The Most Important Law of Success

Legendary self-help author Napoleon Hill is known for his book Think and Grow Rich.

However, he did other things as his influence grew and in 1952 he did a series of radio lectures for the small town of Paris, Missouri.

These lectures were made available through the publication Success Habits and consists of seven principles that he felt would matter most to the town’s inhabitants.

He concluded this lecture series with a two-part discussion on what he called The Law of Cosmic Habit Force, indeed the most important Law of Success:

Cosmic habit force is a law of the universe into which all of the other natural laws blend and become a part.

It is not necessarily a thing of its own — it’s an amplifier of what already exists. It magnifies what a person already does. According to Hill, this law forces every living thing and inanimate particle to follow the pattern of its environment.

The Law: if you take possession of your own mind, if you recognize the power of it you can determine your own destiny. 

Much of what we believe in encapsulates this idea: you can develop yourself into whatever it is you want to be. The principles form the foundation of what we like to call the MCD Universe: Mindset. Character. Discipline.

♦ You can become a success or you can become a failure, and the way you become a success is by recognizing the power of your mind, by laying out the patterns you wish to carry out, and by keeping your mind focused on those patterns until this great law of cosmic habit force automatically picks up the patterns and carries them out to their logical conclusion.

♦ You must develop a system for protecting yourself against outside negative influences. The law of cosmic habit force means that there are ways to give yourself immunity against all outside influences, especially the negative ones, the ones that are liable to hurt you.

♦ You must develop a system for the application of faith in your ability to obtain the objects of your earthly destiny as laid out by you. Ninety eight percent of the people in this great country are not convinced of their ability to get the things they want, right here in the midst of plenty. They suffer from a lack of confidence in self.

♦ Life is an eternal proposition of education. You never get through learning. If you really and truly want to make the most of your mind, you have to recognize that every day is a day of schooling.

Read More: The Law of Attraction

♦ You should apply the law of cosmic habit force in developing a system for keeping your mind so busy working out ways and means to acquire everything you desire that no time will be left for your to waste in connection with the things you do not desire. Majority of people go all the way through this world with their minds fixed upon the fear of poverty, the fear of ill health, the fear of criticism, the fear of the loss of love, the fear of loss of liberty, the fear of old age and the fear of death. The majority of their time is taken up with allowing those fears to discourage them from taking advantage of their own prerogative rights to use their minds.

♦ You must learn the power of transmuting sexual emotion by directing it through creative habits connected with your major purpose in life. The most successful people in any field has learned how to convert sexual emotion into doing the constructive things necessary to obtain their major objective in life.

♦ You must develop mastermind allies from which you can borrow the education, the personality, the specialized knowledge, the experience, and the spiritual forces of others that will help you reach your self-created destiny.

♦ You must develop a system that will preclude you from ever speaking of another person in derogatory terms, no matter how much they deserve it. When you criticize another person, you’re damaging yourself, whether or not the other person deserved to be criticized.

There’s so many good things that you can think and say about people that it hardly behooves you to pick out the worst things that you can think and say about them, as so many people are inclined to do.

♦ You must develop a system for practicing gratitude, where you express your appreciation for all your blessings, naming them one by one.

There are ways to establish the kinds of habits that push you forward, that lead you to your destiny. But you have to take the initiative. Nothing works for every person and nothing works forever.

Every day, work to instill the habits listed above. Be persistent in your pursuit of excellence. If you can conceive a thing and believe it and make a definite picture of it, the law of cosmic habit force takes over and guides you to that thing, whatever it may be.

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve. – Napoleon Hill

Onward, 

Chief