You have wasted too many hours walking half steps toward your aims, glancing over your shoulder to see who might approve, who might oppose, and who might laugh. That hesitation has been the thief of more dreams than poverty, more opportunities than lack of education. I tell you now, hesitation is the silent partner of defeat, and you have tolerated it for too long.
The man who moves timidly invites the world to block his path. The man who moves boldly makes the world move for him. This is not a matter of fortune.
It is a matter of law. In Think and Grow Rich, I name the six ghosts of fear. And chief among them for the timid soul are the fear of failure, the fear of criticism, and the lack of decision.
These are the chains that bind the feet of the drifting man. Ask yourself, when was the last time you acted as if victory was certain? not hoped, not guessed, not waited for, but certain.
When was the last time you decided without delay and refuse to revisit the decision? If you cannot recall, it is because you have been practicing the habit of hesitation, and habit becomes character. The character of the hesitant man is written in missed chances and lost years.
Consider Henry Ford in the early days of the automobile. Experts told him the public would never accept the motorc car. Bankers refused him.
Engineers doubted him. Yet Ford moved as if his vision was inevitable. He did not wait for the blessing of the wise.
He did not soften his plans to please the cautious. He fixed his aim and advanced without apology. The result was an industry remade in his image.
Every man has two choices. He may live in the shadow of fear or he may walk in the sunlight of decisiveness. Fear will whisper that you must wait for the right time, the right knowledge, the right support.
But the truth is this, the right time will never come. The right conditions will never align. The right asurances will never appear.
The man who wins is the man who decides and moves. Now hesitation is not harmless. It ages the spirit, bends the posture and drains the fire from the eyes.
Boldness on the other hand renews the soul. Every decisive act taken in the face of uncertainty adds strength to the will and youth to the heart. That is why the bold seem always alive because they are constantly moving towards something worthy.
If you would test this law, begin today. Choose one decision you have delayed, perhaps for months, perhaps for years, and act upon it before this day ends. Do not consult the doubters.
Do not weigh the obstacles. Move as if the outcome were certain. This will feel unnatural at first, for you have trained yourself in hesitation.
But boldness, too, is a habit, and it is built the same way, by repetition. Do not confuse boldness with recklessness. The bold man is not careless.
He is committed. He moves with a plan, with a purpose, and with the full power of his belief behind him. He does not move because he knows every detail.
He moves because he has decided the aim is worth any cost. And because he knows that action reveals what delay conceals. Affirm now, aloud, and without doubt.
I move as one who cannot lose. My steps are firm. I advance without apology.
Speak it until your tone matches the words. Until your spine straightens and your eyes fix forward. Repeat it when fear approaches.
Repeat it when you feel the weight of hesitation pulling at your feet. From this moment, you are no longer a man who waits. You are a man who moves.
And the world, seeing your certainty, will step aside or be carried with you toward the victory you have already claimed in your mind. You will never move boldly until the mind accepts the end result as certain. The timid man waits for proof.
The bold man builds the proof inside his own mind until it becomes a command to his body. This is the law. The subconscious will not permit you to act with conviction toward any end you do not first believe to be already yours.
Therefore, before your hand can grasp it, your mind must own it. It is not enough to wish. Wishes are the idol amusements of the drifter.
They flutter in the wind like dry leaves, moving in whichever direction chance blows them. The builder, the conqueror, the man who commands results, deals not in wishes, but in definite visions. Visions so complete in detail, so repeated in thought, so fixed in feeling that the subconscious accepts them as established facts.
In think and grow rich, I gave you six steps to transform desire into riches. These steps are not mere counsel. They are the method by which a man locks his aim into the machinery of his own mind until it moves toward him as surely as he moves toward it.
Yet most will read them once, nod, and pass on as though the repetition of them daily is beneath their dignity. That is why most remain as they are. Let me give you these six steps again, but I will give them to you now as the iron frame upon which the house of your victory will be built.
First, fix in your mind the exact outcome you desire. Not a vague wish to do better or make more or improve your life. Exact, specific.
If it is money, state the exact sum. If it is a position, name the title. If it is a condition, describe it in detail so precise that no other could mistake it for something else.
Second, determine exactly what you intend to give in return for this result. This is the law of cause and effect. You cannot plant corn and harvest wheat.
You cannot give half service and expect full reward. The man who would see his vision made law must offer value equal to or greater than the reward he seeks. and he must decide this before the harvest not after.
Third, set a definite date by which you will possess the aim. The indefinite date produces indefinite action. The definite date commands immediate movement.
The man who says someday will drift for years. The man who says by the 30th day of June fixes a boundary in his own mind and works to meet it. Fourth, create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once whether you are ready or not to put this plan into action.
