As I study the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill I’ve come to an understanding that there are 3 basic principles needed to establish a strong foundation for one to achieve their goals. The first of which is, Desire.

Napoleon Hill states in his book that “desire is the beginning of all achievements.” Throughout his book he describes this desire as a “white hot” desire. At the time that this book was written people worked in many factories that contained kilns. The hottest fires in these kilns were called “white hot” fires. Hill was trying to communicate that one must have a burning or a white hot desire as the first principle of reaching one’s goal.

The second principle that Hill talks about is Faith. Sometimes people will use the word Belief instead. Hill states in his book that Faith is the most powerful force in the world. In fact if you were to read the Christian Bible you would find that it makes reference to a passage that talks about faith being the amount of a mustard seed…(which is a very small seed) enough to “move mountains.” That alone refers to the amount of power that Faith has!

In order for us to achieve any success at all according to Hill we must have Desire and Faith. Now understand that WE will not automatically reach our goals by Desire and Faith alone. But…both of these will need to be present in order to take “Action” which is principle #3. Hill refers to “Action” in his chapter as “Decision”.

We must have Faith before we can act! Because unless we have faith or the belief we are unlikely to take action toward are goal(s).  So these principles must be followed in a certain order to obtain the results that we are looking for. Without faith or belief we are probably not going to continue the actions needed to reach our goals for any length of time. We will unlikely be able to keep our full commitment toward our goal(s). And our decisions and our actions will be very weak.

So we must start with a white hot Desire first. We then create a strong Belief or Faith from that desire and then we begin to take Action. The action that we take feeds or fuels our white hot desire. In other words…the action that we take creates more desire which in turn feeds our belief and our faith. And of course this creates more actions toward our goals!

During the time the “Think and Grow Rich” was written, Napoleon had studied 25,000 failures. He determined that at the top of the list was the lack of decision or action. That is how important taking action really is!

The wealthiest people in the world create or take advantages of opportunities by applying these principles. This not only allows them to take action but massive action toward there goals.

So when we have a desire to do something and we add just a little faith with some type of action…when can create more desire…which creates more faith and more action! And after a while it takes on momentum to the point that your goals become your reality!

-RH