The Law of Success: Billionaire, Andrew Carnegie of Carnegie Steel Company’s Principles of Success*

By Napoleon Hill

1. A Definite Chief Aim: the starting point of all success is knowing clearly your purpose in life and establishing
derivative goals based on your definite major purpose. Only 2% of people take the time to find out what their
major purpose is while the rest drift through life without clear goals. Greatness comes from clarity of purpose,
which is based on a personal burning desire that is unique to each individual. Discover your burning desire
(which attracts its equivalent) and decide clearly on your purpose and establish plans to achieve that purpose.

2. Mastermind Alliance: a great purpose can only be achieved through the strategic partnership and
complementary knowledge of two or more people. A properly motivated group such as business partners or a
married couple can form an alliance to achieve great power if they are committed to the same purpose in perfect
harmony. Ideas can become practical organized plans for achieving the definite chief aim. Also, specialized skills
needed for leverage in achieving the common purpose must be represented in the alliance to create synergy.

3. Self-Confidence: belief and faith in yourself that you can achieve your purpose and that you deserve to do
so. Confidence is gained by conquering the six basic fears, and their derivative fears, that are genetically or
socially inherited. They are fear of: poverty, old age, criticism, loss of love, ill-health, and death. Confidence is
also developed by creating a successful self-image using autosuggestion: writing down goals, affirming them
aloud regularly, visualizing, and taking persistent action. What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.

4. Saving Money & Time: the habit of saving is the only way to overcome the fear of poverty thereby greatly
increasing self-confidence. Save 10-20% of your income to be ready for opportunities, to invest, and to protect
yourself from financial ups and downs. If you don’t save you can’t accumulate wealth; avoid debt and
speculation and money should be grown by compound interest. Also, save time for self-education, networking,
& positive leisure activities; do the worst tasks first to avoid procrastination and be a person of timely action.

5. Initiative and Leadership: be proactive with aggressive persistence in doing what needs to be done without
waiting for someone to tell you to do it or a crisis to occur. Think about what is necessary in the market, your
company or home, and find solutions to problems yourself. Then, use leadership to persuade and inspire others to
cooperate with your initiative and making quick and strong decisions without wanting something for nothing.
Developing other people’s talents, as well as your own, is an example of initiative and leadership.

6. Imagination: developed by intuition, necessity, and through other people’s imagination. Create value and find
customer needs by observing their most compelling advantage and imagining yourself in their place. Also, create
distinctiveness in your services and innovate using two types of imagination; the most common is synthetic
imagination which combines two existing things in a new way, as when Rockefeller used pipes to transport oil.
The other is creative imagination which makes something totally new as when Edison invented the record player.

7. Enthusiasm: is energy and motivation that inspires others. It’s stimulated by excellence in work you enjoy
and being in a positive environment; it promotes a pleasing personality. Enthusiasm is contagious and is fueled
by a definite chief aim that promises future happiness. It’s vital in sales because it creates rapport with the
customer by positive suggestion as people can detect enthusiasm in your tone of voice. Enthusiasm is also gained
from nice clothes, health, & good character which is demonstrated by belief in what you say and do.

8. Self-Control: is thought control and control of one’s speech, emotional impulses, and actions. It’s required for
career advancement, harmonious relationships, and good health and helps us develop virtues and avoid vices.
Self-control helps us negotiate with tact and do tasks even when not motivated. It gives us the self-discipline to
overcome procrastination and stay focused on goals. It helps us live in moderation, especially in spending
money, and being neither too pessimistic nor too optimistic. Desire for achieving a goal fuels self-control.
9. Doing More than Paid For: doing more and better work than one is paid for will guarantee a good reputation.
By offering higher value to customers or employers one ensures job security and demand for one’s services.
Professionals who exceed expectations by going the extra mile command the highest salaries. Also, companies
that pay well get the best workers. Find work you enjoy, at a place you enjoy, with people you like, and be
excellent. Don’t seek to reap before sowing and you’ll benefit from the law of increasing returns.

10. A Pleasing Personality: being agreeable will attract people’s cooperation; be enthusiastic, a genuinely
interested listener, and a persuasive speaker with conviction. Praise others sincerely for their qualities and speak
in terms of their interests. Avoid being negative, have a good sense of humor, and enjoy helping people. Also,
have a pleasant tone of voice, handshake, facial expressions, and body language. Most importantly, have good
character which includes honesty. A pleasing personality with imagination & cooperation neutralizes resistance.
11. Accurate Thinking: expand your mind to critically determine what is fact or opinion, relevant or irrelevant,
important or unimportant to your chief aim. Seek evidence for facts even if temporarily disadvantageous as
you’ll benefit from seeing yourself and your competitors clearly. Consider the biases of sources of evidence and
use deductive and inductive reasoning correctly. Accurate creative thought occurs using strong desire, faith, self-
control, subconscious autosuggestion, and a mastermind which acquires information from infinite intelligence.
12. Concentration: is key to focusing on desires until they become reality. Use methods of suggestion to
develop new thinking patterns (with desire and enthusiasm) that create new mental pathways to substitute
old ones. Visualizing goals persistently intensify desire. Choose environments and people that support your
goals. Group concentration is more effective as thoughts attract their mirror likeness. Control your attention
on one task at a time, with a sharp memory, and on work you can specialize in, long term instead of drifting.
13. Cooperation: includes teamwork skills with the ability to empathize with the needs of others and ability to
persuade them to sympathize with yours; both listening skills and persuasion skills are needed. Cooperation
means alignment among the conscious mind, subconscious mind, and infinite intelligence in order to take correct
action. Develop the lifestyle and work that cooperate with your nature. Also, group power (like a mastermind or
marriage) requires leveraged complementary skills in cooperative, concentrated, and coordinated action.
14. Profiting from Failure & Adversity: you may fail temporarily and have difficulties but you don’t need to
fail permanently if you are persistent and learn from mistakes and challenges. By learning from adversity one can
profit from it and see that each failure carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. Setbacks are
often blessings in disguise because resistance can create strength and your enemies help reveal your weaknesses.
Often one’s greatest success lies just one step beyond one’s greatest failure; persist and zigzag to your goal.
15. Health & Tolerance: mental & physical health starts with a positive mental attitude that is optimistic
and free of worry. It’s a positive perspective that focuses on solutions and recognizes that many of our points of
view were passed down by social heredity so we should tolerate other people’s different points of view. Health
also requires quality sleep, balanced nutrition, adequate hydration, regular exercise, relaxation & laughter,
elimination and detoxification. Avoid chaotic or unclean places and negative or dishonest people.
16. The Golden Rule: “do unto others as you’d wish them do unto you;” protects you from abusing your power
and self-destructing, since you reap what you sow. Also, think of others as you’d wish them to think of you. Do
not take advantage of others but always think win-win. Even if you suffer temporary financial loss due to
honesty, eventually it will attract reputation and profits. Your thoughts and actions are auto-suggestive and affect
your character. Also, honesty allows peace with one’s conscience leading to peace of mind and self-respect.
17. Cosmic Habit Force: the above 16 principles must become fixed habits for you to reap their benefits. Daily
practice is necessary because habits, like objects, tend to remain fixed unless acted upon by an external force;
through inertia habit patterns become fixed. Prosperous people have fixed habit patterns that lead to a beam of
success. The mind must be conditioned for thought patterns of success or failure thought patterns become fixed
by inertia of hypnotic rhythm. Use habit force to make the 16 principles fixed habits of thought and action.
*Success = power, prosperity, respect, health, peace of mind, harmonious relationships, happiness, and self-actualization.
Power = the ability to get what you want (within reason without violating the rights of others) through organized effort.