Napoleon Hill - The Positive Side of the Street: A Collection of Previously Unpublished Lectures

Other Books by Napoleon Hill

Think and Grow Rich

Outwitting the Devil

Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude

The Law of Success

The Master to Key Riches

Grow Rich! With Peace of Mind

Adversity and Advantage

This book is affectionately dedicated to that great army of unseen students and friends of the author, throughout the world, who have found their places in the world's work through the Science of Personal Achievement philosophy which is briefly presented in these pages. The author wishes especially to express here his thanks to those faithful students who offered him encouragement during the years of poverty and struggle through which he had to pass while the Science of Personal Achievement philosophy was in the making. Finally, the author wishes to pay tribute to all who, during his lean years, tried to destroy him with ridicule and to his enemies who resorted to more violent methods, for they armed him with determination and the persistence to see his labors completed.

Napoleon Hill , 1930

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

The Positive Side of the Street:

A Collection of Previously Unpublished Lectures

2022 by Napoleon Hill

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-63758-178-0

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-179-7

Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

Although every effort has been made to ensure that the personal and professional advice present within this book is useful and appropriate, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any person, business, or organization choosing to employ the guidance offered in this book.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

Contents

Chapter 7 : Imagination, Adversity and Defeat,
Budgeting Time and Money

Foreword

N apoleon Hill was happily married, retired and living comfortably in Los Angeles in the 1950s. But he was restless, as he had been all his life. He had written dozens of books and hundreds of newspaper articles, presented and recorded an untold number of lectures, and discussed and promoted his philosophy of success on scores of radio and television programs. Napoleon came out of retirement and presented even more radio and television shows in the 1950s and wrote more books. He had a prosperous partnership with W. Clement Stone, a Chicago insurance tycoon who had coaxed him out of retirement in 1952.

His venture with Mr. Stone came to an end in 1962, but Napoleon was still not finished. He wanted to continue to teach the principles of success he had discovered over decades of study. In 1964, at age eighty, semiretired and living happily in South Carolina with his wife Annie Lou, both healthy of mind and body and with plenty of money for them to retire on, he decided to present a series of lectures in Tulsa, Oklahoma. These talks focused on all seventeen principles of success, which he called a course on the Science of Personal Achievement.

These lectures were recorded, and the recordings were only recently found by the Trustees of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. They have never been published before, in audio or print form. They are a powerful embodiment of Napoleons success principles, and provide insight into the thinking of this great man as he neared the end of his life. He was to die six years later, in 1970.

In these lectures you will find that Mr. Hill continued to be optimistic about the future. He spoke with great inspiration and understanding about two of the important principles he had embraced later in life, positive mental attitude and cosmic habit force. He spoke expansively and eloquently based on his years of experience about the importance of accurate thinking, maintaining physical health, and, especially, going the extra mile. The lectures reveal a combination of Napoleons ever present youthful exuberance and the wisdom gained by experience and maturity.

We are proud to present these lectures to you, and trust that they will help you along the road to your own future successes, just as they helped Napoleon Hill continue on his constant quest for achievement. We hope they will assist you to travel, as Napoleon emphasized in his lectures on the Master Mind Alliance and Positive Mental Attitude, on the positive side of the street.

Don M. Green
CEO and Trustee of the Napoleon Hill Foundation

Introduction

Narrator: Introducing the Science of Personal Achievement. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the worlds first practical philosophy of success, by Dr. Napoleon Hill. The Science of Personal Achievement is designed to give you a richer and fuller life. It has been said that there is no surer way to success than to follow in the footsteps of those who have reached it. That is exactly what you are about to do: Take the first step with a man who has dedicated a whole lifetime to the organization and teaching of success principles. And Dr. Napoleon Hill has succeeded. So, without further delay, your teammate to success, Dr. Napoleon Hill. Dr. Hill, will you please tell our audience how you developed the Science of Personal Achievement?

Dr. Hill: In 1908, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, then the richest man in the world and founder of the United States Steel Corporation, and builder of public libraries, commissioned me to devote twenty years to studying the causes of success and failure. He believed that the world needed a new philosophy based upon the know-how of men like himself who had learned the rules of success by the trial-and-error method.

Narrator: Isnt it true that you interviewed Henry Ford, Thomas A. Edison, and some five hundred other outstanding businessmen of the 20th century during your research and development of the Science of Personal Achievement?

Dr. Hill: Yes, thats true. I spent more than twenty years in interviewing Americas best-known and most successful men, men like W. Clement Stone, Alexander Graham Bell, William H. Taft, former president of the United States, John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia merchant king, Woodrow Wilson, former president of the United States, Harvey Firestone, Dr. Frank Crane, F. W. Woolworth, and Theodore Roosevelt, former president of the United States. Well, dont you think thats enough? Or would you like me to continue? You know, I interviewed more than three thousand different people but only five hundred were helpful in developing this practical philosophy that is helpful to mankind in America and throughout the free world.

Narrator: I notice in your books that you refer to the seventeen principles that make up the Science of Personal Achievement. Please name the most important of these seventeen principles.

Dr. Hill: All seventeen of the principles are required to make the Science of Personal Achievement serve the purpose it is designed to serve. Its like a chain. If you broke a chain and took out one link, you wouldnt have a chain anymoreyoud only have two parts of a chain.

However, I will name six or seven major principles for you. Definiteness of purpose, which is the beginning of all achievement. The Master Mind, attractive personality, applied faith, going the extra milethat is to say, doing more work and better work than youre paid to do and doing it in a pleasing mental attitudeorganized endeavor, and a positive mental attitude. Any of the principles in the Science of Personal Achievement can be found in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Certainly, he had definiteness of purpose, and it is easy to conceive that the twelve disciples were members of his Master Mind group. And the Bible records that he had self- discipline over all of his emotions, which is proof of a strong positive mental attitude.