There’s a lot to this holomagic, and we describe a little here, and we give an instance or a case study there… And people catch on more and more by degrees. And today I’d like to tell you about when Napoleon Hill got serious with me.
It starts a long time ago, with me as a twenty year old college dropout living in East L.A in 1972. I’m exploring the neighborhoods around the university when this book fells off the upper shelf in a creaky old used bookstore I’d entered at the top of a long climb. It fell from the shelf on the right, spine in my hand, upright. And I knew it was magic – not because it fell into my hand as the shelves sagged forward with my weight on the ancient floor, it was the tingling sensation that ran from my hand to the back of my skull and lit every atom of my scalp…
Thus began my lifelong relationship with that book and that man, Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And if you could see my copy – that same copy forty years later – you’d see more than a few notes of understanding and inspiration – even decisions I made back then that determined the course of my life.
There’s pencil marks and several different colors of pens. There’s yellow, green, pink, and goldenrod highlighter marks. Many important passages are double or triple highlighted in different colors… Read at different times…
And you’d see and smell a still crisp $2 bill, important because it’s got the scene of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on its green back, which is illustrative in chapter 7, “Decision.” For you collectors, it’s a bill printed in 1976, serial number D03287448A, stapled on the final page of that chapter, page 224.
Fast-forward through some adventures, like all youths have, a distinguished sales and marketing career, a few years profing at California State University, then along comes World Internet Summit (www.TheWorldInternetSummit.com ). The defining publicity element of our training was building, marketing, and banking money within 72 hours.
We had people earning over $34,866 within 72 hours from startup. It’s now gone up over $100,000. The whole idea was to PROVE it could be done, so others would follow our lead. We gave attendees every strategy, tactic, tool, resource, contact, and more they could ever need to start their own successful business on the internet.
But I got disappointed because, while many went immediately vaulting into internet success, a large number of others could never seem to get their first site up.
So I kept asking, “What is the secret?! Why do some succeed, and others never get off the ground? What is the difference?”
And in that deep, tumultuous reflection, eventually I asked myself the same question I was asking the Gods to answer for me. It was a breakthrough. It simplified my approach going forward. I took the same questions, and modified them to be specific to me. Nothing more. Such as…
What was/is the secret in your case?!
Why did/do you succeed while so many
others never get off the ground?
What is the difference?
Answering that gave me the answer I was seeking. What turned things around for me was a period I went through while at the university, in which I became obsessed with reading, understanding, following the back story on every instance mentioned, living, and breathing that magic book. Everywhere I went, I was reciting affirmations and insights lifted or inspired from the book. You might say it was immersion therapy, because it certainly worked.
Tuned to that frequency, things started happening for me… Two and a half months after finishing that intense period, I made some decisions and I took some new actions definitively. The very first sales letter I ever wrote – I wrote the product after the orders started coming in – launched a multi-million dollar career, which, at that level, meant million dollar deals.
It might be apparent by now, that for me the secret that unleashed the power was adopting a business philosophy based on my understanding of that book. When I made that system a pivotal platform in my life and business, things took off.
Ultimately, after the thorough understanding and attunement I’d acquired with the philosophy, all it took was a decision to do it. Everything else ordered itself.
So I started making copies of the book available to others. Here’s what happened… I’d go before an audience of a thousand people, talk about, share, and do a little training on the philosophy. That worked good. People got passionate about it.
However, there’s only so much that can happen in a 90 minute engagement, and it’s seldom adequate to facilitate a total life transformation. So I began including a free copy of the book with every order.
It was a bonus; little did I expect the backlash. Minorities, woman, people of other nationalities… The archaic language was making things extremely difficult, but the archaic attitudes – mind you, many are reading with English as a second language in a culture that is NOT American – were downright offensive.
In short, the book undid the pre-selling I’d done, and even though people were eager to get their copy, they got turned off and dropped it. Even those who desperately wanted to slough their way through the book….
Well, yes, I did read the book 77 times… And, true enough, it took the first forty passes to gather adequate understanding of it. And, certainly, I mused, who would ever have the ability, dedication, or drive as an English professor with entrepreneurial passions? I had to admit, the wave of complaints had substance.
Think And Grow Rich was published in 1937. Even the most sophisticated language as old as the Muenster’s would creak when the winds blow with drafts from all parts of the house….
