There are plenty of marketing campaigns that my wife and I implemented to try to help more people and generate more sales for our digital courses and our coaching programs that didn't work. But every time we did those things, we learned from the process. And that learning process was required in order for us to create our most successful marketing campaigns. I think about it now that I have a two and a half year old son, there's so many things that he's doing for the first time. And does he produce the result that he desires the first time he tries something? No, hardly ever. But it's a process of learning. Now would you look at those times that he didn't produce the results that he wanted? Like walking or gripping something with his hand or being able to control the crayons within the outlines of the drawing that he's trying to fill in? The failure to do that is a mistake or a bad decision. No, of course you wouldn't. And so we need to start treating ourselves like hopefully welcome to a Changed Mind. A journey into the topics that matter to you most. From the neuroscience and spirituality of mindset and personal growth, to groundbreaking strategies for health, wealth and relationships, to open and honest conversations about pressing global issues such as the environment, censorship, corporate capture, and democracy. Each and every episode reminds us of the certainty of the goodness of the future and provides the teachings, tools and timeless wisdom inspiring you to create real, lasting change in your life and in the world. If you've been desiring a sanctuary for your spirit. A place to go to tune out the distraction, negativity and doom and gloom so that you can tap into the deep power, the vibrancy and the potential you have inside. You're in the right place. Welcome to A Changed Mind. Hey, it's David. Welcome to A Changed Mind. A sanctuary for your spirit. A place where each and every episode I remind you of the certainty of the goodness of the future. I'm your friend, your host, your guide, David Bayer. You ever wonder why some people seem to turn every idea into success while most people struggle no matter how hard they work? Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, the best selling wealth and success book of all time, talks about 13 principles that unlock the secret to achieving wealth, success, and even personal happiness. But here's the twist. These principles aren't just about money. They tap into something way deeper. The way your mind creates your reality. So in this episode, I'm going to break down each of the 13 principles step by step. Give it a little bit of David perspective and flavor. And by the end, you'll discover the one key factor that ties them all together. It's a principle most people overlook, but can make or break your success. So let's dive in. So Think and Grow Rich is a classic self help book that outlines the principles for achieving success and wealth. And it's based on the lessons Hill learned from studying successful individuals over 25 years. And the primary points of the book are structured around 13 principles. The first of the principles is desire. So Hill says that success begins with a burning desire to achieve a specific goal. Goal. You got to clearly define what you want and commit to it with unwavering focus. And that doesn't make sense. In order to know what you want, you have to be clear on it. But it's so much more than that. My wife and I do seminars all over the world and we love doing them in Mexico. So at one point in time, several years ago, she and I decided that we were kind of done living in Florida and we were going to live in Mexico. Actually. We were at a Mastermind and we were working on the back porch of this hotel looking out over the ocean and a whale breach. And I was like, babe, why don't we live where whales breach all the time? And she's like, yeah, why not? So we kind of got on this kick that we were going to move to Mexico. We found some property and then we talked to one of our advisors who said, you know, you may not want to build your dream home and put really your life savings into it outside of US Constitutional law. And we were like, okay, well, that makes sense. So my wife says, hey, what about Puerto Rico? I said, I've never been. She's Colombian, she's Latin culture. I love Latin culture, clearly. So we make a trip to Puerto Rico and I love the island. The food is incredible, the people are amazing, the music is fantastic. It's such an incredible vibe. And I would love to live on the island of Puerto Rico. The only thing is we can't really find a home that we want to live in. And we had this vision for a retreat style home, A place where we could do private client retreats where I could bring people in, do deep transformation, enough space where we could entertain friends and have family there. And we just couldn't find anything. It was a lot of small condominiums, really overpriced, either in San Juan, which is like the downtown area of Puerto Rico, or there were these golf course communities scattered throughout the island. Dorado, Ritz Carlton, the Bahia, St. Regis. And frankly, we could have just stayed in Florida, if that's where we wanted to live. I wanted to live in the campo. I wanted to live in the country countryside of Puerto Rico. And so right when we were about to give up, my mother in law says, hey, I found this home online. And we take a look at it and it's unbelievable. It's exactly the type of home that we're looking for. It's got like 10 bedrooms. I never thought I'd be living in a 10 bedroom home. It's on three acres down into a lake, surrounded by jungle. And so we turned it into our dream home. But we were very, very clear on what we wanted. We wanted to have a place where we could do retreats, a place where we could entertain families, a place where we could entertain our friends. And so Napoleon talks about how you have to have a des and you have to be clear on that desire. It was really incredible. Three years living into this home. We had some friends over for Christmas. And I have a vision board back from 2012 that's sitting behind my desk. And my friend walks over and she goes, oh my God. You, like updated your vision board with the picture of the front of your house. And I looked at it and it was crazy. It was actually a home I found that was like a kind of a Japanese style home. And if you remove the two Japanese style turrets on top of the house, it was exactly the front of my home here in Puerto Rico. And the other 12 principles are going to break down how this works. But the, the first one for Napoleon is desire. You have to have clarity on what it is that you want. And oftentimes we spend so much time focusing on what we don't want. I don't want to live where I'm living anymore. I don't want to live in my studio apartment in New York anymore. I don't want to live in a town where there's nothing going on. I don't want to live in a place where there aren't good schools for my kid. And we just focus on what we don't want, what we don't want, what we don't want. Napoleon identified among the most successful people in the world at the time he did this study that they were all focused on desire, what they actually wanted. The second principle is faith. You have to believe in your ability to achieve your desire. Or in other words, you have to believe in your ability to achieve your goals. And he says that visualization and affirmations help to build faith and turn thoughts into reality. And this idea that you have to believe in your ability to achieve your goals. Henry Ford supposedly said something like this. The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can't are both right. And so what Napoin's talking to here around faith is in part this idea that the brain is a goal achieving machine. That what it is that you believe you will think that what it is you think you feel, that what it is you feel you do. And what it is you do produces your results over time. And 100% of the time, those results will reinforce the belief that they started with. So if you believe money's hard to make, Ford would say, you're right. And we could look at your life and you would have evidence of that fact in the materialization of your life. But if you believe that abundance and prosperity are your birthright, and you believe that regardless of your current circumstance or situation, that more wealth and abundance is on the way, then you'll experience that too. And this is all backed up by behavioral psychology. It's backed up by neuroscience. Your brain is this incredible technology that allows you to achieve extraordinary things really beyond your wildest imagination. And so what Napoleon is talking about here, in addition to faith, is visualization and affirmation. It helps to build faith and turn thoughts into reality.

