothing but a rearrangement of that which is
old. Practically all the patents recorded in the Patent Office are nothing more
than old ideas which have been arranged in a new order, or given a new use.
Patents which do not come under this heading are known as “basic patents” and
they are the work of Creative Imagination; that is, they are based on newly
created ideas which have not been previously used or recognized.
