Archive for People
July 17, 2007 at 1:05 pm · Filed under The Habit Code, Good Habits, Napoleon Hill
If you take an interest in Self Improvement then you will realize that it is a continuous process and success cannot be acheived through reading just one self help book.
One habit that Napoleon Hill discovered successful people practice was what he dubbed R2A2. To gain the benefits you:
Recognize - Recognize a principle, technique or improvement that will benefit you.
Relate - Relate the improvement to your beliefs, experience, business or life.
Assimilate - Assimilate the improvement into your daily routine.
Apply - Take action and make the Improvement a Habit.
June 29, 2007 at 10:16 pm · Filed under The Habit Code, Napoleon Hill
Napoleon Hill’s Famous 17 Principles of Success…
If you do some research, and find out about his 17 Principles, what you are about to read may suprise you.
Hill didn’t seem to keep to the same 17 principles, In fact, from my research up till this point I’ve counted no less than 38 different Principles that he’s used throughout his books and publications.
There are a core number that Hill refers to in every publication I’ve read.
But the rest he seemed to pick sometimes calling it a different name, but meaning the same thing such as:
Pleasing Personality sometimes called Attractive Personality
or
Learning From Defeat sometimes called Profiting By Failure or Learning From Adversity and Defeat
Other times throwing in a completely new principle such as Positive Mental Attitude as he became acquainted with W. Clement Stone.
I’m still waiting for a couple more books to arrive before I publish all the different principles Hill came out with.
Let me know if you find any that are not in Hills more famous books Think and Grow Rich and The Law Of Success
April 5, 2007 at 2:23 pm · Filed under The Habit Code, Good Habits, Napoleon Hill, Andrew Carnegie
Reading through one of Napoleon Hill’s books “How To Raise Your Own Salary” I come to a chapter about Learning From Defeat.
The Book is a breakdown of what was said between Hill and Carnegie during their meetings in 1908. In my search for confirming the link between Personal development, success and habit I am trying to link up as many connections as I can and here, in this book is one great big humdinger of a connection.
I quote…
Napoleon Hill: “From what you say about habits, I reach the conclusion that Success is a habit”
Andrew Carnegie: “Now you are getting the idea! Of course success is a habit”
March 7, 2007 at 11:45 am · Filed under The Habit Code, Good Habits, Habit Quotes, Napoleon Hill
“Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you; until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.” - Napoleon Hill.
Napoleon Hill. He knew the importance of Habit.
March 7, 2007 at 11:35 am · Filed under The Habit Code, Good Habits, Bad Habits, Benjamin Franklin
Can you learn the success habit?
Is it possible to get a list of the habits of successful people and then copy their habits until they become your own?
Also Is it just those habits that they DO or is it the Bad Habits that they avoid?
Benjamin Franklin had his theory of Moral Perfection.
His 13 ‘Virtues’ were as follows.
Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Looking at his virtues, it consists not only of habits to do, but of habits to moderate, or give up altogether.
Sometimes it is the things you don’t do, that are the hardest to control.
You can also see that a fine balance in the things you do is important too. Balance is one of the Keys to success.
January 22, 2007 at 11:02 pm · Filed under What Are Habits, William James
In a previous post I mentioned about ordering a copy of ‘The Principles Of Psychology’ by William James. It arrived yesterday and I’ve just started flicking through the book. It does have some interesting things to note within it’s pages. In the very first chapter (in this version) named ‘The Scope Of Psychology’ James talks about experimenting on a frog. Stay with me on this one…here is an extract from that chapter…
“The physiologist does not confidently assert conscious intelligence in the frog’s spinal cord until he has shown that the useful result which the nervous machinery brings forth under a given irritation remains the same when the machinery is altered. If, to take the stock-instance, the right knee of a headless frog be irritated with acid, the right foot will wipe it off. When, however, this foot is amputated, the animal will often raise the left foot to the spot and wipe the offending material away.
Pfluger and Lewes reason from such facts in the following way: If the first reaction were the result of mere machinery, they say; if that irritated portion of the skin discharged the right leg as a trigger discharges its own barrel of a shotgun; then amputating the right foot would indeed frustrate the wiping, but would not make the left leg move. It would simply result in the right stump moving through the empty air (which is in fact the phenomenon sometimes observed). The right trigger makes no effort to discharge the left barrel if the right one be unloaded; nor does an electrical machine ever get restless because it can only emit sparks, and not hem pillow-cases like a sewing-machine.
If, on the contrary, the right leg originally moved for the purpose of wiping the acid, then nothing is more natural than that, when the easiest means of effecting that purpose prove fruitless, other means should be tried. Every failure must keep the animal in a state of disappointment which will lead to all sorts of new trials and devices; and tranquillity will not ensue till one of these, by a happy stroke, achieves the wished-for end.
In a similar way Goltz ascribes intelligence to the frog’s optic lobes and cerebellum. We alluded above to the manner in which a sound frog imprisoned in water will discover an outlet to the atmosphere. Goltz found that frogs deprived of their cerebral hemispheres would often exhibit a like ingenuity. Such a frog, after rising from the bottom and finding his farther upward progress checked by the glass bell which has been inverted over him, will not persist in butting his nose against the obstacle until dead of suffocation, but will often re-descend and emerge from under its rim as if, not a definite mechanical propulsion upwards, but rather a conscious desire to reach the air by hook or crook were the main-spring of his activity. Goltz concluded from this that the hemispheres are not the seat of intellectual power in frogs. He made the same inference from observing that a brainless frog will turn over from his back to his belly when one of his legs is sewed up, although the movements required are then very different from those excited under normal circumstances by the same annoying position. They seem determined, consequently, not merely by the antecedent irritant, but by the final end,-though the irritant of course is what makes the end desired.
