You Have To Think Wealthy To Become Wealthy
Posted on September 21, 2007
Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is probably the great-granddaddy of all self help books. Hill was a newspaper editor and later a speech writer for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was Hill who wrote the famous sentence: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
The book came about because industrialist Andrew Carnegie hired Hill to write about his success principles. Carnegie had come to the United States from Scotland penniless and worked as a telegraph operator for the Pennsylvania Railroad for 12 years. He became the richest man in the world because he saw the potential of steel beams for railway-bridge construction, rather than wood trestles. This simple insight led to his starting the Carnegie Steel Company, which he sold to U. S. Steel for $250 million in 1901.
It’s fascinating that we human beings tend to forget the difficulties of accomplishment once we’ve reached our objective. Once we’ve done something, we tend to look at others and think, “Why are you having so much trouble? It’s not that hard.” We do that regardless of the difficulty we may have had when we first tried it. Carnegie felt that way about money.
Just as many mothers quickly forget the pain of childbirth when they first hold their baby, we soon put behind us the pain of attacking and conquering life’s objectives. During Andrew Carnegie’s rise to power, I’m sure he faced incredible difficulties, but after his success he couldn’t understand the poverty that he saw all around him. It astounded him that so many people were having trouble surviving in a country that had given him so much. He wanted to share his secrets of success with the world, but as a high school dropout, he lacked the education to write a book, so he hired Napoleon Hill to write it for him.
Carnegie felt that you have to make people work for their own success. He said, “There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he is willing to climb himself.” I couldn’t agree more. You don’t have to look far to see how the subsidies our government doles out have destroyed initiative, demoralized people and diminished personal responsibility. People are far better served by giving them a hand up, rather than a hand out.
In his day, Carnegie had the opportunity to rub shoulders with hundreds of self-made millionaires. As he got to know them, he realized that there was a common denominator among all of them. What they shared was that even in the earliest days of their careers, these millionaires knew what they wanted and what it would feel like to be successful. They could create a visual image of their success and experience it mentally long before they achieved it.
I had one of these experiences more than 30 years ago. I thought I might like to learn to fly an airplane. My business was doing well and I could afford the lessons, so I gave it a try. When I crawled out of the plane after my first lesson, my shirt was soaked through with perspiration and my heart was pounding double time. This would have been an intimidating experience for many people, but mentally I could already visualize myself as a pilot. I had no doubts about it. I was so convinced after that first lesson I bought a small single engine airplane so I could learn in my own plane instead of renting someone else’s.
By the time I got my private pilot’s license, I knew the single engine plane was nothing more than the means to an end. Before I had 100 hours of flying time, I had a picture of a pressurized twin engine turboprop Beechcraft King Air taped to the door of my office. I outlined a strategy for what I would need to learn in order to eventually fly one like it. I got my instrument rating in that single engine plane, and then traded it for a small twin. I flew that twin until I became proficient in it and then I traded up to a pressurized piston twin. Although the process took years, that picture on my office door kept the mental picture of me at 25,000 feet in the cockpit of the King Air fresh on my mind. Guess what I’m flying today?
Here’s a tip! You may not see yourself becoming a pilot, but everyone would like to be doing better financially. The problem is that few people understand that you have to think wealthy before you can become wealthy. As the country song says, “From a Chevy to a Lincoln; from neon lights to crystal chandeliers.” Can you see yourself making the transition? Are you willing to put forth the effort and face the challenges required to move from living paycheck-to-paycheck to the security that comes with financially independence?
You won’t be able to make the decisions wealthy people make if you think like a common laborer. You have to visualize yourself as being wealthy before you can become wealthy. That’s why so many people who win millions in the lottery end up broke in a few years. They can only see the end result, and not the journey. They see wealthy people spending money on fun and exciting things and think that’s what being wealthy is all about. I wouldn’t be flying a high performance King Air today if I had waited until I could afford one to start learning. It took a journey of several years to get from that first small single engine plane to the one I fly today. Do you have a dream? Are you willing to take the journey required to realize it?
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