- The fear of POVERTY. Symptoms:
- indifference (lack of ambition, willingness to tolerate poverty, acceptance of whatever compensation life may offer without protest, mental and physical laziness, lack of initiative, imagination, enthusiasm and self-control)
- doubt
- indecision (the habit of permitting others to do one's thinking)
- worry (expressed by finding fault with others, a tendency to spend beyond one's income, nervousness, lack of poise, self-consciousness)
- over-caution (the habit of looking for the negative side of every circumstance)
- procrastination
- The fear of CRITICISM. It destroys initiative, and discourages the use of imagination. Symptoms:
- self-consciousness (nervousness, timidity in conversation and in meeting strangers, awkward movement of the hands and limbs, shifting of the eyes)
- lack of poise (lack of voice control, nervousness in the presence of others, poor posture of body, poor memory)
- personality (lacking in firmness of decision, personal charm, and ability to express opinions definitely)
- inferiority complex
- lack of initiative
- lack of ambition (mental and physical laziness, lack of self-assertion, slowness in reaching decisions, easily influenced by others, the habit of criticising others behind their backs and flattering them to their faces, the habit of accepting defeat without protest, quitting an undertaking when opposed by others, suspicious of other people without cause, lacking in tactfulness of manner and speech, unwillingness to accept the blame for mistakes)
- The fear of ILL HEALTH. Symptoms:
- auto-suggestion (looking for and expecting to find the symptoms of all kinds of disease, experimenting with diets, physical exercises, reducing systems, without professional guidance)
- hypochondria (imaginary disease)
- susceptibility to disease
- self-coddling
- intemperance
- The fear of LOSS OF LOVE OF SOMEONE. It grew out of man's polygamous habit of stealing his fellow-man's mate. Symptoms:
- jealousy
- fault finding (the habit of finding fault with friends, relatives, business associates and loved ones upon the slightest provocation, or without any cause whatsoever)
- The fear of OLD AGE
- The fear of DEATH
In order to be free of fear of X, one
- needs to know how to avoid X OR
- realize that the fear hinders the avoidance of X.
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Unfavorable Hereditary background. If you have some kind of deficiency of brain power because of a disability or some sort, there is not much you can do about it. This is the only one of the 30 causes of failure that cannot be easily corrected.
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Lack of a well-defined purpose in life. If you don't have some kind of goal that you are aiming for, how are you supposed to achieve anything or therefore be successful? Have a clear, defined goal that you want to achieve and know why you are working to reach it.
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Lack of ambition to aim above mediocrity. People who don't want to get ahead in life can never be successful. This when you just don't want to even try to improve your life and would rather stay at a mediocre level. I doubt most people actually intend to stay mediocre their entire lives.
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Insufficient education. A lack of the right education can be overcome with ease. In Think And Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill explains that it is not so much the most highly educated people in school that are the most successful, but the ones who self educate themselves. School cannot teach you experience. It is not all about knowledge, but knowledge that is applied that is important.
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Lack of self-discipline. You must learn self-control to avoid letting any negative qualities overtake you. You must develop your mind and become your own best friend to conquer yourself this way.
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Ill health. If you aren't healthy, you probably don't ever feel like getting much work done. This is another aspect of self-control that many people struggle with.
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Unfavorable environmental influences during childhood. One thing you definitely cannot do is live in the past. Most people that become criminals had pretty bad childhoods or just grew up in a bad environment.
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Procrastination. Delaying or postponing something.
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Lack of persistence. It's a lot easier to start something than it is to finish it. Especially in entrepreneurship, people tend to be excited about getting started, but then quit at the first sign of defeat. The most successful people in the world had to go through many failures before their first successes. Failure cannot cope with persistence. As long as you keep consistently working towards something, you will get past every bump in the road you hit and eventually reach success.
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Negative personality. You must attract people to you with your personality, not repel them. When people are attracted to you, they want to do business with you and just be around you. Become a more positive person and you will develop better relationships with people that can help you.
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Lack of controlled sexual urge. Sex is the most powerful stimuli that moves people to action. It has to be controlled and the emotional energy must be converted into other channels.