We can conclude then that most automatic motor functions are controlled by the spinal cord, and that these unconscious motor functions are seperate from conscious thought.
January 17, 2007 at 4:58 pm · Filed under Napoleon Hill
In the original version of The Law Of Success, Napoleon Hills Philosophy of success contained 15 principles. The Master Mind was put down as an introduction to the whole philosophy and not included as one of the principles but as an all encompassing method of gathering the skills and tapping into the unconcious minds of it’s participants.
Eventually The principle of the Master Mind was installed as the first of the prionciples of The Law Of Success, as below:
1. The Master Mind
2. A Definite Chief Aim
3. Self Confidence
4. The Habit Of Saving.
5. Initiative And Leadership.
6. Imagination.
7. Enthusiasm.
8. Self Control.
9. The Habit Of Doing More Than Paid For.
10. A Pleasing Personality.
11. Accurate Thought.
12. Concentration.
13. Co-Operation.
14. Profiting By Failure
15. Tolerance.
16. The Golden Rule
Eventually Napoleon Hill came to believe that Cosmic Habitforce, which he sometimes referred to as the Universal Law, was the final lesson in the course that finally took him 20 years to complete. By then Cosmic Habitforce was part of the whole philosophy and given 17th place in the table.
Hill spoke of the Cosmic Habitforce as the Greatest Of All Natural Laws.
“Cosmic Habitforce is the medium by which every living thing is forced to take on and become part of the environmental influences in which it lives and moves.”
January 9, 2007 at 4:19 pm · Filed under What Are Habits, William James
William James talks of the Laws of Habit. Napoleon Hill talks of Cosmic Habitforce. I talk of The Habit Code. They all try to explain the natural course of action of LIVING and even inanimate things within the universe.
It is very important that we realize the importance that habit plays within our lives. Take for example the act of walking. It takes a human baby nigh on four months to go from a crawling state, to a walking state and then several more months (even longer) to finally perfect the act of walking.
During the learning stage the bedding down of neural pathways within the brain produce a range of movement and cause electrical activity within thousands of muscle fibres. The accurate timing for each nerve firing is embedded in the brain through repetition.It then needs only the initial thought of walking to trigger the nerve firings to cause your legs to move and feedback to tell you where your leg needs to move several times a second.
It is amazing when you think about it.
If your brain had to calculate how to walk everytime you needed to it would have no time to calculate anything else, never mind running all your other autonomous tasks like making your heart beat faster, or even the blinking of an eye.
The following passage ‘The Laws of Habit’ is taken in part from ‘Talks to Teachers’ by William James.
We speak, it is true, of Good habits and Bad habits, but, when people use the word ‘ habit’ in the majority of instances it is a bad habit which they have in mind. They talk of a smoking habit and the swearing habit or the drinking habit. They never speak of the abstention habit or the moderation habit or the courage habit. But the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices. All our life, so far as it has definate form, is but a mass of habits, - practical, emotional, and intellectual, - systematically organized for our weal (prosperity) or woe (suffering), and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.
January 9, 2007 at 3:03 pm · Filed under People, William James
In the Law of Success by Napoleon Hill, Hill relates back to William James. William James was a Psychologist and Philosopher. He wrote ‘The Principles Of Psychology’. He wrote about habit and instinct. Just before christmas I ordered ‘Psychology’ (an edited version of his greater work) and ‘Talks to Teachers’ ( a book created from a few public lectures on Psychology to the Cambridge teachers). Both books arrived yesterday and I’ve been devouring them over the last 24 hours.
More info on William James - William James at Wikipedia
William James Photos and Bio
October 26, 2006 at 5:07 pm · Filed under Napoleon Hill
I told in my post the other day how I’d ordered Benamin Franklin’s Autobiography and I’m glad to say that they were delivered by amazon in their normal prompt way. What I didn’t tell you was that I also ordered Napoleon Hill’s Law Of Success. This book was the actual culmination of all the long years of study that Napoleon Hill had so studiously undertaken for Andrew Carnegie interviewing over 500 wealthy and brilliant people for the best part of twenty years.
Published in 1928 in a set of eight volumes, it is a monument to Personal Development. I can feel in my bones that I’m about to partake on a great adventure of discovery and I can see no other option but to study all of Hill’s works. I know of no other person that would have spent the amount of time Hill did to get the information he did. Heck, half of the people he’d interviewed had died by the time he’d published his work!.
I had a vested interest to read “The Law Of Success” (LOS) because of Napoleon Hills “Think And Grow Rich” (TGR). In TGR Hill plainly states in several chapters of how controlling Habits is a fundemental part of success.
I’ve only been flicking through LOS but Already Two chapters have the word Habit in the title. (The copy I’ve got is the updated 21st Century Edition, aparently LOS was originally 15 chapters long. This is 17 ).
Here is a quote that just sends shivers down my spine too:
“The word Habit is an important word in connection with this philosophy of individual acheivement, for it represents the real cause of everyones economic, social, professional, occupational, and spiritual condition in life. As has already been stated, we are where we are and what we are because of our fixed habits. And we may be where we wish to be and what we wish to be only by the development and the maintenance of our voluntary habits.”
Anyway, back to the study, and to my original ideas on Benjamin Franklin soon…
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