The Thoughtful Path of the Entrepreneur
The Entrepreneurial Path Leads to Success so Long as Self Motivation and Auto Suggestion are Active
“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents”.
-Andrew Carnegie
One of the greatest influencers, philanthropists and most successful entrepreneurs of our time was Andrew Carnegie. A Scottish immigrant, Carnegie is said to be one of the greatest “rags to riches” stories in American History. Starting out as the son of a weaver, and moving with his family from an impoverished nation to the United States in 1848, at age 13 Carnegie started working in a cotton mill 12 hours per day for $1.20 a week; working hard, and with blind faith in his ability to succeed, he built his fortune in Steel and finally retired at 66, selling his steel enterprises in 1901 for $480 million.
Carnegie had a great many philosophies about life, philanthropy and making one’s dreams come true; at his bidding, Napolean Hill wrote a book called Think and Grow Rich, which lists 13 steps for success, and is based on the philosophies passed on to him by Carnegie, as well as his observations of many of the most successful entrepreneurs and thinkers of the time.
The 13 Steps are:
- Desire
- Faith
- Auto-suggestion
- Specialized knowledge
- Imagination
- Organized Planning
- Decision
- Persistence
- Power of the Master Mind
- The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
- The Subconscious Mind
- The Brain
- The Sixth Sense
“Self discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do. Simply, self discipline enables you to think first and act afterward”.
–Napolean Hill
What you believe about your path makes all the difference between success and failure. When you struggle with belief, or faith as Hill often refers to it, you have the ability to change your thinking through the simple use of self discipline.
As an Entrepreneur you are already a special breed. You have a different way of viewing the world and your ability to move through it, and succeed in it, in a different way than the majority of people. What you may not know is that your thoughts and your beliefs have a tremendous effect on the outcome of your endeavors. When you think with the end in mind, your ultimate success, and envision what that looks like, you will inevitably manifest your dreams.