Napoleon Hill's 13 principles from Think and Grow Rich — explained clearly with how to apply each one. The complete summary in one place.
Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937) outlines 13 principles he identified after studying over 500 successful individuals across 20 years. The principles are: Desire, Faith, Autosuggestion, Specialized Knowledge, Imagination, Organized Planning, Decision, Persistence, the Mastermind, Sex Transmutation, the Subconscious Mind, the Brain, and the Sixth Sense. Hill presents them as an interconnected system — not a checklist — where each principle builds on the one before it.
Here is a quick-reference overview of all 13 principles: Desire — a burning, specific want is the starting point of all achievement. Faith — belief that you will succeed, cultivated deliberately. Autosuggestion — using repeated self-instruction to influence the subconscious. Specialized Knowledge — targeted, actionable knowledge, not general education. Imagination — the faculty that converts desire into concrete plans. Organized Planning — translating desire into a written, actionable plan. Decision — forming clear decisions promptly and changing them slowly. Persistence — sustained effort in the face of failure. The Mastermind — an alliance of like-minded people working toward a shared goal. Sex Transmutation — redirecting powerful creative energy into purposeful work. The Subconscious Mind — the channel that converts plans and faith into results. The Brain — a receiver and transmitter of thought influenced by your environment. The Sixth Sense — developed intuition accessible only after mastering the first 12.
Desire is the foundation of Hill's entire framework. He is explicit that this is not a vague wish or passive hope — it is a specific, burning want backed by a willingness to give something in return.
Hill outlines a six-step method for converting desire into money or any goal. Fix the exact amount or outcome you desire. Determine exactly what you intend to give in exchange. Set a definite date for achieving it. Create a definite plan and begin at once, whether ready or not. Write out a clear, concise statement of all four points above. Read this statement aloud twice daily — morning and night.
How to apply it: Write your desire as one sentence with a number, a date, and a trade. Read it aloud every morning before checking your phone. Revisit and sharpen it every 30 days.
Faith, for Hill, is not religious belief — it is a mental state you deliberately cultivate by acting as though success is already certain. He argues that the subconscious cannot distinguish between a real experience and a vividly imagined one, so repeated visualization with emotional intensity produces the same neural conditioning as actual experience.
How to apply it: Write a personal faith statement alongside your desire statement. Use visualization daily — close your eyes and picture the specific outcome for 2–5 minutes. Eliminate sources of sustained doubt from your environment.
Autosuggestion is the process of deliberately feeding instructions to your subconscious through repeated, emotionally charged self-talk. Hill argues the subconscious accepts whatever you give it most consistently — including negative inputs — so the practice must be intentional.
How to apply it: Speak your desire and faith statements aloud, not silently. Add genuine emotion — visualize the outcome as you speak. Do this for at minimum 30 consecutive days before evaluating results.
Hill does not argue that you need to know more — he argues that general knowledge is nearly useless for wealth creation. What matters is specialized knowledge organized and applied toward a specific purpose. Critically, you do not need to personally possess this knowledge — that is what the Mastermind is for.
How to apply it: Identify the two or three knowledge areas most directly connected to your goal. Invest in targeted learning in those areas only. Map knowledge gaps to specific people you could bring into your mastermind.
Hill distinguishes two types of imagination. Synthetic imagination rearranges existing ideas into new combinations — most practical problem-solving uses this. Creative imagination is the faculty through which entirely new ideas surface, often experienced as hunches or sudden insights.
How to apply it: Schedule unstructured thinking time with no input and no devices. When stuck on a problem, write down 10 combinations of existing ideas before seeking new information.
Desire without a plan is daydreaming. Hill recommends forming a mastermind group, deciding what you will offer each member in exchange, meeting regularly until you have a workable plan, and following the plan with persistence. If the plan fails, replace it immediately — but never abandon the goal.
How to apply it: Write your plan on paper, not in your head. Assign every action a name and a date. When a plan fails, treat it as data and build the next version within 48 hours.
Hill found that every successful person he studied shared one habit: they reached decisions promptly and changed them slowly. Unsuccessful people did the opposite. He argues that most failure is rooted in indecision — procrastination and indecision are the same enemy in different clothes.
How to apply it: Set a personal decision deadline for any open question — 24 hours for small decisions, one week maximum for major ones. Once decided, require strong new evidence before reversing.
Hill frames persistence plainly: riches do not respond to wishes. They respond only to definite plans backed by definite desire, applied with persistence. He lists four steps to developing it: a definite purpose backed by burning desire, a definite plan expressed in continuous action, a mind closed tightly against negative influences, and a friendly alliance with at least one person who will encourage you.
How to apply it: Track your consecutive days of action toward your goal. Pre-decide what you will do when you want to quit. Review Hill's eight symptoms of weak persistence monthly as a self-audit.
Hill defines the Mastermind as the coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose. When two minds connect in harmony toward a shared goal, they produce a third, invisible force that neither person possesses alone.
How to apply it: Identify 2–4 people whose skills directly complement your gaps. Be specific about what you offer them in return. Meet on a fixed schedule with a written agenda.
Hill's argument: sexual energy is the most powerful creative drive humans possess. Rather than suppressing or purely expressing this energy, extraordinary achievers learn to redirect it into their work — producing heightened imagination, courage, willpower, and persistence. Modern readers can engage this principle as a broader claim: strong emotional drives, consciously channeled, fuel creative and professional achievement.
