Think and Grow Rich Summary – Part 9 | | Wealth For TeensWealth For Teens

STEP 13: THE SIXTH SENSE: THE DOOR TO THE TEMPLE OF WISDOM

The flashes of inspiration sometimes called hunches are received by the sixth sense, which is part mental and part spiritual. It is the connection between human minds and infinite intelligence. If you have mastered the prior 12 steps to riches, your subconscious mind can now detect danger signs and recognize opportunities more quickly that your conscious mind, giving you precious advance time to react accordingly.

NOW THAT YOU HAVE THE 13 STEPS TO RICHES, CONQUER YOUR FEARS SO YOU CAN PUT THEM INTO PRACTICE

Your own indecision, doubt, and fear will are your worst enemies. Indecision is the tiny seed that plants doubt that, if left unchecked, grows into a huge forest of fear, where you can wander aimlessly forever, never finding the road to your riches again. Read about them here, then guard against them for the rest of your life. You and your family’s happiness and well-being depend on it.

SIX BASIC FEARS

To prepare your mind to receive the philosophy of the 13 Steps to Riches, you first need to rid your mind of indecision, doubt, and fear. The sixth sense cannot do its work while these three negative emotions occupy your mind. Indecision becomes doubt which ultimately becomes immobilizing fear. There are six basic fears:

Fears are merely states of mind; and, states of mind are subject to control and direction.

FEAR OF POVERTY

There is no compromise between the goals of poverty and riches. If you want riches, you must refuse all roads that lead to poverty. The starting point on the path to riches is desire. But you must first clear your mind of fear of poverty to enable you to follow the instructions for developing and maintaining the first step to riches, burning desire.

Fear of poverty is the greatest of the six basic fears. Nothing brings humans so much suffering and humility as poverty. Only those who experienced it understand this fully. Symptoms of the fear of poverty include:

1. Indifference. Lack of ambition; willingness to tolerate poverty; acceptance of whatever compensation life may offer without protest; mental and physical laziness; lack of initiative, imagination, enthusiasm, and self-control.

2. Indecision. Letting others do your thinking; sitting on the fence.

3. Doubt. Making excuses for lack of success; criticizing others who are successful.

4. Worry. Finding fault with others; overspending; neglecting personal appearance; scowling and frowning; overindulgence in alcohol, narcotics, or sex; nervousness; self-consciousness; and lack of self-respect.

5. Over-cautiousness. Focusing on the negative side of every circumstance; preferring to criticize plans instead of thinking of improvements; delaying until the perfect time to put ideas and plans into action; focusing on failures and not successes; pessimism causing indigestion, poor elimination, auto-intoxication, bad breath, and bad disposition.

6. Procrastination. Putting off until tomorrow what should have been done last year; spending enough time making excuses to have succeeded in the task; refusing responsibility whenever possible; compromising instead of putting up a good fight; bargaining with life for a penny instead of demanding happiness and prosperity; planning for failure instead of burning bridges to make retreat impossible; expecting poverty instead of demanding riches; associating with people who accept poverty instead of seeking the company of those who demand and receive wealth.

FEAR OF CRITICISM

The fear of criticism robs people of their initiative, destroys imagination, limits individuality, and takes away self-confidence. Parents often irreparably harm their children by criticizing them. The mother of one of Hill’s friends punished him with a switch daily and always told him when she finished, “You’ll land in the penitentiary before you are twenty.” He was sent to a reformatory at age 17.

Our closest family members are often the worst offenders of handing out plenty of unsolicited criticism. It is a crime against nature for any parent to create inferiority complexes in the mind of a child through unnecessary criticism. Employers get the best out of their employees, not by criticism but, by constructive suggestion. Parents could accomplish the same results with their children. Criticism plants fear or resentment in the human heart. It does not encourage love or affection.

This fear is almost as universal as the fear of poverty. Its effects are just as fatal to personal achievement because it, too, destroys initiative and imagination. Symptoms of the fear of criticism include:

1. Self-consciousness. Nervousness; shyness in conversations and meeting strangers; awkward movements of the hands and limbs; unable to make or hold eye contact.

2. Lack of poise. Insufficient voice control; bad posture; poor memory.

3. Personality. Indecisive; lacking personal charm; unable to express definite opinions; side-stepping issues instead of meeting them squarely; agreeing with others too easily.

4. Inferiority complex. Expressing self-approval to mask feelings of inferiority; using big words, often without knowing the real meaning of the words; imitating others’ styles in dress, speech, and manners; bragging about made-up achievements.

5. Extravagance. Trying to keep up with the Joneses; overspending.

6. Lack of initiative. Not taking opportunities for self-advancement; not expressing opinions; lacking confidence in your own ideas; answering questions evasively; hesitant in manner and speech; deceitful in words and deeds.

7. Lack of ambition. Mental and physical laziness; not being assertive; slow to reach decisions; easily influenced by others; criticizing other behind their backs while flattering them to their faces; accepting defeat with protest; quitting whenever opposed by others; overly suspicious of others; not tactful in manner and speech; unwilling to take responsibility for mistakes.

