Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude

Napoleon Hill, author of the bestselling Think and Grow Rich, and W. Clement Stone co-authored this self-help classic. Drawing on principles Hill distilled from over 500 interviews with successful Americans, a project originally commissioned by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1908, the book argues that the single quality shared by all successful people is a Positive Mental Attitude, or PMA. The authors present PMA and its opposite, NMA (Negative Mental Attitude), as two sides of an invisible talisman that every person carries. The side one turns up determines whether one attracts or repels success, wealth, health, and happiness.

The book opens with the story of S. B. Fuller, one of seven children of a Black tenant farmer in Louisiana. Fuller's mother told him the family was poor not because of God's will but because no one had ever developed a desire to be rich. Fuller sold soap door-to-door for 12 years, saved $25,000, raised the remaining $125,000 needed to buy his supplier's company, and eventually acquired controlling interest in eight companies. The authors use Fuller's story, alongside others, to establish PMA's defining characteristics: faith, integrity, hope, optimism, courage, initiative, generosity, tolerance, and good common sense.

Hill and Stone then present 17 success principles extracted from the experiences of hundreds of accomplished Americans. These include definiteness of purpose, going the extra mile, accurate thinking, self-discipline, the master mind (a coordinated alliance of minds working in harmony), applied faith, enthusiasm, creative vision, and what they call "cosmic habit force," their term for the application of universal natural law. The authors argue that PMA is the catalyst that activates any combination of these principles, while NMA renders them ineffective or destructive.

To illustrate definiteness of purpose, the authors tell the story of Robert Christopher, a 26-year-old photographer, who set a goal to travel around the world on $80 and achieved it in 84 days through resourcefulness and persistence. They also present the story of Milo C. Jones, a farmer who experienced extensive paralysis but used his mind to devise a plan for his family to raise pigs, convert them to branded sausages, and sell them nationwide, becoming a millionaire. Both cases support the book's core formula: What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve with PMA.

The authors address what they call mental "cobwebs": the negative feelings, prejudices, and habits of thought that prevent clear thinking. They discuss semantic misunderstandings, false premises, and the dangerous belief that necessity justifies dishonesty. A student in the authors' PMA Science of Success training course who blamed his wife for his unhappiness discovered after four weeks of self-examination that his own negative attitude was the real problem. The authors also recount Hill's conversation with Al Capone at the Atlanta federal penitentiary, where Capone attributed his criminal career to necessity, illustrating how distorted reasoning leads to destruction.

A substantial portion of the book explores the subconscious mind. Hill and Stone argue that conscious autosuggestion, the deliberate repetition of positive affirmations, produces measurable results. They cite Bill McCall, an Australian reader of Think and Grow Rich, who wrote down his goal to become a millionaire by 1960 and achieved it four years ahead of schedule through disciplined use of autosuggestion. They also describe Emile Coué, a practitioner who had previously treated patients through hypnosis, and his discovery that patients' own mental suggestions, not their doctors', effected cures.

The authors introduce the concept of "something more," the additional element needed to complete a winning combination. Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patent was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court because Bell switched from intermittent to continuous current, a change his closest competitor missed. The Wright brothers succeeded in flight by adding movable wing flaps to control equilibrium. Thomas Edison tried over 10,000 experiments before perfecting the incandescent lamp. In each case, persistence and the application of a previously overlooked principle made the difference.

Hill and Stone argue that problems are opportunities in disguise and present a six-step formula for meeting challenges with PMA that includes asking for divine guidance and reframing adversity. Charlie Ward, convicted of narcotics smuggling, entered Leavenworth Penitentiary embittered but chose to change his attitude, read the Bible daily, studied electricity, and became superintendent of the prison power plant. After release, Ward joined Brown & Bigelow, the company of fellow inmate Herbert Hughes Bigelow, rose from laborer to president, and grew annual sales from under $3 million to over $50 million.

The self-motivator "DO IT NOW!" is presented as the secret of getting things done. Kenneth Erwin Harmon, a civilian Navy employee captured by the Japanese in Manila, immediately typed an entire copy of Think and Grow Rich before being sent to a prison camp. Harmon read the manuscript repeatedly during three years of captivity and emerged mentally stronger than when he entered. The authors instruct readers to practice responding to "DO IT NOW!" in small matters to build a reflex powerful enough to function in emergencies.

The book's middle sections address motivation and wealth-building. Hill and Stone identify 10 basic motives that inspire all human action, from self-preservation and love to the desire for material gain, and present Benjamin Franklin's self-improvement system as a practical formula: Franklin listed 13 virtues, concentrated on one per week while tracking violations, and cycled through all 13 four times per year. On acquiring wealth, the authors advocate using OPM (Other People's Money) through credit and borrowed capital, while warning about the dangers of credit abuse. Stone describes his own purchase of the Pennsylvania Casualty Company, in which he bought the firm for $25,000 and borrowed its $1,600,000 in liquid assets from the selling company itself, repaying the loan within 60 days.

The authors also discuss finding satisfaction in one's work through PMA. They present the "step-stone theory," in which routine tasks become meaningful when connected to a larger goal, and distinguish between negative dissatisfaction and "inspirational dissatisfaction," the constructive discontent that drives progress.

The concept of a "Magnificent Obsession," drawn from Lloyd C. Douglas's novel of the same name, urges readers to develop an unselfish dedication to helping others without expecting reward. Orison Swett Marden, a writer orphaned at seven and inspired by Samuel Smiles's Self-Help, lost his hotels and manuscript during the Panic of 1893 but rewrote Pushing to the Front while living on a dollar and a half per week. The book was printed in 25 languages and helped shift public attitudes from negative to positive.

The final sections cover health, happiness, and guilt. The authors argue that PMA promotes physical health and longevity: Industrialist John D. Rockefeller, who retired at 57 with ulcers and poor health, rebuilt his health through balanced living, daily spiritual nourishment, and the care of a full-time physician, living to 97. On happiness, they cite Abraham Lincoln's observation that people are as happy as they decide to be. On guilt, they present Jim Vaus, whose criminal career ended when he attended a Billy Graham event and made a public commitment to change, later learning that a rival gang had planned to kill him on the trip he abandoned that day.

The book includes a Success Quotient Analysis, a self-assessment questionnaire based on the 17 success principles, that helps readers identify areas for improvement. In the closing chapter, Hill and Stone urge readers to awaken the "sleeping giant" of the conscious mind by combining it with the subconscious through PMA. They provide a recommended reading list of over 60 books and encourage readers to share what they have learned, treating the book's ending as the beginning of a new era in their lives.