Imagination

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"

So said, Albert Einstein. And you know what? He's right. Imagination is the foundation of all new thinking. And it is with new thinking that you can best tackle the myriad of problems that life throws at you.

Of course they say you should not reinvent the wheel, and this is true to an extent. But borrowing other peoples ideas is not the whole story. These solutions need to be modified to fit in with your situation. They can be improved, made even more useful.

And this is to say nothing of the power of imagination in setting and achieving goals. Being able to picture what you want, makes you much more likely to get it. Lets talk about visualization next time, ok?

Specialized Knowledge

In order to succeed, you must utilise knowledge. But this does not mean learning the capital cities of the world. This would be foolish, and not useful.

Knowledge must be specialised. It must be focussed on the area that you wish to excel in, and most of all, it must be practical. Theory and trivia do not help.

But what of the person who does not have knowledge. No problem. The knowledge doesnt need to be yours. As long as you know where to get it, its as good as yours.

Autosuggestion

As this blog grows into a global brand, I want to emphasise the importance of daily autosuggestion.

You must repeat the statement EVERY DAY.

A friend of mine, keeps his in his toilet, and says his statement with EMOTION. Sometimes he forgets to inject the emotion, and so on those days, hes just saying his statement with A MOTION.

Remember the importance of emotion. As NH says, words repeated blandly do not influence the subconscious mind. They are useless.

Faith

Faith is the head chemist of the mind. I never really understood this statement, but what I do understand, is that if you dont truly believe that you can achieve something, it makes it difficult (not impossible) to achieve it.

Lets take an example:

You are given directions to drive to a house on the other side of the city, that you have never been to before. What are the chances of you doing this, even though you have never been there before? Very high. Why? Because even if you have never been there, you have driven before, and you have used directions to go to places that you have never visited before. So, you have fairly strong belief that you can get there.

But what happened if you didnt believe you could do it. What happened if you thought it was unlikely? What happened if you thought that one wrong turn meant that you were hopeless at following directions and you gave up.

This example feeds into other areas like persistence, and specialised knowledge, but you can see that without the faith to beleive that you are capable of achieving something, it makes everything else much harder

Desire 2008

Welcome back to the TAGR blog for 2008. After a slow start to the year (zero blog posts), its time to get back into it.

Desire is the cornerstone of achievement. Simply put, if you dont desire something enough, then you will not achieve it. Attempting something, when you are indifferent to it, is a recipe for bad apple pie. And yet, we see scores of examples of people doing things that they arent really into, and then failing.

One of my readers once asked me, "What do you do, if you don't desire anything at all?"
"Well Jimmy" I said "If you don't desire anything at all, you're probably dead"
Her name wasn't Jimmy, and she didnt think that was very good advice, but the question remains,

"What if I don't desire it enough?"

Answer:
If you don't desire it enough, you won't overcome all the hurdles that will present themselves. You'll stop short.
But don't forget, that desire doesn't always appear immediately. Contemplating, and working on something, mulling it over in your mind, over time, nurtures desire. It creates desire and strengthens it.

This is why reading the statement (see Autosuggestion chapter) is so important. Reading the statement over and over again cultivates the desire in you. And then... its only a matter of time.

Introduction (Thoughts are Things)

How did a man dressed like a tramp with no money and no prospects, pitch up at the office of the greatest inventor in history, and secure himself a fortune?

We are all used to using excuses (alibis as Napoleon Hill calls them) to justify why we havent succeeded:

"If only I had more money..."
"If only I had more time..."
"If only I had superpowers..."

But one can truly see the absurdity of our excuses, when you see how little Edwin C Barnes had when he presented himself in front of Edison to ask for a job.

But it didnt matter, because had more than money or clothes or good references. He had his thoughts. He had a major definite purpose (to work with Edison), and he had a burning desire to make it happen.

Ok, it didnt happen straight away, but it did happen. Knowing what he wanted, and being committed to achieving it no matter what, gave Barnes the advantage over anyone else, and meant that nothing could stand in his way. Its as simple as that.

Appeal for Feedback

My hit counter tells me that there are at least 4 people who read this blog in the last week. Granted, two of them could have been me refreshing the screen, but that still leaves two faithful readers, willing to broaden their horizons by taking in the gems of information contained within this humble blog.

But, my plea to you is, don't visit in silence. Don't let the only vestige of your stay be another ambiguous number on the hit counter. Leave a comment. Leave more than one comment. Comment on any of the posts over the last three months. Let me know you actually exist!

Thank you