FEAR OF BAD HEALTH

The fear of bad health is closely related to the fears of old age and death because the latter are “terrible worlds” yet unknown to us but of which we have all heard troubling stories. Not only can bad health lead to death, it can also cause economic devastation. But the fear of disease in the mind alone can produce the physical symptoms of it. Ask a healthy person if he is feeling well then follow with a comment that he looks terribly ill. If this suggestion is made three times in a row, despite the person’s protest, especially if made by a different person each time, the healthy test subject may honestly begin to feel poorly and may even fall ill. So take care not to take this experiment too far!

In fact, any form of negative thinking can cause bad health: worry, fear, discouragement, and disappointment in love and business affairs. Doctors send patients to new climates because a change in mental attitude improves health. The symptoms of this fear are:

1. Negative auto-suggestion. Looking for and expecting symptoms of all kinds of disease; trying all health fads and quack remedies without professional guidance; obsession with others’ illnesses, diseases, accidents, and medical procedures.

2. Hypochondria. Focusing the mind on disease; creating cases of “nerves” from imaginary diseases.

3. Lack of exercise. Staying indoors for fear of disease, resulting in lack of exercise and excessive weight gain.

4. Lowered immune system. Constant worrying about health harms your body’s natural ability to resist disease.

5. Fishing for sympathy. Feigning sickness to receive sympathy to avoid work or as an excuse for lack of ambition.

6. Substance abuse. Using alcohol or narcotics as painkillers, instead of eliminating the source of the pain.

FEAR OF LOSS OF LOVE

Hill explained: “The fear of the loss of love probably dates back to the stone age when men stole women by brute force. They continue to steal females, but their techniques have changed. Instead of force, they now use persuasion, the promise of pretty clothes, motor cars, and other ‘bait’ much more effective than physical force. Man’s habits are the same as they were at the dawn of civilization, but he expresses them differently. [¶] Careful analysis has shown that women are more susceptible to this fear than men. This fact is easily explained. Women have learned from experience that men are polygamous by nature—that they are not to be trusted in the hands of rivals.”

The distinguishing symptoms of the fear of loss of love are:

1. Jealousy. Suspicious of friends and loved ones without any reasonable evidence; accusing wife or husband of infidelity without grounds; general suspicion of everyone; absolute faith in no one.

2. Hypercritical. Finding fault with others for little or no cause.

3. Reckless pursuit of money. Gambling, stealing, cheating, and otherwise taking hazardous risks to obtain money in an attempt to buy love; overspending and piling up debt to impress others; insomnia; nervousness; bad temper; weak will; lack of the following important habits: self-control, self-confidence, and persistence.

FEAR OF OLD AGE

The fear of old age is related to the fears of poverty and of the afterworld. Some also fear their diminishing sex appeal. The most common symptoms of the fear of old age include:

1. Drop in productivity. Slowing down and developing an inferiority complex in the 40s, falsely believing they are “slipping” because of age when they are just beginning to enter their most useful mental and spiritual decades.

2. Apologizing for own age. Referring to yourself as old instead of expressing gratitude for reaching the age of wisdom, understanding, and greatest productivity.

3. Ignoring new ideas. Killing off initiative, imagination, and self-confidence by falsely believing yourself too old to act on new ideas.

4. Clinging to youth. Dressing and acting too young; trying to recapture the past instead of focusing on improving your future prospects.

FEAR OF DEATH

For some people, this is the cruelest of all the basic fears. Religious fanatics have taught that an eternity of hellfire and brimstones awaits all those who do not follow their dogmas. Hill wrote: “Eternity is a long time. Fire is a terrible thing. The thought of eternal punishment with fire not only causes men to fear death, it often causes him to lose his reason. It destroys interest in life and makes happiness impossible.”

“In truth, no man knows, and no man has ever known, what heaven or hell is like, nor does any man know if either place actually exists. This very lack of positive knowledge opens the door of the human mind to the charlatan so he may enter and control that mind with his stock of legerdemain and various brands of pious fraud and trickery.”

“This fear is useless. Death will come, no matter what anyone may think about it. Accept it as a necessity, and pass the thought out of your mind. It must be a necessity, or it would not come to all. Perhaps it is not as bad as it has been pictured. [¶] The entire world is made up of only two things, energy and matter. In elementary physics, we learn that neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. Both matter and energy can be transformed, but neither can be destroyed. [¶] Life is energy, if it is anything. If neither energy nor matter can be destroyed, of course life cannot be destroyed. Life, like other forms of energy, may be passed through various processes of transition, or change, but it cannot be destroyed. Death is mere transition. [¶] If death is not mere change, or transition, then nothing comes after death except a long, eternal, peaceful sleep, and sleep is nothing to be feared. Thus, you may wipe out, forever, the fear of death.”

The general symptoms of this fear are:

1. Preoccupation with death. Thinking about dying instead of making the most of life due to a lack of purpose or suitable occupation; cure this with a burning desire to achieve something that makes life too thrilling to worry about death.

2. Worries about surviving loved ones. If you are worried about leaving your loved ones in poverty, all the more reason to focus your mind on achieving riches in your lifetime.