No matter what track you choose to follow to seek wealth – becoming a trader, a value investor, a real estate pro, a chief executive, or perhaps an entrepreneur – you must have the correct mindset. Let us examine how you can optimize your chance of building up a great fortune according to Napoleon Hill’s book.

It is what you think that matters. This is the main key to meeting your goals. If you do not see riches in your thoughts, how can you expect to see them in your future bank accounts!? All achievements and all earned wealth start with an idea. Great leaders once were dreamers. How do you think Mahatma Gandhi, George Washington or Martin Luther King succeeded? Obviously, it all started with an idea.

A burning desire. If you ask a hundred people what they want in life, they will probably not be able to answer immediately. If you hurry them though, they will mention some of their wishes—maybe money, fame, or freedom. In fact, wealth does not come from vaguely expressed wishes. It responds to a burning desire implemented through well-defined plans and constant persistence. “God seems to throw himself on the side of the man who knows exactly what he wants, if he is determined to get just that” — Napoleon Hill, the author of the book THINK and GROW RICH.

Become an unstoppable force. No one is ever defeated until he or she has accepted that as a reality. Persistence is everything in any part of life where you wish to thrive. When someone has cultivated the habit of persistence, they gain insurance against failure. Sometimes, it may appear that other people succeed without first paying the price, but that is probably not the case. Stick to your plan and you will win.

Sexual energy (especially for men). According to Napoleon Hill, the five strongest known stimulants to men are: friendship, music, a burning desire for wealth, love, and sex. Desire for sex is the most powerful of all men’s desires. Just observe what happens to any animal after it has been castrated, and you will figure out what happens when sexual energy is removed from a being. All men who have reached the highest level of achievements, have had highly developed sexual natures.

The transmutation of sex energy to energy and creativity in other endeavors, is a primary source of genius. The energy must be transmuted from desire for physical contact, into some other form of desire and action before it will lift one to the status of a genius. However, far from becoming genii, because of great sexual desires, most men lower themselves through misunderstanding and misuse of this great force, to the status of the lower animals. There is a reason why most men do not achieve much before they are 40. It is not only due to the fact that they become wiser and more self-confident over time.

The six ghosts of fear. Before following the previous strategies, these most common and most destructive ones must be conquered. Let us keep this in mind: they only exist in our mind and only us can control them. Here they are: the fear of poverty (It relates the lack of ambition towards money where mind cannot focus on how to be rich), the fear of criticism, the fear of illnesses, the fear of losing someone’s love, the fear of old age, the fear of death.

Source: “THINK and GROW RICH”, a book written by Napoleon Hill