“Life’s Greatest tragedy consists of men and women who earnestly try and fail.”
~ Napoleon Hill
Happy Groundhog’s Day friends. It’s a cool and rainy morning here on St. Thomas. Good news for my friends up North, as that would mean Spring is on it’s way!! I hope the Groundhog in Punxsutawney get’s rained on too 🙂
As we continue on with thinking about our ability to create abundance, today we are given a very important list.
Napoleon Hill had the privilege of analyzing several thousand men & woman over a 25 year span. 98% of these people were classified as “failures”.
Out of his research, Hill would deduce that there are 13 major principles to success through which people accumulate fortunes.
And just as there are 13 principles to success, there are 31 major causes of failure.
Today I’ll share with you the first 15 causes.
As we go through this list, we are asked to honestly measure ourselves point by point.
It will help us to discover how many of these causes of failure stand between us and success.
I am only providing a summary listing here. If you have Hill’s book, I’d suggest you read this section for yourself. The short narratives under each of the captions really drive home an important message. Some of Hill’s best known quotes come from this section of his book.
15 of the 31 Major Causes of Failure
- Unfavorable hereditary conditions.
- If you are born lacking intelligence, your only hope is the Master Mind group
- Lack of a well-defined purpose in life.
- This is the major cause for failure. No aim, no success.
- Lack of ambition to aim above mediocrity.
- There is no hope if you are indifferent.
- Insufficient education.
- Self education: Education consists not so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and persistently applied.
- Lack of self-discipline.
- Self-mastery is the hardest job you will ever tackle. But before you can control conditions, you must first control yourself.
- Ill health.
- Many causes of ill health are of our own doing, thus subject to mastery & control.
- Unfavorable environmental influences during childhood.
- As the twig is bent, so shall the tree grow.
- Procrastination.
- A big one. Most of us go through life as failures because we are waiting for “the time to be right”. Do not wait.
- Lack of persistence.
- Most of us are good “starters” but poor “finishers” of everything we begin. There is no substitute for persistence.
- Negative personality.
- Negativity does not induce the co-operation needed for success.
- Lack of control of sexual urges.
- Sexual energy is the most powerful of emotions. Properly controlled, it can be converted into creativity.
- Uncontrolled desire for “something for nothing”.
- Gamblers will fail.
- Lack of a well-defined power of decision.
- Reach decisions promptly and be slow to change those decisions. Those who fail reach decisions slowly and change them frequently and quickly. Indecision & procrastination are twins. Kill off this pair before you are bound to the treadmill of failure.
- One or more of the 6 basic fears. Fear will be discussed in it’s own chapter. The 6 fears which must be mastered are:
- Fear of poverty
- Fear of criticism
- Fear of ill health
- Fear of loss of love
- Fear of old age
- Fear of death
- Wrong selection of a mate in marriage. Highly common. The wrong partner creates disharmony & destroys ambition.
I personally find it interesting that this list is contained within the chapter on Organized Planning. In a round about way, I think Hill is saying that with proper planning, we can overcome just about any obstacle!
And as I wrote these numbers in the margin of the page, I couldn’t help but notice that both success & failure share the same numbers, only in reverse. 13 and 31.
I decided to look up what the science of Numerology had to say about it …
For those not familiar with Numerology, Numerology is any study of the purported divine, mystical or other special relationship between a number and some coinciding observed or perceived events. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs.
1+3 or 3+1 equals 4.
