Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude

Why do some people flourish under adversity while others collapse? Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone argue that the secret lies in your mind's invisible talisman: Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) and Negative Mental Attitude (NMA). Every thought, reaction, and decision flips this talisman one way or the other—and that determines whether you attract blessings or repel opportunity.

Throughout their collaboration, Hill and Stone weave one consistent message: success is not random luck but the habitual discipline of your thinking. You can train your subconscious to operate like a success-seeking instrument through PMA, definite purpose, accurate thinking, and continual action. The book presents examples from everyday life and industrial history to prove the claim in practice.

Two Faces of the Talisman

Your attitude acts as an invisible magnet. When it faces PMA, it pulls opportunity toward you; when flipped to NMA, it drives it away. PMA includes faith, initiative, courage, tolerance, generosity, and common sense. NMA expresses fear, envy, defeatism, and excuses. S. B. Fuller’s story—a tenant farmer’s son who dared to think like an industrialist, read inspirational books, and used PMA to raise capital for his soap company—illustrates the power of this mental orientation. By contrast, the woodcutter who hoarded his secret never prospered, showing how secrecy and scarcity thinking block prosperity.

Practicing PMA

PMA is not a mood; it’s a trainable habit. The authors recommend deliberate self-suggestions such as “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve,” practiced until reflexive. Tom Dempsey, born without hands, and Henry J. Kaiser, who learned the joy of work from his mother, are cases of PMA translating directly into concrete achievement. They faced barriers but held their talisman toward faith and perseverance.

PMA as Catalyst for All Success Principles

Hill and Stone identified 17 success principles—definiteness of purpose, applied faith, controlled attention, teamwork, creative vision, and others—but insist PMA is the activator. Without PMA, these principles remain inert. With PMA, they form a practical success formula. When Milo C. Jones, paralyzed from the neck down, used PMA and definite purpose to teach his family sausage production, he embodied how mental attitude can overpower physical restriction.

Turning Adversity into Growth

Every problem, the authors say, contains the seed of an equal or greater benefit. Charlie Ward’s transformation from prisoner to president of Brown & Bigelow demonstrates the six-step method: ask for guidance, analyze your problem, affirm “That’s good!”, and keep searching until a solution appears. Even economic depressions, sexual energy, or guilt can be transmuted into vitality through PMA-directed actions.

Action as the Bridge

Thought alone is inert. Hill condenses the method into a practical self-starter: DO IT NOW. Every time the impulse to act arises, follow it. This reflex transforms visualization into achievement. Kenneth Harmon’s habit of immediate action—copying Think and Grow Rich from memory while captive—captures the spirit of decisive PMA.

Core Insight

PMA is both philosophy and tool: it trains your thoughts, conditions your subconscious, and guides your behavior. You grow rich in spirit, health, and wealth by continually flipping your talisman toward PMA—believing in possibilities, acting promptly, learning from defeat, and helping others do the same.

The book’s deeper promise is moral as well as practical: condition your mind to act with faith, honesty, initiative, and generosity, and success ceases to be a chase—it becomes the natural outcome of a clear, positive attitude.

Definiteness of purpose is the steering wheel of success. Hill and Stone present a system of 17 principles that synchronize through PMA—with definite purpose as the first and most critical. You must know not just that you want success, but exactly what kind and when.

Robert Christopher’s world trip on $80 and Milo C. Jones’s sausage enterprise while paralyzed are vivid examples of focused purpose transforming constraints into opportunity. Each combined faith, creative vision, controlled attention, budgeting, and teamwork—the coordinated use of multiple principles.

How Purpose Directs the Subconscious

When you define an aim clearly and emotionally, your subconscious begins to scan the world for support and ideas. Edward Bok saw a cigarette card as opportunity because his imagination had been primed to notice editorial work. Your mind behaves like radar tuned to your definite purpose, constantly filtering distractions and flagging relevance.

Practical Integration

• Write your major purpose clearly with deadlines and quantities.
• Bridge gaps by practicing missing principles weekly—self-discipline, enthusiasm, teamwork, etc.
• Use motivating phrases daily to reinforce persistence: “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Definiteness converts vague desire into actionable direction. Coupled with PMA and the other principles, it makes achievement practically inevitable—if you act and adjust when reality shifts.

Your success depends on removing what Hill and Stone call mental cobwebs—false beliefs, emotional biases, and sloppy semantics. Accurate thinking requires testing premises and defining words before building conclusions.

Dr. Fosdick’s student who called himself atheist discovered belief after defining 'God.' Similarly, W. Clement Stone’s error about frog legs shows how a false premise ruins good logic. Every time you use all-or-nothing words (“always,” “never”), you weave new cobwebs that obscure possibility.

How to Clear Cobwebs

• Define every critical term before arguing or deciding.
• Check whether a belief is based on experience or inherited bias.
• Ask whether 'necessity' justifies honorable action or excuses wrongdoing.

Honesty is integral: criminals rationalize theft by 'necessity' and destroy themselves, while Lee Braxton turned necessity into honest enterprise. Learning and open-mindedness are antidotes to cobwebs. Accurate thinking lets PMA work uncorrupted—it is reasoning disciplined by facts and clarity.

