Napoleon Hill My Mentor by Don Green

Author:Don Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: G&D Media
Published: 2020-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Favorite Ideas and Stories

Think and Grow Rich was published in 1937, at the height of the Depression. Hill said that it was written for the millions of men and women who were living in poverty and in fear of poverty.

Persistence

In some ways, this book is really a story about persistence. In chapter 1, Hill tells the story of Edwin Barnes. He was a tramp, but he had a desire: to partner with the great inventor Thomas Edison. Hill told the story of Barnes and the way he went about realizing his desire. Hill said that if he could convey that mes sage to the reader, the reader would not need to read the rest of the book.

I’ve got a number of letters from later in Hill’s life, handwritten letters from Barnes. They kept in communication all that time, and they had nicknames for each other. Barnes called him “Nap the Sap” and other different names.

Barnes had a desire and, above all, persistence. He looked like a tramp and he had to hitchhike, but he became Edison’s only partner because he had a desire to be his partner and he never let up. He headed up the Dictaphone project; Edison gave it to him to sell to businesses.

I also love the story of the nine-year-old girl at the old mill. She goes to the mill and says, “My mammy has got to have 50 cents.” The man keeps telling her, “No.” She never takes her eyes off him, and she keeps saying, “My mammy’s got to have 50 cents.” Finally he tells her, “I’m going beat you with a stick,” but she keeps saying, “My mammy has got to have 50 cents.” Finally he gives her 50 cents. She backs away up to the door, afraid that he is really going to hit her.

The man said after that happened, he stared out the window for a minute, realizing that he just been conquered by a nine-year-old kid. The little girl might not have known what persistence was, but she practiced it. She took the threat of a beating with a stick to get that 50 cents. That’s a common theme throughout the book.

Of course, there’s the story of Hill’s son Blair, who was born without ears. Hill never let him go to a school for the deaf and dumb. The doctors told him to just get over it; he was never going to be able to hear, but Hill practiced autosuggestion with him. Finally he recovered 65 percent of his normal hearing and led a normal life. He went to college, became a businessman, and served on a bank board in West Virginia. That’s a story of persistence if there ever was one.

That’s a common theme in the book. Hill demonstrates over and over again that people become successes just through persistence. As Steve Jobs says, “About half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the nonsuccessful ones is pure perseverance.” His biography tells about his persistence in developing and cofounding Apple.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.