Napoleon Hill – Part 6. Self Discipline (Think and Grow Rich – Success Principles)

This visit brings us to the sixth principle of success without which the five principles I have given you previously would be useless. It is the principle of self-discipline. Self-discipline as I am presenting it to you here, has reference not only to your mastery of negative habits, which stand in the way of your success. But more particularly, to your development and enforcement of the positive habits, you will need in order to avail yourself of the six assets you bought over with you in that sealed envelope I mentioned,  in our first visit. Now let me give you a list of the more important things over which you will have to exercise self-discipline, before you can embrace and use the great master key to riches.

1.  #00:00:51-6# You will have to gain mastery over your tongue, by acquiring the habit of thinking first and then speaking. After you are sure that what you say will benefit you and not injure others. A loose tongue often is one’s greatest liability.
2.  #00:01:09-4# You will have to exercise self-discipline in mastering the common tendency to strike back at those at whom you have a cause, real or imaginary for a grievance. You must remember that everything you do to or for another, you do to or for yourself. Because your every thought and every act which benefits or injures another person, comes back to you in kind, greatly multiplied. So if you feel that you must slander another person, do not speak it but write it. Write it in the sands near the water’s edge, then move away from it until the tides have flown.
3.  #00:01:48-3# You will have to exercise self-discipline over all of your emotions, particularly your emotions of love, hate, fear and sex. These are the big four of your emotions and they can make you or break you according to the extent of discipline you exercise over them.
4.  #00:02:08-4# Your mental attitude needs discipline and control at all times, lacking this discipline, it can and it often does drive away friends. Destroy opportunities to get ahead, brings on physical and mental illness, develop stomach ulcers and makes piece of mind impossible.
5.  #00:02:30-5#  I have reserved the emotion of sex for special mention. Because failure to exercise self-discipline over this emotion, probably heads the list of all the causes of personal failure. The emotion of sex, is the most powerful of all emotions, and it is nature’s great creative instrument with which all species of living things are perpetuated. The proper means of self-discipline of the emotion of sex, is transmutation. The control and direction of this great emotional feeling toward the attainment of worthy purposes, such as the fulfilment of one’s major purpose in life. The great leaders, artists, orators, industrialists and professional people have learned the art of sex transmutation through the proper system of self-discipline. Because of the delicacy of the subject of sex emotion, I am limited as to the information I can give you about it on this visit. But I have covered the subject much more in detail in some of my books.
6. #00:03:38-2# Your stomach also needs discipline, through the proper habits of dieting and fasting, because information on dieting and fasting should come from your own doctor, I will not go into details concerning them except to call your attention to the need for knowledge on this subject. Personally, I attribute my sound physical health mainly to the habits of dieting and fasting which I have developed through the years.
7.  #00:04:06-4# You will need to exercise self-discipline in relation to religion and politics, because our country which is the most acceptable form of society civilisation has yet produced, is made up of people in varying beliefs in connection with both of these subjects. To be happy and prosperous in our country,  we must learn to live and let live, to give others the privileges we ask and demand for ourselves. And this also calls for strict discipline over self.
8.  #00:04:37-2# But I have reserved until the last, my reference to the most important circumstances over which you must exercise the strictest of self-discipline if you are to embrace and use the great master key to riches. I have reference to your profound privilege of taking possession of your own mind and directing it to whatever it is that you may desire. You cannot take possession of your own mind, or direct it to definite ends, without a practical system. I have devoted the better portion of my past life to the revelation and presentation of such a system, and I know that this system works because it has been successfully used by many millions of people throughout the world. The system is not only practical and workable, but it is so simple that anyone who is ready for it, may master it and use it successfully. Its use does not call for a genius, nor a great amount of formal education.

Interviewer: It calls only for a will to take possession of one’s own mind, and a definite purpose to which the mind is to be directed. Self-discipline by Thomas A. Edison made him the world’s greatest inventor who revealed to mankind during the first half of the 20th century, more of nature’s secrets than have been uncovered during the entire previous history of civilisation. Self-discipline carried Wilbur and Orville Wright through a multitude of failures and enabled them finally to give the world its first practical aeroplane, an achievement which has made the world smaller and changed the entire trend of civilisation. Self-discipline helped Helen Keller to triumph over deafness, blindness and dumbness. A combination of afflication such as most people never experience. Self-discipline helped me to carry on through years of heart aching discouragement and defeat, and give the world the first practical philosophy of success based on the ‘know-how’ gained by hundreds of men and women who spent a life-time by the trial and error method, and discovery of the principles which lead to personal success.

#00:06:56-0# Self-discipline is among the top ranking features of all the great religions, including of course the Christian faith, and there are some people who believe that our major purpose on earth is that of developing wisdom, through struggle and self-discipline. One thing is certain, no-one ever becomes very wise without the aid of self-discipline, and no-one ever finds peace of mind and happiness without the strict exercise of self-discipline. Self-discipline is the only means of transmuting sorrow into faith; it is the only means by which we may transmute hatred of others into the milder emotion of sympathy for them. It is the only means by which we may reveal and profit by the seed of an equivalent benefit which comes with every adversity, and every defeat. It is the only means by which we may shut out of our minds the deadly effects of past experiences of suffering and unpleasantness and it is the means by which we may discover that other self we carry around with us. That self which has great capacity for belief and does not become influenced by failure and defeat.

#00:08:16-8# Self-discipline can give us freedom from the fear of death. The most difficult to master of all of our fears. It can free us from the disease of hypochondria, the fear of imaginary illness with which so many people suffer and sometimes die. Self-discipline is the means by which we may think our own thoughts, live our own lives as we wish to live them, and remain forever free from the evil of fears and limitations, which we have inherited from the dark ages before the dawn of civilisation.

#00:08:51-9# The creator never gives one an asset or benefit without passing along with it the means by which it may be embraced and used. Self-discipline therefore is the means by which the creator provided us with a method of embracing and using the only thing over which we have unchallengeable control, the power of our own thoughts.

#00:09:15-9# And now until our next visit, may I remind you, that the habit of taking the line of least resistance makes all rivers and some men crooked.