Key Reminder

Ask: What do these words mean here? What premises underpin my judgment? Clear the cobwebs and PMA becomes precise rather than naive optimism.

The subconscious is your invisible partner. Hill and Stone explain that conscious autosuggestion—repeating short, emotionally charged phrases—programs the subconscious to act toward your goals.

Bill McCall visualized being a millionaire, repeated his self-suggestion aloud, and structured actions to realize it. Ralph Weppner even used a memorized phrase, “You can do it if you believe you can,” to recover from a heart attack coma. These examples underline the mind-body link forged through repeated, emotive suggestion.

Guarding the Inner Environment

Your subconscious absorbs everything—from affirmations to subliminal advertisements. Vance Packard’s work and Sidney Schneider’s Brain Wave Synchronizer alert you that unseen inputs may shape you without awareness. Thus, choose your mental diet carefully: read inspiring material and avoid corrosive messages.

How to Practice

• Write brief, emotional affirmations (self-motivators).
• Repeat aloud morning and night with visualization.
• Control what enters your subconscious—music, media, dialogue—and feed only constructive ideas.

Use autosuggestion to build PMA from the inside out. The subconscious acts obediently on repeated feeling-toned words; you are its editor, not its victim.

Success happens when you add “something more”—a fresh idea, improved detail, or extra effort that turns ordinary attempts into breakthroughs. The Wright brothers refined wing control, Bell modified electrical continuity, and Columbus turned a supposed failure into world discovery. Hill and Stone call this creative insight and tie it to controlled attention and cosmic habit force—the natural laws that reward persistent, directed creativity.

Cultivating Creativity

Dr. Elmer Gates’s “sitting for ideas” and Alex Osborn’s brainstorming are complementary methods. One values solitude; the other collective spontaneity. Both depend on recording ideas promptly (Einstein’s notebooks are cited). The habit of documenting and revisiting ideas transforms random sparks into usable innovations.

Practice Point

Ask after any failure: what small change would alter the result? Test that change immediately. Note-taking converts inspiration into systematic progress.

Creative vision combined with PMA is not mystical. It’s disciplined imagination plus persistent experimentation until cosmic habit force turns success into repeatable law.

Hill distills personal achievement into one phrase: DO IT NOW. Thought becomes valuable only when translated into motion. Every act strengthens neural pathways of initiative until action itself becomes automatic.

William James’s insight, “Sow an action and you reap a habit,” is the psychological base. Edwin East’s decision to recall old clients immediately after a talk, doubling sales in two days, and Manley Sweazey’s impulsive idea to sell insurance on Alaskan trains both demonstrate how ‘right-now’ execution multiplies opportunity.

How to Practice

• Follow the impulse when consequence is non-harmful.
• Practice on small tasks for 21 days.
• Keep a visible reminder—mirror or desk card—that reads DO IT NOW.

Key Idea

Action bridges desire and result. The consistent habit of doing immediately transforms PMA from psychology into productivity.

Hill and Stone repeat: “You’ve got a problem? That’s good!” Problems are the world’s way of forcing progress. The six-step method—ask guidance, set thinking time, analyze, affirm it’s good, ask what’s good in it, and persist—converts crisis into creativity.

Charlie Ward’s story epitomizes transformation: from convict to corporate leader after applying PMA and technical learning. Economic downturns and personal tragedy alike can become training grounds if you meet them constructively. Even sexual energy, often misdirected, can be transmuted into creative virtue through disciplined obsession.

Turning Obstacles to Fuel

During depressions, imaginative managers redecorated and merged leases to revive businesses. These examples demonstrate that adversity is raw material for invention, not destruction. By saying “That’s good!” and searching for its hidden asset, you pivot emotion from complaint to curiosity.

Action Reminder

See every setback as data. Reframe, ask better questions, and experiment—the PMA way to turn adversity into fuel for mastery.

Hill and Stone elevate giving as strategic success: develop a Magnificent Obsession to help others selflessly. Carnegie, Marden, and Douglas turned personal struggles into lifelong service. Anonymous donors and grieving mothers who built foundations prove that generosity multiplies returns far beyond money.

You can start without wealth—share time, cheer, or knowledge. Keeping your motives pure aligns you with goodwill networks that circulate opportunity and strengthen character.

Why Giving Works

Giving enlarges personality and stimulates cosmic habit force—the law by which positive acts echo back multiplied. In communities, secret benefactors inspire exponential trust, proving that PMA combined with service yields enduring prosperity and joy.

Pilot Thought

Share yourself without expectation. Give daily until the Master stops giving to you.

Guilt can destroy or redeem depending on your response. Hill and Stone outline a redemption formula: listen, count blessings, become sincerely sorry, take the first step, make amends, and apply the Golden Rule. Resolved guilt becomes energy for service.

Jim Vaus’s conversion—from criminal to moral reformer—shows guilt transformed into creative virtue. By publicly acknowledging fault and repaying debts, he not only saved his life but found authentic satisfaction. In business, loyalty-based decisions that avoid betrayal exemplify living without residual guilt.

Moral Insight

You have guilt—that’s good. Use it as conscience, repent sincerely, and act on the Golden Rule. That emotional clarity restores peace and power.

Ultimately, character sustains achievement. A clear conscience and PMA together make success joyful instead of hollow.