The next story about Henry Ford illustrates the following key points:
Key Point No. 8: Believe that nothing is impossible for you.
Key Point No. 9: Be willing to look at everything in a new way.
Success comes to those who are success conscious. Failure comes to those who let themselves become failure conscious. To succeed, you must change your mind from failure consciousness to success consciousness. You must believe that what you want is possible even if everyone else does not. The secret to Ford’s great fame and fortune is evident in the example of his V-8 engine. He wanted a gas engine with all eight cylinders in one block and ordered his engineers to design it. Every single one of his engineers believed this was not physically possible.
Ford said, “Produce it anyway.” When they tried and failed, he told them to keep trying until they succeed no matter how long it takes. The engineers had to keep trying if they wanted to stay employed, so they stretched their skills and imaginations for a full year without success. They tried everything they could imagine, but the task truly seemed impossible. At the end of the year, Ford checked on their progress. They reported that they had not found a way to carry out his orders. He merely told them to keep trying. “I want it, and I’ll have it.” Until, suddenly, as if by magic, they found the design that worked! The secret to Ford’s success was his determination.
Similarly, Barnes succeeded in his goal to go into business with Edison because he chose a definite goal, then put all of his faith and energy behind that goal. He did NOT say to himself when he climbed off that freight train: “If I get no encouragement of ever achieving my ultimate goal after a few months of working in some capacity for Edison, I’ll go home or try my luck at a different goal.” Instead, he swore to himself: “I will tell Edison that I have come to be his future business partner, and I will do everything I can to make this happen because I have burned all the bridges behind me and staked my entire future on my ability to get what I want.”
The secret to Barnes’ success is that he left himself no choice but to succeed. Failure was not an option. Here, Hill recites the story of “a great warrior” who burned his ships so his soldiers knew retreat was no longer an option. They had to win the battle or die trying.
Key Point No. 10: Failure is not an option.
So how do you create a burning, undying desire for riches (financial, physical, or spiritual)? Follow the Six Steps to Create a Desire for Riches, listed below.
SIX STEPS TO CREATE A DESIRE FOR RICHES
1. How much money do you desire? Pick a specific dollar amount. (If it is something other than money, pick a specific goal related to that other desire.)
2. What will you give for that money? Don’t expect something for nothing.
3. When will you have that money? Pick a specific date.
4. Create a plan that can get you what you desire and start immediately, ready or not.
5. Write a short statement of the exact amount of money you will have, the date you will have it, what you will give in exchange for it, and a clear plan for getting it.
6. Read your statement out loud every night before you go to sleep and every morning when you wake up, while seeing, feeling, and believing yourself having it.
Let your desire turn into an obsession. Only then can you convince yourself you will have what you want so thoroughly that you can easily see, feel, and believe it. If you doubt these six steps will work, remember that Andrew Carnegie created them to explain his own success, one of the greatest rags to riches stories of all time. He began without money, education, or connections and retired one of the richest, self-educated, and influential men in the world. Also, remember that Edison agreed with these six steps as not only essential for acquiring wealth but to achieve any desired goal.
Everyone who has accomplished amazing results in life first dreamed, hoped, wished, desired, and planned to achieve them long before they began to succeed. You might as well know that you can never succeed unless you develop a blue heat of desire for your specific goal and actually believe you will have it. Every great leader was a practical dreamer. If you cannot visualize your goal accomplished, then you will never have it.
Practical dreamers are always in demand, especially in difficult times. The world is always demanding new ideas, new inventions, new ways of doing things, and new leaders. To benefit from all of this demand for newer and better everything, you must have a definite purpose—you must know what you want—and a burning desire to have it.
Practical dreamers have always been able to harness the power of their own imaginations and turn them into skyscrapers, airplanes, automobiles, and every form of modern convenience that makes life more enjoyable.
Key Point No. 11: Tolerance and an open mind are prerequisites to success.
Key Point No. 12: “Success requires no apologies. Failure permits no alibis.”
Ignore everyone who does not believe in your dream. Columbus staked his life on his dream and discovered an unknown world and kept pursuing his dream till he died. Copernicus was denounced by many in his own lifetime for his belief that the planets revolve around the sun, but the entire world has since accepted his teachings. Henry Ford was poor and uneducated when he dreamed of a horseless carriage. He went to work immediately with the tools he had and put more wheels on the road than any man before him. Thomas Edison dreamed of a lamp operated by electricity and, over 10,000 experiments later, his dream became a reality. Abraham Lincoln dreamed of a united country with no more slavery in the South. He put his dream into action and lived long enough to see the start of his dream come true. The Wright brothers dreamed of a machine that could fly people through the air. Their dreams have been realized around the world. Marconi dreamed of uniting the world by transmitting the sound through the wireless air. Now everyone, from the humblest cabin to the stateliest mansion, can receive announcements from the President of the United States at the same time.
Everyone who achieved phenomenal success in life started from scratch and experienced many heartbreaking defeats before making their own unique contributions to history. John Bunyan wrote his famous Pilgrim’s Progress while imprisoned for 12 years for his religious views. O. Henry became the most famous short story writer in American history after he was imprisoned for embezzlement. Charles Dickens began working at the age of 12 pasting labels on jars of boot polish 10 hours a day for 6 shillings a week. Robert Burns was a poor, uneducated farm boy who became one of the most beloved poets despite his alcoholism. Helen Keller became deaf, mute, and blind shortly after birth. Despite her great misfortune, she turned her life into a source of inspiration for millions. Booker T. Washington was born a slave, but his burning desire led him out of a life of menial labor into becoming the preeminent civil rights leader of his time. Beethoven composed music despite starting to lose his hearing in his mid-twenties and composed some of his best music after going completely deaf. Milton published Paradise Lost 16 years after he went blind.
There is a difference between wishing for something and being ready to receive it. You are ready to receive something when you believe you can have it. You must believe you can have it and not just hope or wish to have it. Open your mind to this belief. Let it plant itself like an acorn in your mind to grow the deep roots and mighty trunk of an oak, with no room left for weeds of doubt to sprout under the great shade of your firm belief.
You can dream big or your can accept whatever life happens to give you, as the poet Jessie B. Rittenhouse expressed in her poem “My Wage”:
I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.
For Life is just an employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.