Do not wait for a perfect plan. Perfection in planning comes through motion, through the collision of your will with circumstance, through correction in the field, not in the armchair. Fifth, write out a clear, concise statement of the outcome you desire, the date by which you will attain it, what you will give in exchange, and the plan by which you will carry it out.
This written statement is your command, your constitution, your personal law. Sixth, read this written statement aloud twice daily. Once just before retiring at night, and once upon arising in the morning.
As you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the aim. The voice must carry conviction. The mind must form pictures.
The heart must feel ownership. Now, let us turn this from instruction into living law. I command you to take a sheet of paper this very day and write what I will call your victory statement.
This is not for ornament nor to be filed away in some forgotten drawer. This is to be placed where you will see it every morning upon waking and every night before closing your eyes. The victory statement must contain four elements.
The goal stated with exactness, the date of attainment, the service or value you will render in exchange and the broad outline of the plan by which you will proceed. Beneath it, write these words. I see, I feel, I believe this aim to be mine.
I will act upon it daily with faith and persistence until it is made visible. Sign it with your name for a man's signature is his bond. Once this is done, you will have taken the first step in locking your aim into the subconscious.
But writing alone is not enough. The subconscious accepts the written word only when it is coupled with repeated emotion. That is why you must read it aloud twice daily with the voice of certainty.
In time, this repetition ceases to feel forced. You will begin to speak it as a man states the obvious. And when that happens, you will notice something strange.
Your actions will start to match the vision without strain. Let me give you the proof. Thomas Edison did not create the electric light by accident.
He carried in his mind a picture of that light glowing in homes across the land long before the filament that could withstand the heat had been discovered. He endured thousands of failed experiments. But these were not failures to him, for they did not alter the picture in his mind.
That picture was fixed. The work merely caught up to it. Andrew Carnegie saw a steel empire in his mind when others saw only smoke and risk.
He wrote his vision in his thought so clearly that every meeting, every negotiation, every hire, and every investment moved in its direction. Those who worked with him caught the same image because it was carried with such certainty. Carnegie did not hope his empire would exist.
He conducted his affairs as though it already did. The timid soul says, "I will believe it when I see it. " The bold soul says, "I will see it until I believe it.
And believing it, I will cause it to be seen. " Which are you? When you rise tomorrow, will you look upon your victory statement and think it a noble ambition but far away?
Or will you look upon it as a deed to property already owned, a title to wealth already claimed, a letter of appointment already signed? Understand this. The subconscious mind is the link between your desire and infinite intelligence.
It works continuously. Whether you give it food or poison, whether you give it command or confusion, if you do not deliberately feed it with the images of your aim, it will feed itself on whatever scraps of doubt, fear, and distraction the world throws to it. And as it feeds, so it acts.
Therefore, you must starve it of fear and feed it with certainty. When you speak your victory statement, you are not reciting a dream. You are engraving a fact upon the deepest part of your nature.
The more deeply it is engraved, the more the body obeys without hesitation. Perhaps you doubt this power because you have never practiced it with persistence. You may have written goals before, but you have not joined them with the repetition of voice, the engagement of feeling, and the mental picture so vivid you could draw it in detail.
That is why they faded. Here is your test. Commit to this practice for 30 days without missing a single morning or evening reading.
Read aloud. Imagine the scene of your victory, the sights, the sounds, the conversations you will have. Feel the weight of the contract in your hand, the smell of the office where you will sit, the ring of coins, or the rustle of banknotes in your possession.
Involve every sense, for the subconscious responds to complete impressions. Your present condition is the result of the pictures and emotions you have most often impressed upon your mind. If those have been vague or negative, the result will be in kind.
But change the pictures, fix them with certainty and act as the man who already possesses them and you will change the result. Do not speak against your own vision. Never say if I succeed but when I succeed.
Never say I hope this works but it is working now. These are not tricks of speech. They are safeguards of faith.
The tongue must serve the vision not undermine it. Every great builder of enterprise, invention or wealth has practiced this law whether he knew its name or not. They formed the image.
They repeated it. They acted in harmony with it. And they refused all contrary suggestions.
You cannot name a single enduring achievement that was not first fixed in the mind as a completed picture. Affirm now with voice steady and eyes fixed. I see the end as done.
My mind accepts no picture of defeat. Each act moves me toward the result already mine. Say it again and again until the words become more than sounds.
Until they become the truth by which you govern every hour. This is how the bold move without hesitation. They have already traveled the road in the mind.
So the steps in the body feel familiar. They are not guessing. They are following a path already drawn.
