Did you know that there's actually a formula for success?
This formula is not a set in stone clear path to success, but it is an outline and it lays
out many different principles on your path towards success.
And it lays out different principles that one must acquire or learn how to get and improve
upon in order to see success in their life.
And all these principles or laws were put together by a man named Napoleon Hill.
And there's a quick story I want to tell about Napoleon Hill.
He actually, a story I heard from Russell Brunson.
Russell Brunson told me that, not told me directly, but I heard Russell Brunson speak
and say the story.
So the story goes along.
Henry Ford is an extremely successful person and he created the Ford company, which is
the car company.
And then Andrew Carnegie is also another extremely successful person.
He created a steel company, one of the most successful steel companies in history.
Extremely wealthy individuals.
And Andrew Carnegie told Napoleon Hill to study all of the super, hyper successful individuals
in the world at the time.
So the likes of Thomas Edison, the person who invented the light bulb.
So he studied Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Rockefeller, all types of people, extremely
successful people.
These are extremely successful people.
And he, Andrew Carnegie basically gave Napoleon Hill all these connections of all these different
individuals to learn from.
And so Napoleon Hill spent 30 years just studying what the difference between these
successful people and the average man, he wanted to find out what made these people different
than the average Joe who works in nine to five.
What makes these people different from the average people who walked the streets?
And so after 30 years of studying all these people and teaching all the laws and principles
that he found, he refined his framework down more and more and more and made it even more
accurate and even better.
And after 30 years, he wrote a book.
He wrote this book.
He spent a long time writing it and he published it.
And this book was published and Henry Ford, one of the people he studied and one of the
most powerful, probably the most powerful man in the world at that time, got ahold of the
book, read it and realized that, oh, this is way too powerful.
This is too powerful for the public.
We have to take this down.
So he essentially ordered Napoleon Hill to take the book down, take it off of out of
print and then Napoleon Hill had to not rewrite it, but he basically had to take out a bunch
of information and take out the secrets, essentially, the secrets of success.
And then he republished it.
And by the way, the first book that Henry Ford got ahold of was called The Laws of Success
in 16 Lessons.
So he republished this book that was way more watered down and it had less secrets in it.
And then Henry Ford got ahold of it again and still thought it was too powerful.
So he made Napoleon Hill take it off, take it out of print again and cut even more information
out of it, cut even more of the secrets out of it.
And so Napoleon Hill did that and then he released a book to the public called Think
and Grow Rich.
Now you may have heard of this book because this book was the number one bestseller in
the self-help book category.
And I've heard many people say that this book has created more millionaires than any other
book of its kind.
So this book is extremely powerful, Think and Grow Rich.
And that doesn't even have the secrets.
I've also heard that Think and Grow Rich is a long sales letter to try and get you to
read Laws of Success in 16 Lessons.
So I have not read Think and Grow Rich, but I am halfway through reading the Laws of Success
in 16 Lessons.
And what I found is lots of valuable information.
I want to talk about one thing in particular, one of the Laws.
And this Law is self-control.
He said that, Napoleon Hill said that all successful people have self-control.
Every single successful person has self-control.
But the average man allows his thoughts and words and actions to run wild.
And that is no self-control.
That is low self-control.
So he also said that self-control is solely a matter of thought control.
So let's talk about that.
Self-control is just a matter of controlling your thoughts, controlling your thinking.
Over the past couple months, over actually over almost a year, I've been learning about
your thinking through a book called Reality Transurfing.
And I realized that that is an essential piece of the improvement game, the self-improvement
game.
It's thinking and controlling your thoughts.
And so I realized that you have to have self-control in your thinking in order to see success.
And one of the examples that Napoleon Hill gave in his book, Laws of Success in 16 Lessons
about self-control, was he talked about how he gave an example of a salesman.
So a salesman has to have a high amount of self-control.
Because if he shows any signs of impatience or unhappiness or anything, then the sale
is lost.
So I want to put you in this scene.
So you're at a store and there's a salesman walking up to you.
You're trying to look for shoes.
And so you're impatient.
You're trying to buy shoes, but you don't really know exactly what you want.
But you're a little impatient today, because you had a long day at work and you're tired.
And you just want to get your pair of shoes and leave and go home so you can watch TV
for the rest of the day.
So this salesman walks up to you and you are not happy with it.
So the salesman says, what would you actually know?
The salesman actually eyes you up and sees that your shoe size is 10.
You have a 10 size for your shoes.
And he also knows your interests just by looking at your outfit and your current shoes.
