INTRODUCTION to the LECTURE SERIES,

from the Publisher

Your Right to Be Rich by Napoleon Hill was originally presented as a lecture series to a Chicago audience in spring 1954. Courtesy of The Napoleon Hill Foundation, this publication makes this series of lectures available to you and grows the illustrious works of Napoleon Hill, an American icon of successful living.

Your Right to Be Rich can truly help you achieve your every goal and dream. It will inspire new goals and dreams whereby riches are not restricted to such narrow parameters as fortune and fame. You deserve to be rich in every way—personally, spiritually, and financially. Dr. Hill discovered that those who attained only financial rewards from life, no matter how great those rewards may have been, were the least happy and satisfied people in the world. To be truly rich, you must be rich in all aspects of life.

While Dr. Hill refers to this philosophy as a science of personal achievement—a science of success—you may wonder how success can follow science. Can the steps to riches be synthesized, quantified, and made to work without fail, like a trusted experiment in the laboratory? Dr. Hill defines science as the art of organizing and classifying facts. Like all sciences, the science of success is only useful in its application toward some goal. Dr. Hill presents factual, proven principles so carefully organized and explained that they will, if you follow them carefully and without fail, lead you to the riches you so earnestly desire.

These outstanding lectures represent a unique opportunity to long-devoted students as well as newcomers to Napoleon Hill’s work. From this material, based on his live lecture recordings, we experience Dr. Hill’s personal presentation of his outstanding philosophy as never before, in a remarkable, effective, and dramatic manner. This lecture series gives us Napoleon Hill’s seventeen principles of success, the culmination of decades of study and research.

To more closely achieve the same experience as his students, consider following these three points Dr. Hill strongly emphasized when he gave these lectures:

1. Take notes. Keep a notebook handy and take generous notes, starting now. Writing down the information you learn will help to imprint Dr. Hill’s philosophy more strongly on your conscious and subconscious mind, putting it to work more immediately and effectively. You may choose to write or record your ideas.
2. Add your own ideas. As you progress through the material, expand your notes, constantly adding to them your own original thoughts as well as relevant thoughts from newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV.
3. Use repetition to make these ideas yours. Don’t just read these ideas once. Review this material over and over and over again, emphasizing through the power of repetition their messages of thought and action. The more you work with this course, the more it will work for you.

THE SEVENTEEN PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS

1. Definiteness of Purpose. All achievement starts with setting your major objective and making specific plans for obtaining it.
2. Mastermind. This process lets you reap the full benefits of the experience, training, education, and specialized knowledge and influence of others.
3. Applied Faith. Turn faith into action so that the power of the soul through which your aims, desires, plans, and purposes are developed may be translated into reality.
4. Going the Extra Mile. Rewards multiply when you render more service and better service than you are paid to render.
5. Pleasing Personality. Develop the mental, spiritual, and physical traits that will help you make the most of yourself and lead you to success.
6. Personal Initiative. Taking action is the principle that is necessary for leadership in any walk of life.
7. Positive Mental Attitude. The right attitude creates a path to success and the means by which this philosophy can be implemented.
8. Self-Discipline. Emotions must be managed in order to balance your head and your heart to achieve a coordination of reason and emotion.
9. Enthusiasm. This dynamo of all individual achievement helps you develop self-confidence and overcome negative thoughts, worries, and fears.
10. Controlled Attention. Organize your mind. Focus on success. Coordinate and control the powers of your mind. Use the powerful tool of autosuggestion.
11. Accurate Thinking. Gather facts, weigh their relative importance, use your own judgment, and think a matter through in order to make the right decision based on thought vs. opinion or emotion.
12. Learning from Adversity and Defeat. Understand and circumvent the causes of failure, turning the inevitable setbacks, failures, and opposition into positive benefit.
13. Cooperation. Coordinate your efforts with others and work together to achieve a common goal. Use teamwork and tact to your advantage in your personal and business endeavors.
14. Creative Vision or Imagination. Let the powerful workshop in your mind reveal the ways to express the purpose of your brain and ideals of your soul.
15. Sound Health. Physical well-being is essential to cultivating the energy, vitality, attitudes, and habits for a truly healthy, happy, and successful life.
16. Budget Time and Money. Make and get the most out of your physical resources.
17. Law of Cosmic Habit Force. Understand and apply the dynamics and power of the controlling force and the natural laws that govern the universe (including human relationships).

THE INCREMENTAL POWER OF ALL PRINCIPLES WORKING TOGETHER

Each of these seventeen principles, in and of itself, is of tremendous value. However, this is a synergistic philosophy in which all the elements working together have an overall effect greater than the sum of their individual effects. As Dr. Hill discusses each principle, he frequently refers to one or more of the other principles. His repetition is a purposeful and constant reminder that all these principles are interrelated, each one drawing from and building upon every other one. Much like baking a cake, each ingredient is necessary to get the desired results. You can’t make a cake only from flour or baking powder or shortening or flavoring; you need all the ingredients in the recipe.

You will notice one particular word Dr. Hill uses often. The word is transmute. A dictionary defines it as changing one form, condition, nature, or substance into another. To transform or convert, this thought is essential to your understanding and application of this philosophy.

Transmutation means that you have the ultimate control over your thoughts and feelings. If they are negative, you can make them positive. If they are restrictive, you can make them expansive. If you have held yourself back, you can set yourself free. You have the capacity to transmute or change the habits and patterns that have defeated you.

You will also notice Dr. Hill’s reference to the nine basic motives, also called (in other works) the alphabet of success. They are important to understand because emotions and desires inspire all voluntary actions that become individual achievements. As the basic building blocks of human character, motives are the foundation on which this philosophy rests. They are vital to your understanding of other people and of yourself, for they are part of us all.

THE NINE BASIC MOTIVES

1. The emotion of love.
2. The emotion of sex.
3. The desire for material gain.
4. The desire for self-preservation.
5. The desire for freedom of body and mind.
6. The desire for self-expression and recognition.
7. The desire for life after death.
8. The desire for revenge.
9. The emotion of fear.

As you can see, this list truly mirrors human nature, with motives that are positive and motives that are negative. To achieve the riches we want, we must understand these forces and how to work with them.

The principles of this philosophy and the basic dynamic forces of humanity hint at the exciting and inspiring journey that awaits you. In the following pages, you will learn from the man who developed this philosophy, and who has motivated more men and women to achieve success than anyone else in history. Napoleon Hill, America’s greatest millionaire-maker, will share his secrets of success with you in this never-before-published series of powerful lectures. Take a front-row seat as one of his students. Welcome the wisdom that will change your life. Prepare for the adventure of a lifetime. Accept your right to be rich.