if only

I recently finished a new book. It’s called ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill. I recommend reading it. This guy here spent around 25 years studying wealthy people, trying to understand how they accumulated richness and eventually drew up a list of principles for all of us to use - in order to turn our burning desires into their physical correspondents.

It’s not an easy read, as you have to be ready to embrace its message. I promise it comes with a few annoyingly ugly truths indeed. For instance, what if I told you that your destiny depends on you and you only, that there’s no such thing as luck nor such thing as accidents (as in “things that happen randomly”). Your wealth depends on you, as much as poverty and, to a certain extent, illness does too.

“Man can create nothing which he does not first conceive in the form of an impulse of thought”, he writes. Following this statement comes another of still greater importance, namely, “MAN’S THOUGHTS THEMSELVES INTO THEIR PHYSICAL EQUIVALENT, WHETHER THOSE THOUGHTS ARE VOLUNTARY OR INVOLUNTARY”. And if that wasn’t appealing enough he continues, a few lines forward, with some even more interesting quotes. This is the one that broke through my heart: “[…] Impulses of fear of poverty cannot be translated into terms of courage and financial gain”. You may substitute the money topic with anything else - this concept would still work perfectly. E.g. the fear of being in love is not going to open doors to the perfect half, as much as the fear of being rejected won’t translate into countless friends and shiny fame. Being scared of success is definitely not going to make us successful, it would blind us in front of any opportunity instead. And when I say “being scared”, I mean scared scared. Like that kind of fear that wakes you up in the middle of the night, that paralyses your brain and stops it from thinking straight. And if you try to be rational, asking yourself “what’s the worst that can happen though?” you don’t even know, you wouldn’t be able to draw up a list of things, but would still feel overwhelmed and chained to that sensation: “you should be scared of it, whatever ‘IT’ is”. My therapist found a very effective formula for when I fall into the ‘What If’ rabbit hole. She tells me to “stop the ball”, comparing my mind to a marble, scrolling quickly on a sloped surface. If you flick the marble, I bet you any money it won’t ever stop - until it probably hits some obstacles or crashes down a precipice. That’s my mind when I’m scared. So I should stop the ball. You might find the comparison too simple to be effective, but it did the job with me. Considering I’m one of those people whose left side of the brain is uncomfortably lazy, I need to visualise things to deeply understand and even memorise them. In school I used to underline books with three different colours:

Yellow was “wow, that’s vital. I NEED to remember it.”

Blue was “It’s not as important but it’s interesting. I should remember it.”

Pink was “The teacher won’t ask it, but I shouldn’t forget about it.”

Pencil was “I don’t really understand this- don’t forget to ask for clarification.”

Eventually it got so messy that I needed to draw some kind of key at the beginning of every chapter - in case I got confused. Also, the colours had to look beautiful together. Say I didn’t have the blue highlighter, no way on earth I’d used the green one. It would have looked horrific with the yellow and put me in a very bad mood. I would probably fail the test. We all have our things, so don’t judge. As if that isn’t weird enough, I am also a firm believer that the colours of the ice cream flavour MUST match on the cone - or the taste will be horrible. I’ll give you an example: Strawberry and Melon or Peach - probably one of the best combinations ever. Try Pistachio and Strawberry instead - I could be sick only thinking of it. Chocolate and coconut, thank me later.

Not sure if these habits and beliefs come from my tendency of being surrounded by beauty or to my disruptive impulse to overthink things to a ridiculous extent. I wonder what it feels like to be one of those people who dive into situations without painting every possible or, if not impossible, quite improbable scenario. What it feels like to just give things a thought - you know that very healthy thought, that enables you to analyse and evaluate a certain situation, in order to come up with a good solution. As Jay Shetty suggests in his podcast “On Purpose” the right balance between thinking and doing should be respectively 30% and 70%. I defenitely got my ratio wrong. Or my thinking wrong: if Napoleon Hill is right and the thoughts are really the only things that humans have control of, then I shouldn’t have focused on all the worst possible scenarios for my ‘What Ifs’ but on the best ones. “Do not expect troubles as they have a tendency not to disappoint”. And so that would explain why I am not swimming in gold (yet).

Plato said “The first and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile”: it’s time to unmask alibis. If you remember yourself thinking one of the following statements then you should probably read the book too.

IF I didn’t have a wife/husband and family

IF I had money

IF I had a good education

IF I only had time

IF other people understood me

IF I had a chance

IF I only knew how

IF people weren’t so dumb

We’re in this together.