Napoleon Hill's Success Masters

by Napoleon Hill

  AVOID SELF-SABOTAGE

  Right now, let’s look at some of the self-sabotaging beliefs people hold about money—and let’s also see how to replace those beliefs with new ideas for building real wealth.

  One of the most widespread beliefs is that making money is very difficult. It’s too hard and complicated for the average person. You’ve got to be a genius like Bill Gates, right? But the truth is, millions of people have become wealthy and millions more are going to do it in the very near future. You can be one of them. If you want to do it, you can do it.

  There are also many people who tell themselves that they don’t like to think about money. They might enjoy having more of it, but they don’t really want to focus on it. They tell themselves that maybe, if they don’t really concentrate on it, wealth will come into their lives all by itself. But in reality, we all have to think about money whether we want to or not. And the less we have of it, the more we have to think about it. We all have to pay the electric bill, pay the mortgage, put our kids through school, and a thousand other things. So, remember: The passive income streams you can build aren’t ends in themselves. They’re vehicles for setting you free in a financial sense. Once you’re free, you can stop thinking about money altogether if you so desire. Or you can think about it more than ever and in completely new ways. But the choices won’t be forced upon you. You will make your own decisions about the place of money in your life.

  Another common belief is the idea that making money involves luck or that it requires special abilities. This is the idea that wealth happens by chance. It’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. You just have to be lucky; and if you’re not lucky, there’s nothing you can do about it. But would you say that the top individuals in any field got there just because they’re lucky? Does a baseball player hit a home run just because they were lucky enough to get a good pitch? Does a poker player win a world championship just because they got the right cards? It’s true that chance plays a part, but you’ve got to be able to make the most of the chances that come your way.

  It can definitely be useful to think of making money as a game, but there’s more to it than just rolling the dice. The game of making money is challenging and fun, and it becomes more fun once you learn how to play it well. And the amazing thing is, you can even teach the money-making game to play itself. That’s really what passive income is all about.

  It’s not wrong or unspiritual to want to earn money without working hard for every single penny. Your prosperity does not detract from anyone else’s. The world is a place of abundant opportunity, and we should be grateful for the chance to put those to work. Wanting to be financially successful is not wrong. It’s perfectly natural. And since you are a good person, you will put your money to good use. So, the more money you have, the better the world will be.

  Now that we’ve gotten past the unconscious barriers that people place between themselves and financial success, we’re ready to start looking at how to build passive income in the most exciting medium ever created in the history of humankind. Yes, that’s a big statement, but that’s exactly what the internet is.

  This is an excerpt from The Power of Passive Income by Nightingale-Conant, The Power of Passive Income, ©2019, Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of The Staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc.