Anybody who knows me understands that I am a bookaholic. I love books. I read them, write them, buy them, review them, collect them, give them, and more. My world would not exist without books. That said, I am wondering if they are all they are cracked up to be.
I was just in Ohio visiting family. I poked around the dusty boxes of books still in my parent’s basement and found copies of books I didn’t and still don’t recall reading.
I picked up a paperback edition of Napoleon Hill’s classic self-help book, Think and Grow Rich. Apparently I bought it in 1976. I don’t remember reading it. The book has a few underlined sentences. It looks read.
The thing is, if I read that book in 1976, I either missed something or didn’t apply something. I was broke for the next ten years or more. Maybe I just didn’t think enough to get rich while I read it.
I’m not saying this to suddenly be against books. I think you can learn the wisdom of the universe from books. But there’s reading, there’s understanding, and there’s implementation. I don’t think I understood Hill’s book in 1976. I don’t think I implemented it, either.
We learn faster when we have a coach, mentor, educator; someone to help us understand the material and then guide us as we take action and get feedback.
Yes, you can read the book and get results. I’m told more people have become millionaires from Think and Grow Rich than any other book ever written. But that doesn’t mean the process is automatic. I think we need guidance.
There are exceptions to every rule. I taught myself writing. I did it with books. But I read, studied, and implemented every single thing I came across in those books.
Yes, read Think and Grow Rich.
Yes, read Attract Money Now. 
But also do something to integrate what you read.
Consider forming a study group or mastermind.
Or maybe get a Miracles Coach and really turbocharge your life and career.
I’ll never be against books. But I do think you have to become one with a book to really understand it. Had I done that in 1976, I might have been far happier, healthier and wealthier at an earlier age.
Ao Akua,
PS — You can get a free thirty minute taste of Miracles Coaching, see a short video about it, and hear an interview with a Miracles Coach over at http://www.miraclescoaching.com or by clicking right here.
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for sharing this, Joe
It sure is important to emplement what you read and learn, and keep reminding you about it or else there is a risk that you go back to old and comfy habbits!
Warm greetings,
Claus
I totally agree.
Joe
In “Attract money now” you say that we should give thanks for everything we had to go through b/c it helped us to become what we are today. I agree with that and think that your past just HAD to be the way it was in order for you to become such an amazing inspiration to the world….you don’t have a reason to regret anything at all.
Don’t you think so? Blessings, Eva
Hi Eva. I totally agree with you. I wasn’t expressing regret at all; it was a reminder that we need to implement to get results.
Thank you
joe
BTW: after reading “Think and grow rich” I now bought a spanish copy of the book in order to perfect my espanol
Another bookaholic here.
You are wise.
Hello there Joe…
I am from a town close to where Napoleon Hill had grown up.
Jennings Randolph was a person from my home state, West Virginia who had written Hill and encouraged him to put his information into his book, “Think and Grow Rich.”
Somebody needs to make a movie about Hill.
joe
Somebody needs to make a movie about Hill…. I Agree… why don´t you…
Working on it…
joe
I think also that the person has to be ready to receive the information in the books and other sources. I’ve had a copy of Shakti Gawain’s “Creative Visualization” in my possession since the mid-1980s. It has been read and re-read, along with Carlos Castaneda, Lynn Andrews, and Edgar Cayce (etc).
But the information didn’t really start to sink in until about three years ago, when my quest for enlightenment launched in earnest. I think NOW I am ready for the information, and now it makes sense to me.
Maybe you just weren’t ready to receive the information in 1976.
You are most probably correct. I think we’re on some sort of inner schedule.
joe
Yay! Napoleon Hill´s movie already exists! It´s almost manifesting I can see… a lot of people wants it. It could be part of a bigger picture. Something like “old masters series” with Joseph Campbell, Napoleon Hill and so on…
just throwing some ideas in the air…
with love!
Excellent ideas!
joe
Funny thing, I glanced at your blog and stopped reading it, thinking that I read it already…Then I realized I did not read it, only to find out that the blog speaks about a book that you were not sure whether you read…
I loved the book, though it isn’t until I read it 3 times and used videos made about the book, to fully comprehend its principles, and fully apply them, daily.
Check http://www.thesecretvideos.tv to fully understand the science of Thing and Grow Rich.
Hill is an amazing man indeed!
Cheers, Nick
Think and grow rich.
DO and grow richer.
All the best
MS
I must have misunderstood you then
I’m glad you don’t regret anything.
When are you going to write a book called s-ing like “The Answers” where you answer your readers questions? I want to have the first one as soon as it comes out of print, ok? AND I’ll send you lots of questions if you need some more (I’m sure you have tons of them already!)
I quite liked Hills book but your “Attract money now” was so much easier to understand…I’m glad I read yours first. I loved the story about his son though,- it’s so beautiful! Blessings to you and yours, Eva
I highly recommend Miracles Coaching. I joined a couple of years ago and it was the best thing I’d done for a long time.