You must become such a man. And you become him by making your vision the law within you. Faith is not a matter of chance.
It is a discipline built as a mason builds a wall, one brick at a time, with deliberate care and daily labor. Faith is the foundation of all bold action. Without it, your steps will falter at the first sign of resistance.
With it, you will advance through storms that send other men running for cover. In law of success, I gave the self-confidence formula. This is not an ornament for idol reading.
It is a working tool for the builder of destiny. Copy it in your own hand. Sign it with your name.
Read it aloud upon waking and before sleep. Do this until the sound of your own voice declaring your certainty becomes the ruling tone of your inner thought. The formula begins.
I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my definite chief aim. Therefore, I demand of myself persistent continuous action toward its attainment. and I here and now promise to render such action.
You will not merely say these words. You will command them until your mind accepts them as the only truth it knows. Look to Abraham Lincoln in the darkest days of the Civil War.
His advisers urged retreat. His enemies predicted collapse. And yet he acted with the calm of a man convinced of the Union survival.
Every decision he made carried the weight of settled conviction. And that conviction became the backbone of those who followed him. His faith was not built on ease.
It was built on daily decisions to believe in the end he had chosen. You must do the same. For the next seven days, I command you to make at least one decision each day that feels too bold for the man you have been.
Do not seek approval. Do not wait for agreement. Act at once and let the act itself train your mind to accept that you are the sort of man who decides and does.
Understand this. Faith without action is a dreamer's play thing. Action without faith is labor without reward.
The man who moves boldly and wins in everything unites the two. He believes in his aim with such force that his actions carry a spirit others can feel. That spirit attracts allies, opens doors, and forces obstacles to bow.
Guard your faith as you would guard a treasure. Do not expose it to the rust of idle talk or the rot of doubtful counsel. Speak only that which supports your aim.
Refuse to lend your ear to the man who would weaken your resolve. Faith grows in the soil of repetition. Repetition of thought, of word, of deed.
Affirm aloud. I act with the calm of one already victorious. My faith turns thought into reality.
Say it until your mind obeys it. Until hesitation feels unnatural and bold action feels like the only choice. For that is the discipline of faith.
It becomes the habit of moving as if victory were already yours. Bold action is born at the moment of decision. Every victory you admire began with a man saying, "It will be done.
" And then, sealing that decision so tightly that retreat was impossible. The timid man leaves himself a way back, the bold man burns his bridge and marches forward. The difference is not in fortune, it is in resolve.
Consider Hernand Cortez as he landed upon the shores of the new world. His men faced uncertainty, opposition, and a vast unknown. Cortez gave one command.
Burn the ships. There would be no return. Their only hope was forward.
This is the power of eliminating retreat. It turns the mind's full energy toward the one path that remains. Victory.
Many of you fail not because you cannot succeed, but because you have kept one foot in the camp of doubt. You tell yourself you are committed, yet you keep your old employment just in case. You maintain friendships with those who mock your aim.
You entertain the thought of quitting when it grows hard. This is not commitment. This is drifting.
And drifting is the path to defeat. In Think and Grow Rich, I told the story of Ru Derby and his uncle who quit mining just 3 ft from gold. Their decision to stop was not made in a moment.
It was made long before when they kept the thought of quitting as an option. Once that seed is present, it will grow under the first heat of difficulty. I ask you now, where in your life have you left yourself an escape?
In your work, in your discipline, in your speech. List them without excuse. Then close them one by one.
Tear the safety net. Cancel the fall back. End the conversation that tells you it is wise to wait and see.
It is only when you have no retreat that you will find the strength to take the ground before you. Remember Henry Ford's challenge to his engineers, build a V8 engine in a single block. They said it could not be done.
He told them to work until it was done, no matter how long it took. Months passed with no progress, but Ford never reopened the decision. His certainty became their certainty and the impossible was completed.
Your daily drill. Write down three escape routes you have left open. Financial, relational, mental.
Destroy them. Replace them with a single sentence of decision. This will be done and there is no other way.
Read it aloud morning and night. Let your mind hear it until it believes it. Decision is the door to boldness.
And the elimination of retreat is the lock that keeps it shut. Until you do both, you will always move as a man half-committed. But once done, you will advance with the confidence of one who knows.
Victory is not an option. It is the only outcome. Decision starts the march.
Persistence finishes it. Many men begin with enthusiasm. But when the road grows steep and the hours grow long, they stop.
They tell themselves they will resume later, but later never comes. The victor is the man who presses forward when his muscles ache, when his mind is tired, and when others have already turned back. Persistence is not stubbornness for its own sake.
