Dallas Personal MBA Mastermind Group

Book Discussion: 3/1/2009

Attendance: Chris, Justin, Harry, Saad

The discussion of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich was very interesting. While two hours was not enough to cover the book in it’s entirety, we did get to cover a substantial portion of the philosophy. For this blog, I just wanted to go over the questions that were posed to the group and provide a very brief synopsis of the answer.

Many of the discussion questions came from a discussion guide at www.ideamerge.net.

1) What do you think is meant by “thoughts are things?”

No matter how big or small, achievements begin with a basic thought. One of three things can happen with the initial thought:

-it can be dismissed

-it can be kept as a wish or dream

-it can be acted upon

The focus of Hill’s work is on the third action. A large part of success depends upon the thoughts that one has and how they are nurtured and cultivated.

2) Are thoughts alone enough? What else do you need to do to be successful?

Thoughts of course are not enough. There is an essential ingredient list of success. Most of these ingredients are a result of thought. Thought is a huge component because it will determine how one responds to the other essential component of success; action.

3) Why is desire the starting point for all achievement?

Success requires hard work. There are very few actual stories of “overnight success.” You must carefully listen to your desires before you will be able to develop the intense focus needed for achievement.

4) What value do you place on your thoughts?

5) Why is it important to choose a definite goal?

The human mind is very powerful and it is constantly thinking. The problem is, for most people this thinking is unfocused. Lack of focus is a real inhibitor when it comes to achieving things. Listening to your desires and developing a definite goal will help you to develop the focus needed to make your endeavors successful.

6) What separates successful people from unsuccessful people?

Successful people are focused. They generate plans, then act upon them. They do not let Unsuccessful people go from one thing to the next and allow life’s noise to be the main driver of their efforts.

7) What should a person do who has a definite purpose but know plan?

Put your purpose onto paper and repeat it aloud once in the morning, and once at night. Picture yourself as already possessing the definite purpose. This will allow your brain to go to work and figure out the steps needed to accomplish your purpose.

8) How does hill specifically suggest a person develop faith and plans?

Hill has something called the self confidence formula. It is based off the principle of auto suggestion which consists of believing that one can accomplish his goals, reading aloud his goals and imagining himself in possession of his goals.

9) What does it mean to be truly educated?

The example given in the book is the story of Henry Ford in court who exclaims that it is a waste of his time to memorize useless facts because he has an army of staff that can provide him any answer he wants if he should he have a need to know.

An educated person does not need to know everything already, but instead he needs to have the skills and resources needed to obtain information that is required.

10) Why is imagination the “hub” of all of the lessons in the book?

One can have desire, and action and plans, but all of these may be rather meager without imagination. Imagination allows the mind to create things that may be of value which are not in existence.

11) How is marketing yourself similar to marketing merchandise?

People are judged in similar terms to that of merchandise. Think of the qualities that people look for in merchandise and they will most likely apply to your work as well.

12) What is the single most important thing in developing persistence?

A definite chief aim is the most important thing in developing persistence. Without this, one cannot truly be persistent. The problem is, very few people actually have a definite chief aim. Napoleon Hill contends that 98 out of 100 people do not have a definite goal.

10 Days To Faster Reading

Attendance: Chris, Harry, Justin, Nathan.

Overview

This book is designed to help your everyday untrained average reader learn skills that will improve his or her reading ability. It guides you sequentially through different techniques that enhance your reading skills and it has exercises and tests to try a long the way.

Commentary

Everyone seemed to enjoy this book quite a bit. I know that I did. Now I have skills that are going to help me keep up with all of the reading I plan to do without killing myself to do it. As far as discussion goes, it was very straightforward. The whole point of the discussion was not really to help anyone gain any new insight on the material, but just to activate another part of the memory to help remember the contents.

Because the goal of the discussion to commit the material to memory, I simply asked a series of questions that took us through the book. This resulted in lots of flipping through the book and reviewing the different concepts outlined within. I actually used the opportunity to finally take notes on the big post it flip chart paper.

Many people are at first skeptical of this book. But after reading it, I can truthfully say it has been very useful to me. I can now easily keep up with the reading that this group will require.

For me, the most useful techniques were:

1) Previewing — This technique is fantastic. It is basically a method of trying to find the authors outline so you can quickly go through a book or chapter and get the main points. I have really started doing this a lot.

2) Using a notecard as a pacer – This helps assure that you are not wasting eye movements looking back up at what you previously read, or trying to find your place. It also makes you keep up a constant pace.

3) Looking for Keywords – This method basically boils down to “read the big words.” Most smaller words add very little content to a sentence, and the meaning of the sentence can be derived from the bigger words. By training yourself to look for the bigger words you can cut down on about half of the words you are reading.

There are many more techniques in this book, and exercises to go along with them. The exercises were all easy and very helpful to practice the material. My reading skills have definitely improved as a direct result of this book. Unless you are already a really good reader, it is worth your time.