How to Create a Wealth Mindset and Become Rich

How to Create a Wealth Mindset to Change Your Reality

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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How do you create a wealth mindset? Why is a rich mindset so powerful?

You create a wealth mindset by becoming success-conscious and having an all-consuming desire to be rich. When you think yourself rich, you stimulate your imagination to dream up action plans that will help you achieve your goals.

Read more to master how to create a wealth mindset.

Have a Wealth Mindset by Default

Thoughts are powerful: What you think becomes your reality. We all have the power to control our thoughts, although many people don’t use it. If you have a wealth mindset, you can become rich, or achieve what you seek.

The way to achieve riches is to become success-conscious, rather than failure-conscious:

Start by focusing your mind on a single, clearly defined purpose, not multiple purposes that would dilute your focus. Choose one overriding life goal.
Make achieving this goal your all-consuming desire, to the point that you think of little else and you devote all your time and energy to achieving it.
Finally, be persistent in pursuing your one goal or purpose. You will encounter setbacks but have faith in your goal and ability to achieve it — and never give up on it.

Here’s how having a wealth mindset worked in the lives of two men.

Example 1: Partnering with Edison

Edwin C. Barnes had an overriding goal (his definite purpose) of working with the inventor Thomas Edison. Partnering with Edison became his all-consuming desire.
Despite never having met Edison, Barnes went to see and told him his goal. Edison recognized his determination but gave him a lesser job. While this might seem like a defeat, Barnes agreed to work for Edison, but persisted in focusing on his specific goal of a partnership.
This went on for five years, but he didn’t give up on his goal or stop thinking about it.
Barnes saw an opportunity when Edison couldn’t get his salespeople to sell his new dictating machine. Barnes said he could sell it and was given the opportunity. He sold it so successfully that Edison gave him a contract to distribute and market the machine.
Thus, Barnes thought his way into a partnership with Edison. Continuing to believe he could be successful allowed him to persist, which allowed him to seize the opportunity when it surfaced.

Example 2: Striking Gold

A man had a specific purpose and desire to find gold. He discovered a small amount of gold, staked a claim, and raised money for the machinery and labor to extract more.
But after much work, the effort came up empty. He failed to develop a wealth mindset and he lacked persistence, so he quit, selling the machinery to a ‘junk’ man.
Before reselling the machinery as junk, the junk man hired an engineer, who advised that the gold lay just three feet from where the man had stopped drilling.
The engineer was right and the junk man made a fortune because of the first man’s failure to persist.

Similarly, the 500 wealthy men interviewed by Hill told him their greatest successes came when they persisted in going one step beyond a failure or setback. Thomas Edison reportedly tried and failed 10,000 times before inventing a successful electric lightbulb.

Temporary defeats are common in most endeavors, and they often seem to come when success is within reach. Unlike Edison who had a well developed wealth mindset, many people quit too soon.

How to Create a Wealth Mindset and Become Rich