The Most Crucial Trait for Success Is Also the Most Underdeveloped One: An exclusive excerpt from Napoleon Hill’s Self-Confidence Formula
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What is the most crucial trait for determining an individual’s success in life?
Desire?
Definiteness of purpose?
Faith?
A positive mental attitude?
What if there were a quality whose presence energized all these other success requisites—and whose absence rendered them innocuous?
According to Napoleon Hill, there is such a foundational attribute, one that both contributes to and results from all principles of individual achievement that came to form his Law of Success philosophy. As he exclaims:
Try as hard as you wish and you cannot be happy unless you BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! Work with all the strength at your command and you cannot accumulate more than barely enough to live on unless you BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!
The one and only person in all this world through whose efforts you can be supremely happy UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, and through whose labor you can accumulate all the material wealth that you can use legitimately, is YOURSELF!
Self-confidence might rightly be understood as the backbone of Hill’s success system. But despite how crucial it is for prosperity and happiness, this characteristic is significantly underdeveloped in most individuals.
The majority of human beings in today’s world move through life aimlessly and dejectedly, casting their eyes on the ground rather than up and ahead to the financial, spiritual, and emotional riches they could claim. They allow external opinions to dictate how they see themselves and how they see the world. Their passivity permits negative thoughts to infiltrate their subconscious mind, which then undermines them by working to translate those dominating ideas into reality. As a result, people without self-confidence drift through life, endlessly dissatisfied with their circumstances and using this unrest as an alibi for their poor self-regard.
The time for self-doubt and self-criticism is over. Your faith in yourself and your ability to attain your chief desire make the difference between your success and failure. Hanging in the balance are your emotional and financial security. It’s time to begin a journey of discovering, acknowledging, and sharing your strengths so that you can regain the energy and motivation you need to achieve your goals.
This is an exclusive excerpt from Napoleon Hill’s Self-Confidence Formula. This official publication of the Napoleon Hill Foundation equips you with the strategies recommended by Hill for controlling your thoughts in order to boost self-confidence. It is available from Sound Wisdom on March 16, 2021. Preorder your copy now.