It is the continual application of effort in a definite direction until the aim is reached. In think and grow rich, I laid out the seven factors that build persistence. Definitess of purpose, desire, self-reliance, accurate knowledge, cooperation, willpower, and habit.
Without these, persistence cannot live. With them, it cannot die. Consider Thomas Edison.
10,000 experiments failed before he produced the working light bulb. 10,000 times he could have said enough. But each failure was taken as a step closer to the answer.
He persisted, not because it was easy, but because he had determined there would be no end but success. Or take Colonel Harlon Sanders, who in his later years carried a chicken recipe to over a thousand potential partners. Each rejection met with the same steady reply.
Onto the next. He acted as if the outcome was certain and his persistence turned no into yes until his name became known in every city. You must train persistence as you train the body by daily exercise.
Plan your week so that the most important task connected to your aim is done first each day before lesser matters are allowed in. Keep this appointment with yourself as you would with the most important client in the world. Your challenge for 30 days.
Do one thing every day that moves you forward, regardless of mood or difficulty. Do it on good days and bad. On days of strength and days of fatigue.
At the end of 30 days, persistence will no longer feel like strain. It will feel like the natural order of your life. Affirm aloud.
I outlast all obstacles. Persistence is my ally. I hold the course until the victory is complete.
Speak it when you are tempted to pause. Speak it when your results seem small. Speak it until the thought of quitting feels foreign to your nature.
The man who persists cannot be defeated. Circumstances will bend. Obstacles will yield.
Time itself will serve him. And in the end, he will stand where others stopped, looking back at the ground he has gained. Not because he was stronger at the start, but because he refused to stop before the end.
No man wins greatly and alone. The solitary worker may accomplish much, but there is a power greater than any single mind. A power born when two or more minds unite in harmony for a definite purpose.
In law of success, I called this the mastermind. It is the blending of intelligence, faith, and effort in such a way that each member draws strength from the whole. Andrew Carnegie was once asked the secret of his wealth.
He pointed to a group of men, his cabinet of trusted associates, and said, "These men," he credited his fortune not to his own genius alone, but to the combined power of minds working together in perfect accord toward a shared aim. This was his mastermind. Thomas Edison built an invention factory where teams of skilled men worked side by side.
Problems that might have delayed one man for months were solved in hours by the sharing of knowledge and the meeting of ideas. The mastermind multiplies boldness because it removes isolation. When others around you believe in the aim, doubt has no foothold.
To form your own mastermind, choose members with care. Each must possess a skill or knowledge that strengthens the whole. Each must agree on the definite aim.
Most important, each must be willing to maintain harmony. One doubter, one cynic can poison the entire effort. Remove them quickly, for they will erode boldness as surely as water wears stone.
Set regular meetings with your mastermind. Review progress toward the aim. Offer and accept counsel without vanity.
Share responsibility and give credit freely. In this way, the bond grows and with it the shared belief in certain victory. I command you to begin assembling your council now.
If you cannot yet find such men, begin by becoming the sort of man they would join, decisive, reliable, and committed. Your own boldness will draw like-minded allies to you. Affirm aloud.
I surround myself with allies of courage. Our union multiplies our power. Victory is certain when we act together.
Speak it until you feel the strength of this unseen army at your side. With a mastermind, you will move not with the force of one man, but with the momentum of many, and the world will yield before that force. Boldness cannot live in a mind that is divided.
Controlled attention is the art of fixing your thought on that which serves your aim and refusing to allow entry to anything that contradicts it. In law of success, I warned that the mind will follow the direction in which it is most often pointed. If you feed it images of defeat, it will travel toward defeat.
If you feed it certainty, it will march toward victory. The average man does not control his attention. He surrenders it.
He lets idol talk, foolish news, and the opinions of the unsuccessful plant seeds in his mind. He permits the fears of others to mingle with his own thoughts. This is why his energy is scattered, his courage diluted, and his actions uncertain.
If you will act as if everything always works out, you must starve the weeds of doubt. Look at Woodro Wilson in his fight for the League of Nations. He faced fierce opposition at home and abroad.
The newspapers were filled with criticism. Advisers urged compromise. Yet he kept his attention fixed on the image of the world order he sought.
Even when others abandoned him, his words and actions showed no retreat. His focus outlasted the noise. Andrew Carnegie practiced the same discipline in business.
He filtered the information brought to him. He did not allow his mind to dwell on problems without solutions or predictions based on fear. He demanded facts that could be acted upon and dismissed speculation that would only slow his advance.
This was not ignorance. It was accurate thinking. Accurate thinking is the shield of controlled attention.