How to apply it: Notice your periods of highest creative energy and schedule your most important work during them. Use emotional intensity as a signal to work, not as a reason to be distracted.
Hill describes the subconscious as the part of the mind that never sleeps — constantly receiving inputs from conscious thought, emotion, and environment, and converting them into action tendencies over time. It accepts whatever it is fed most consistently, which is why Autosuggestion and Faith must be practiced actively.
How to apply it: Review your desire and faith statements before sleep — the subconscious is most receptive as you fall asleep. Protect it from sustained negative inputs. Trust strong gut responses that emerge after sustained focus on a goal.
The practical insight from this chapter: your cognitive environment — the people you spend time with, the content you consume, the conversations you have — shapes the quality and direction of your thinking in ways you do not consciously notice. Successful people manage their cognitive environment deliberately.
How to apply it: Audit your five closest relationships — do they raise or lower the quality of your thinking? Seek environments where the ambient level of ambition and competence is higher than your current level.
The Sixth Sense is Hill's final and most abstract principle. He describes it as a faculty that develops only after the other 12 have been consistently practiced — a form of intuition through which ideas, warnings, and opportunities surface without conscious effort.
How to apply it: Do not attempt to apply this principle first — it requires the others as foundation. Track instances where a strong intuitive feeling proved accurate. Distinguish between Sixth Sense (calm, persistent clarity) and anxiety or wishful thinking (loud, inconsistent, emotionally reactive).
Hill's 13 principles are not a menu — they are a sequential system. Desire sets the direction. Faith and Autosuggestion condition the mind to move toward it. Specialized Knowledge and Imagination identify the path. Organized Planning, Decision, and Persistence put the plan into motion. The Mastermind and Sex Transmutation amplify the energy behind it. The Subconscious Mind and the Brain sustain the process below conscious awareness. The Sixth Sense emerges as the natural result.
Readers who cherry-pick individual principles typically see limited results. Readers who apply all 13 as a system describe compounding returns over months and years.
Start with Principle 1 — Desire — and don't move on until you have a written, specific, dated desire statement. Most people skip this and jump to Organized Planning or Mastermind because those feel more actionable. But a plan built on a vague desire will collapse under the first real obstacle.
If you have already written a clear desire statement and practiced it for 30 days, move to Faith and Autosuggestion simultaneously — they are designed to work together. The Mastermind is the most immediately high-leverage principle for most professionals.
Napoleon Hill's 13 principles are: Desire, Faith, Autosuggestion, Specialized Knowledge, Imagination, Organized Planning, Decision, Persistence, the Mastermind, Sex Transmutation, the Subconscious Mind, the Brain, and the Sixth Sense. Hill derived these from 20 years of research into successful individuals including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and Thomas Edison. He presents them as an interdependent system, not a list of independent tips.
Hill names Desire as the foundation — the starting point of all achievement. Without a specific, burning desire, the other 12 principles have no direction to work in. Many practitioners also consider Persistence the most important in practice, because it determines whether all the others are actually applied when motivation fades and obstacles arise.
The Mastermind is Hill's term for forming an alliance of two or more people who work toward a shared goal in a spirit of harmony. Hill believed that aligned minds create a collective intelligence greater than any individual. In practice, this looks like a business partnership, an advisory board, a peer accountability group, or a small cohort of peers with complementary skills who meet regularly with a shared agenda.
Sex Transmutation is Hill's most controversial principle. He argues that sexual energy is the strongest creative drive humans possess, and that redirecting it into purposeful work produces exceptional imagination, willpower, and persistence. Modern readers can engage this as a broader claim: strong emotional drives, consciously channeled, fuel creative and professional achievement.
Hill argues that general knowledge is nearly useless for wealth creation unless it is organized and applied toward a specific goal. Specialized knowledge is targeted, actionable, and directly connected to your purpose. You don't need to personally possess all the specialized knowledge you need — that is what the Mastermind is for.
The core principles — Desire, Persistence, Decision, Specialized Knowledge, and the Mastermind — remain practically relevant and align closely with modern research on goal-setting, deliberate practice, and accountability. Some principles are more metaphysical and require interpretive work for contemporary readers. Most readers engage selectively, applying the principles most relevant to their specific goals.
Hill recommends: identify 2–4 people whose skills and knowledge complement your own gaps, decide clearly what you will offer each person in return, meet on a fixed regular schedule with a defined agenda, and maintain harmony. Start small — one trusted, ambitious peer is a better beginning than a large, loosely committed group.
Hill's system works best as a whole, but starting with all 13 simultaneously is impractical. A realistic sequence: begin with Desire, add Faith and Autosuggestion in the first week, start forming a Mastermind in the first month, and introduce Organized Planning once your desire is clear. The Sixth Sense develops only after the others are well-established.
Hill's six steps are: fix the exact amount you desire, determine what you will give in exchange, set a definite date, create a plan and begin immediately, write a clear statement of your desire and plan, and read this statement aloud twice daily with genuine belief and emotion. This process sits within Principle 1 and is the entry point to the entire system.
Yes — with appropriate context. The book's core framework on desire, planning, persistence, and the mastermind is genuinely useful. Read it critically: some claims are unverifiable and the cultural lens is firmly 1930s American. Treat it as a structured thinking framework to interrogate and adapt, not as an authoritative empirical study.
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