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Uncontrolled desire for "something for nothing". To reach success or achieve any goal, you must provide something in exchange. To always want something for nothing is to have a gambler's mentality that will never reward you in life consistently. You must give value to get value in return.
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Lack of a well defined power of decision. The reason business owners can make the toughest decisions under pressure is because they make quick decisions and change their mind slowly. Failures make slow decisions if any at all and change their mind too easily. You can't stay consistent if you keep changing your mind on the direction you're going in.
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One or more of the 6 basic fears. You must overcome any fears that may hold you back from taking action to achieve a goal.
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Wrong selection of a mate in marriage. It's a sad statistic, but more people in the U.S. are now divorced than married. Many people just do not have a harmonious marriage and that can definitely affect your business or work performance. Being unhappy in your personal life will usually kill your ambition for achieving great things in your career.
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Over-caution. Although you don't want to be too hasty, you don't want to be overly-cautious either. You have to take some chances to achieve big things, but don't go for the hail mary everytime. Make logical decisions and you'll have a good balance of caution and risk.
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Wrong selection of associates in business. If you're going to work with others in your business, you want them to be people to uplift you. If you are choosing an employer, try to choose one that is an inspiration and will set a good example for you to learn from.
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Superstition and prejudice. Superstition is a form of ignorance and so is being prejudice. Superstition is also a form of fear. People who are successful keep open minds and are afraid of nothing.
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Wrong selections of a vocation. It's pretty hard to want to strive to achieve great things in a field that you aren't very passionate about. It's amazing to me how many people settle for less and take a job they don't even like because they think they have no choice.
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Lack of a concentration of effort. You don't want to try and master too many things all at once. Become a specialist before you branch out into other things because a "jack-of-all-trades" isn't very good at anything.
"I fear not the man who practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man who practiced 1 kick 10,000 times."
– Bruce Lee
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The habit of indiscriminate spending. Especially in business, you need to have a budget. You need to be able to manage money in all aspects of life really. Indiscriminate spending will create a fear of poverty because you won't ever have much money left over in the bank. Without much money in the bank, you won't have much courage to push for better business deals. You just take whatever you are given when you have a fear of going broke.
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Lack of enthusiasm Have you ever tried to do a business deal or sell something when you didn't even have any enthusiasm about what you were selling? If so, you know it never goes very well. People don't like downers. Get around people that are enthusiastic about what they're doing and it'll rub off on you.
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Intolerance. You definitely don't want to be closed-minded when trying to achieve success. You need to be open to new strategies and knowledge that comes from those who have already reached the level you want to be at.
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Intemperance. Napoleon Hill states that if you overindulge in things like food, sex or drinking, it could be fatal to your success. Control yourself and don't give in to little temptations that could throw you off track.
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Inability to cooperate with others. If you have ever watched the TV show Shark Tank, you know that the business investors never want to make deals with people that don't seem like they would work well with others. You're not going to always be right. You're not going to always get your way. Learn to accept that and be tolerant of other people and you're already way ahead of countless others in the journey to success.
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Possession of power that was not acquired through self effort. Have you ever noticed that the majority of people that get large inheritances at an early age or people that win the lottery tend to just blow all the money, only to be broke again? Successful people stay successful because they earned their success and so should everyone else.
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Intentional dishonesty. When trying to move up in life, your word and your reputation can be your biggest assets or your biggest faults. Being dishonest with people on purpose is a good way to get in peoples' "dog house" and end up losing everything.
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Egotism and vanity. These two things are just fatal to success. When people see these traits in you, they are red flags that are hard to look past.
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Guessing instead of thinking. Have you ever known one of those people that automatically makes arguments and forms opinions on the spot without even taking the time to learn the facts? That won't win you much respect in life either. Be logical and know the facts before making decisions or forming opinions. Laziness and not doing your homework will lead to a lot of bad judgements.
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Lack of capital. Especially when it comes to starting a business for the first time, it helps to have some capital in the bank to absorb the mistakes you're likely to make and keep you from getting into debt, killing your credit or anything like that. Those types of problems are hard to recover from in today's world.
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Napoleon-Hill-ebook/dp/B01BT0ISHQ