In the 1920′s and 30′s,  a young journalist  called Napoleon Hill, interviewed 500 of the most successful people in America. He found that people who create success have many things in common. These are some of them as described in his best-selling book, “Think and Grow Rich”

1. Decide what you want. Desire is the starting point of all achievement. Desire is a crazy mad emotion that you absolutely have to satisfy, not a rational reasoned argument for doing something.

2. Believe that you can get what you want. Self doubt will prevent you from taking action. No-one is born with a sense of what they can’t do. Limiting beliefs are learned and they can and must be unlearned. It is usually easier to overcome other people’s judgements than our own.

3. You don’t have to do it all yourself. As Mother Teresa famously told Bob Geldof, “I can’t do what you do and you can’t do what I do but together we can change the world.” Surround yourself with people who can do what you can’t and who respect you for what you can do. Start or join a  MasterMind Group with like minded people.

4. Make practical use your imagination. Work out how to turn your dreams into reality. Everything, everything, starts out as an idea. Ideas are the beginning point of all achievement but they need to be harnessed into practical action.

5. Create a plan, organise your ideas and take continuous action. Most people put more effort into planning a holiday than planning their life. Successful people don’t just react to things that happen to them, they question whether something will take them closer to their goal before acting on it or rejecting it.

6. Avoid procrastination and make decisions. The ability to make decisions comes back to understanding exactly what it is that you want, to the burning desire and definite purpose that underpins all achievement. Successful people in all walks of life decide quickly and firmly and the world has a habit of making room for the person who knows where they are going and why.

7. Persist. Things will go wrong, people will let you down. If your desire is strong enough you will find a way through all difficulties to achieve your desire. Don’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results. Find different ways to achieve your goals. Paulo Coelho was committed to a mental asylum by his parents three times and subjected to electro-convulsive therapy because they thought he must be mad to want to become a writer instead of a lawyer. He persisted and his book, The Alchemist, sold over 40 million copies.

8. Aquire power and learn how to use it. The ability to lead others in a spirit of harmony to achieve a definite objective is a major source of success but successful people say that personal power and self mastery are most important.

9. Understand that sex is the most powerful of human desires. When this desire is harnessed into a creative process it can be the source of genius. It can also be a huge temptation and has destroyed many great people.  Successful people say that they are able to transmute its power into a creative force that helps them to produce and action ideas that in many instances makes their fortunes.

10. Learn to use the power of the subconscious mind. Everything we have ever experienced is kept in the vast storehouse of our sub-conscious. It can work for or against us but when we learn how to harness this power it makes us unstoppable. What we think of the world and ourselves makes us not only who we are but who we can be.

11. Develop and learn to trust the ‘sixth sense’. Intuition can help us to avoid dangers and grasp opportunities. Intuition is part of our nature and many successful people admit that intuition is a big part of their success including Donald Trump, Oprah, Richard Branson and even Bill Gates. Einstein and Edison described their creative process as having original ideas that didn’t come from the rational foundation of the mind. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, says, ‘The intuitive mind tells the logical mind where to look next.’

12. Deal with fear, the major obstacle to achievement. Almost every feeling of fear we experience is as the result of an IMAGINED situation, not a real one. In almost every case, the imagined situation that we most fear never happens. When a situation that we had feared actually materialised, most of us deal with it without any real consequences. The only thing holding most people back is their own imagination!

Is it ever too late to do the things you once dreamed of doing?

Mary Wesley, best-selling author, took up writing at 70

Charles Darwin’s first book wasn’t published until he was in his 50’s

Colonel Sanders was in this 60’s when he franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken

Ray Kroc was in his 50’s when he launched McDonalds

Agatha Christie was 62 when she wrote The Mousetrap

Julia Child was 50 before she took up cooking professionally

Benjamin Franklin was 78 when he invented bifocals.

Life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years. There is no longer an official retirement age. If you go to college at 40 and qualify at 45 you could still have half your life left to work at what you love. It’s never too late to become an achiever instead of a dreamer!