You must separate fact from mere opinion, truth from rumor, and possibilities from impossibilities. Ask always, "Does this information help me advance? Does it strengthen my aim?
" If not, reject it as you would reject spoiled food. Your mind is the table upon which you feed your destiny. Do not serve poison there.
Here is your practical drill. List every source of doubt in your life. This may include certain people, newspapers, habits, or conversations.
For the next 30 days, cut them off entirely. Do not explain yourself. Do not argue.
Simply remove the channel through which these influences reach you. You will find in a matter of days that your energy rises and your confidence deepens. During this time, feed your attention only with that which confirms your aim.
Read biographies of men who have won greatly. Study examples of persistence rewarded. Speak daily with those who believe in you or in their own worthy aims.
Let your environment be an unbroken chain of reminders that victory is natural to the man of purpose. When doubt does attempt to enter, meet it with deliberate replacement. Speak your aim aloud.
Review your written statement. Recall a past victory you have won through persistence. Replace the false image with one that serves you.
Over time, your mind will learn to reject doubt on its own. As a trained guard rejects intruders without waiting for orders, affirm aloud, "I control what enters my mind. My attention serves my purpose.
My mind rejects defeat. " Say it with the certainty of a commander giving orders to his troops. Remember, your mind is the captain of your fate.
If you allow it to be distracted by every passing shadow, your ship will drift. But if you keep it fixed on the horizon you have chosen, no wind or tide can carry you from it. Controlled attention is not only the guardian of boldness.
It is the amplifier of it. When every thought, word, and deed points in the same direction, progress accelerates. What others call luck is often nothing more than the effect of a man's attention held steadily upon his aim until the world adjusts to it.
From this moment you will no longer let chance rule what you think about. You will take the wheel. You will decide the subject of your thoughts and you will hold to it until it yields results.
That is controlled attention. That is the discipline of the victor. There is a state of mind in which hesitation cannot survive.
It is the state of one who has already claimed the victory in his heart and in his conduct long before the world has seen the proof. This is the summit of boldness to walk, speak, and act as the man who has already secured the prize while others still question if it is possible. You may think this is pretense, but it is not.
It is the deliberate embodiment of your definite chief aim. The timid man waits for evidence before adopting the posture of success. The bold man adopts it now and the evidence follows.
Life bends toward the one who carries himself as its master, not its supplicant. Andrew Carnegie was known to negotiate as if the terms were already settled in his favor. His tone, his manner, his calm certainty suggested that the agreement was merely a formality.
This was not arrogance. It was the natural confidence of a man whose mind was already living in the result. And so the result came to meet him.
Henry Ford often spoke of projects as if they were already completed before the first plans were drawn. When challenged, he did not argue. He continued as if the objection did not alter the certainty of the outcome.
That is why his enterprises advanced while others hesitated. The world grows accustomed to granting what a man has already taken in his own conviction. If you would live as the man who has already won, begin with the outer signs.
Your posture should be upright, your step deliberate, your speech free of uncertainty. Remove from your language the phrases of doubt. If it works, I hope we'll see.
Replace them with when it is done. It will be so. This is certain.
Your words are the heralds of your future. Let them announce victory. Drss each day in a manner that reflects respect for yourself and for your aim.
Not for vanity, but for alignment. Your outward appearance should match the inward identity you are cultivating. A man who looks like a victor begins to think like one.
And a man who thinks like a victor begins to act like one. Your daily schedule should be the schedule of a man who has already attained his aim. If your goal demands leadership, structure your day as a leader would.
If it demands mastery, give the hours to study and practice as the master does. Do not wait until someday to live in this pattern. The pattern is the cause of the outcome.
In outwitting the devil, I spoke of hypnotic rhythm, the invisible law by which repeated thought and action become automatic. When you live each day as the man who has already won, you set this rhythm in motion. At first, you must think about it.
Soon, it becomes the only way you know how to move through the world. At that point, nothing outside you can easily pull you back into the habits of doubt. This embodiment is not without resistance.
The world will test you. Some will accuse you of being unrealistic. Others will resent your certainty.
This is the same treatment given to every man who has walked ahead of proof. Do not yield to it. Remember that they speak from their own limitations, not from the laws that govern achievement.
When Thomas Edison pursued the electric light, he was ridiculed. Papers mocked his endless experiments. Yet he moved daily as a man certain of success, rising early, working long hours, speaking of the light as an eventual fact.
His conduct was the proof of his faith, and in time the proof appeared for all to see. Here is your 30-day embodiment challenge. Each morning, read your definite chief aim aloud with the tone and posture of a man reporting a completed task.
Speak of your goal to others only in the language of certainty. Keep a record.