My Miracles Coach really helped me dissolve blocks and discover some other issues I hadn’t been aware of – but had really been holding me back.
If you get the chance, grab Miracles Coaching with both hands!
Colin
I’m thinking of a role in this move!
Joe,
I hear ABC is finally airing their interview with you tomorrow (Tuesday, June 29) in prime time! I can’t wait to see you and your good works finally get the attention they are due!
Joe Vitale’s “Attract Money Now” is an awesome book! He knows his stuff and definitely correct about guidance. I recently put together a podcast, “The teachings of Think and Grow Rich” to help give people that guidance. Thanks Joe!
Let life come and Live generously,
Host and Philosopher
Juddha Fitzgerald
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/juddha-fitzgerald
This is an awesome webpage!!! Good to see other people who are truly followers of Napoleon Hill’s work.
This is one of the VERY FEW books that promises to help you determine Who you want to become? What it is you want to do? When it‘s going to happen? Why THE MISSION IS POSSIBLE? And how you’re going to attain it? All through the aid and application of the “unknown and unused knowledge and power” they termed the “Carnegie Secret.”
1. Ready-Think 2. Get Set-Grow 3. Go-Get Rich
Let life come and live generously,
Host & Philosopher
Juddha Shaddai Fitzgerald
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/juddha-fitzgerald
Dear Joe Vitale,
I would like to congratulate you on your way of living, abundant living, just the way suggested by Mr. Wattles about a century ago. I am focused on this right now, and soon, very soon, I would be very delighted to meet you.
Paulo Pizzato
Airline Captain, seeking higher heights.
I think you hit the nail on the head toward the end of your post when you said you actually learned how to achieve something when you implemented what you were reading.
That’s the key.
Taking action. Getting out there and trying and learning as you go.
Action creates clarity. It gives you the experience. And until we’ve experienced something we’re never going to truly know it.
Love your stuff Joe.
Joe-
Interesting thoughts. I have thought these exact things you have mentioned above regarding perception and books found in boxes. Also, books as we know them, on paper, will cease to exist in 3-10 years. They will be electronic with links. Oh, paper books for collectors and signings for big name authors will still be present, but in one or two generations it will all change. I found your blog about “Capt. Ahab Syndrome” interesting-as did the Bradbury family. I hope you liked the “Moby Dick” DVD also. Like you, I give books away and related items away, when I think appropriate. I think your readers would find another “Ahab-like” monster extremely interesting- one “super egocentric sea-related character” (as the sea is “the big conscious unknown” of the mind–or to me the “unknown” spiritual self, yes?) just as “terrifying”-Capt. Wolf Larsen of “The Sea-Wolf”….this “Ahab -related syndrome” I would call “The Wolf Larsen Syndrome.” Larsen is from Jack London’s masterpiece “The Sea-Wolf.” As a collector-reader of the great Jack London for years, London was (and still is to me) a paradoxical enigma of a man that folks might find very interesting. London, who died at 40, not from suicide, but from uremic poisoning and a heart attack. He wrote 50 books over a 17 year period. He is forgotten by many now, except for “The Call of The Wild” and writer of dog books-such as “White Fang.” Quite the contrary, he wrote about time travel, astral projection, aliens, plagues wiping out civiliation, a Chinese invasion of the US, social conditions, the very very socially deprived and abuse of the poor masses of humanity and on and on. His real masterpiece is “The Sea-Wolf” –not “The Call of The Wild.” This character of Capt. Larsen is worthy of a few words, a nightmare mad man who was also “learned” with racks of books by intellectuals, poets and scientists, all shelved on his true ship from hell. He created a world of social Darwinism and horror in his universe so unbearable, so terrible, that for himself that the only escape was death. (My mind also goes back to Ernest Miller Hemingway when I mention this, another genius…) All this kind of world perception and “collective thinking” can be paralleled to what is happening today in our society, as I look around. Many will not agree with me. Now, I am coming back to my good friend Ray Bradbury and his masterpiece “Fahrenheit 451″ (of whom Dr. Werhner von Braun, the inventor of the V-2 Rocket, said of Ray Bradbury – he had it “all figured out way ahead of all of us”). “Fahrenheit 451″ is a perfect parallel of what is happening today, “firemen” burning books…I could go on about this, but it is all in the book-just think forward a few years. We do attract our own miracles-I truly believe this. We need not be book burners, Ahabs or Larsens. Everything is LOVE. That is Ray Bradbury’s mantra, as I have heard him say this over many many years. As another lovingly put “aside” comment from a forgotten author: “Books were once men.” This one comes from George Barr McCutcheon-creator of the magical kingdom of “Graustark.”—Peace, love and good karma, John.