So he knows that you are into Nike's and he knows that you like black shoes.
So he realized all of this stuff.
So he walks up to you, you're impatient and he says, oh, here I've got some shoes over
here that I think you'd like.
So you're like, oh, I don't like this, but you're just thinking to yourself, I just
want to get out of here as quick as possible.
And so this salesman walks you over to these shoes and he shows you three different options.
All three of them are Nikes and one of them is black with white bottoms.
The other one is black with black bottoms.
And then the third one is gray with black bottoms.
So you look at all the three options and you're annoyed.
You kind of just say, no, I'm not interested.
And this salesman can sense you're annoyed that you're annoyed.
The salesman knows all this stuff, but he is still exerting a high self-control persona.
He is still, he's still putting on the image of happy and excited to see you.
He is still controlling himself and inside his mind, he is kind of reciprocating your
anger because we as humans have a tendency to reciprocate the emotion that is getting
sent to us.
So let's say your friend walks up to you and is extremely pissed off at you.
Then us as human, human behavior has a tendency to reciprocate that anger and be angry back.
But this salesman has high self-control and he knows that he is going to lose the sale
if he reciprocates any of this bad emotion.
And so he is sending you positive emotion.
He is being extremely patient with you.
And as a result, because of this law that I just explained of people have a tendency
to reciprocate the emotion, you're kind of shifting from impatient and not wanting to
be there and angry.
And now you're shifting your emotions to having more patience and having a higher happiness
level.
So now because of this salesman's self-control, he's actually changing your mood.
And then he asks you, he noticed that when you were reviewing the three different shoes,
you looked at one of them, the first option, the black one with the whites, the white bottoms.
He noticed that you reviewed that the longest.
So he took note of that and pulled those shoes aside.
And then when he finally got you, after a little bit more conversation and finally changed
your emotion, now you're not impatient anymore.
Now you're feeling tranquil and calm.
Now you're standing there feeling exactly like this is where you want to be.
And that moment he strikes and hands you these shoes again and says, here, why don't you
try these shoes on?
And so you agree because now you're no longer impatient.
Now you're in a happier mood.
And that is the point of the psychological sale.
I believe that's what the term is called.
And that is the point where the salesman gives you those shoes, try on, and then you try
them on and like them.
Now he's made that sale.
And because of that, because of the fact that he had self-control, he made a sale.
And now you're happier because now you get to go home with shoes.
And that's the reason why you got there.
You wanted to get out of there as quick as possible so you could get home.
But you weren't going to get there.
You weren't going to leave as quick as you did if the salesman didn't help you out so
much.
So this was a win-win situation for both parties.
So that's the value of self-control.
So this salesman controlled his thoughts.
He understood that you were sending him negative energy, but he chose not to accept that negative
energy and he chose to emit positive energy.
This is all in his mind.
He controlled his thoughts.
And now as a result, both parties are happy.
So that is the power of self-control.
And he actually, Napoleon Hill actually said that you can't really see success unless you
have self-control.
And one of the, like I said, I said this earlier, but one of the best, most striking quotes
that I read in that book so far is, self-control is solely a matter of thought control.
So if self-control is required for success and self-control is solely a matter of thought
control, then that just makes sense to focus a lot of energy and effort on controlling
your thoughts, on developing the ability to control your thoughts.
And the fact of the matter is everyone has this ability.
It's just out of practice for most people.
A lot of the times people get angry very easily and stay angry.
So I want to put you in another scene.
Imagine your parents are angry.
They're angry at each other.
They're yelling, they're fighting, and they have low awareness.
They're not very aware of the situation.
They're just immersed in their own emotions.
And then imagine they're extremely mad at each other.
They are furious.
It's gotten to the point where they're throwing food around.
And then the doorbell rings.
People are here for dinner.
Guests are coming over for dinner.
Our neighbors have come over for dinner because we invited them over for dinner.
Now your parents instantly control their emotions and instantly rush up and instantly go back
to being a calm and tranquil.
Now everyone can imagine this because it's not necessarily a common occurrence, but this
happens and you're extremely pissed off and then the doorbell rings.
Now you have to fix your emotion.
You have to put on this.
You have to change your emotion essentially and control your thoughts and go back to being
calm.
So it's solely a matter of desiring to change your thoughts, to change your emotions.
So the parents desired, they had the desire to be calm.
Now this desire was based off an external factor like someone coming over, but we can
develop this desire inside of ourselves and it just takes a little bit of practice.
And it is possible, it is doable.