Then I realized that fully fifty percent of the fabled “twenty years of research” that went into that famous work was already finished on that black & white day the United States entered World War I. That’s the first great war you read about in the last century in history class. America’s most famous aviator during that war was Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, flying an open cockpit, bi-winged plane.
So, of course, there’s been lots of progress in aviation, the same as in every serious field of human endeavor, since then. Today’s intercontinental flights with over 300 passengers at a time is a far cry from that, as is the most sophisticated fighter aircraft the U.S. Air Force puts in the air… Which is what Capt. Rickenbacker was flying at the time, the best technology money and human mind could make.
So I decided, since the book was in public domain as a world heritage document, I should recast the eternal truths Napoleon Hill had correctly discovered, and update them with sensitivity to modern attitudes and the huge progress that’s been made in every field of human endeavor, including quantum physics, neuroscience, and neurolinguistic programming, and the results of lab and field sports, astronaut, and business training.
I’ll spare you the dark night of the soul account of the wailing demons of self-doubt that surged upon making the decision I’d accomplish that task I felt was well within my abilities… Suffice to say, it took some serious processing, and I was eventually successful. Then there was another thing called time…
Me trying to write it was really, really challenging. I didn’t have time! Where does a businessman, the president of the largest entrepreneurial internet training organization in the world, with events happening all over the globe… Where was I going to find time?
Yet I found time to getaway in the Dominican Republic. Fact is, Thanksgiving and Christmas were the only times I could fit in my schedule to take time off – and Christmas was certainly dedicated to family.
It’s a great place, the country is half of the island, and if you have any special interests in the discovery of the Americas, this is Columbus’ new world home and final resting place.
And I had a motorcycle accident. I could tell you the details, and I will some other time. Basically, I was reflecting on the difference between the “haves” and the “have-nots” – because I was passing through an extreme have-not zone – and got so deeply involved in my thoughts I forgot that I was driving.
I did have a second or two to know I was in trouble when Gabriel’s horn in the oncoming vehicle partially roused me, only to hit the curb and eclipse head-over-heals into death.
I couldn’t say how many eternal seconds misted by… A sharply dressed Napoleon Hill visits me. He’s standing above me, like the genie towers over Aladdin, and he’s scolding me.
And I’m thinking, “Maybe I don’t have to die!” I can imagine seeing out my eyes.
And he’s thundering, and in the rumbling the first words I understand are,
“…work that only YOU can do!”
And he continues,
“There’s nobody else, so if you lay back on this one, it simply will not get done, and you will have to go into your next incarnation with the awful responsibility you cowarded out on a Cosmic directive destined to help millions!“
Then the towering genie puts his fists on his waist, cocks his entire body, looks me drills in the eyes, and composedly thunders,
“What? Do you think you’ll live forever?!”
Flickering between life and death – vapor outside the bottle – the question was poignant. So quick the visit, the mission, and the resolve. A few seconds; a lifetime and a legacy. Something I cannot forget and barely can remember. I live on with good Fortune.
It was a call to contribute while I still have the day to do it! Not to waste the day. One of those 2” x 4” ah-ha moments…
That’s when I turned my life around, changed things, found the time to get my own modernized version of the universal principles written. I stepped away from million dollar winnings with World Internet Summit. Then I invested months and months of intensive reading, communing, writing, rewriting, revising, and put out The New Think And Grow Rich.
But the process continued, and many good interactions refined it even more, so I released the revised edition a few years later, which is, of course, the one you want to get.
But… What Napoleon Hill had to do to get me to move on it! He’d given me the idea, he’d let me live with it for several years already, and he’d actually even extracted some duly ceremoniously executed oaths about it.
But where was I finding time? It simply did not exist. Uh, truth is, I wasn’t listening enough, so he finally pulled out a big 2” x 4” in the form of a motorcycle accident on a clear Caribbean dusk alone in a foreign country. I don’t know how to get closer to death than that.
That’s what happens to you when you’re in holomagic. When you’re playing with holomagic, if you don’t do your part, guess what? …
“We’re coming after you!”
That’s what it was when Napoleon Hill got serious with me.
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When Napoleon Hill Got Serious With Me by Ted Ciuba,
Hope y
ou use the good training you get here!
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