And so here it's important to understand that all things are possible. You could look at this through scriptural standpoint and Christianity. This idea of God is a God of possibility. And you see story after story after story and scripture of how God is able to make the impossible possible, really culminating in many ways in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the parting of the Red Sea by Moses. Whenever we're faced with the challenge, but we have a burning desire God will do what God does to make the impossible possible. In a metaphysical conversation, we look at it as the quantum field. And all things exist in the quantum field. One of the great mystical teachers, Neville Goddard, talks about this. He says that simultaneous to the third dimensional reality that we're living is a fourth dimension of imagination. He says in this fourth dimension, all ide, all inventions, all things, all desires that ever have been that are right now and will ever will be exist right here, right now, in energetic form. And that when we apply ironically, these 13 principles of Napoleon Hill, we are able to transition these concepts or these possibilities that exist in energetic or quantum form in the field into a real, physical, material reality for ourselves. And the reason why I share this is because when Hill talks about having faith, whether you have faith in a God of possibility or whether you have faith in the fact that the desires you have right now actually exist right here, right now. And it's just a matter of aligning yourself with those desires to bring them into your reality that contributes to faith. This idea that like everything is possible and everything exists, and no matter what desire or dream you have, it can be, allows you to have faith. However you achieve that. Napoleon says this is the very, very important thing. And it's his second principle. The third one he describes is oh, and by the way, not only that all things exist right now, but that based on your desire, that your desire is a catalyst for things starting to transition into the material form. Abraham Hicks, one of the great teachers and speakers around the concept of law of attraction and vibration, talks about this. Abraham says the moment you have a desire, all of creation begins to move in order to fulfill on that desire. And you can find similar types of quotes in scripture. So it's this idea that not only is God a God of possibility, and not only is the quantum field hold all possibilities, but that when you have a desire, life itself is working both through you and around you, through thoughts and ideas you have and coincidences and synchronicities that occur to make that desire a reality. And so when you live in that understanding, understanding when you're present to that versus present to your fears, present to your doubts, present to how long your problems have been going on, you're living in a state of faith. And that's a high vibrational state that allows not only you, but life around you to co create and coordinate to make your desire a reality. Principle number three is this principle of auto suggestion. So Hill says that you can reprogram your subconscious mind through repeated positive affirmations and self suggestion and that this aligns your mind with your desires. And I would say that that's true. But what I found is a lot of people move into affirmations or incantations or trying to auto suggest their unconscious mind way too early, before they've started working with the limiting beliefs, the unprocessed traumas and the old programs and install those and transform those. I don't know if you've ever done incantations or affirmations or stood in front of a mirror saying you love yourself or money is on the way or whatever it is for you. But I found early on in my journey that it actually made things worse because I'm like saying these things or screaming these things and it doesn't feel right right to me. And then I'm aware that it doesn't feel right to me. And then I move into a type of thinking that looks like this is never going to change for me. I'm doing something wrong. I'm fundamentally broken. So I think it's important, just as you would want to plant a new garden, if you want to install new thoughts and ideas and program your subconscious mind through auto suggestion and incantations and affirmations, that you actually clear some of the weeds out of the garden first. Otherwise, as you try to plant these new programs, they're just going to be suffocated by the bramble and the weed of what's already there. And so agree 100%. I'm sure Napoleon found this, that the people who were the most successful were very affirmative and used incantations and spoke into a reality that they desired. But I think what Napoleon doesn't spend a lot of time on is limiting beliefs. The concept of childhood trauma was not something that was particularly prevalent in the early to mid-1900s when Napoleon was doing these writings and these studies. And I think that's a really important piece. It's like we got to clear the field before we start trying to influence the subconscious mind. But to Napoleon's point, once we do, yes, we can reprogram ourselves, but in order to build new neural pathways, you have to weed the old and plant the new affirmations afterwards. Principle number four is specialized knowledge. He talks about general knowledge is not enough. Acquire specific practical knowledge related to your goals and continue learning throughout your life. Well, the good news here is that life has actually been setting you up for specialized knowledge. So all throughout your life, from your early childhood programming built into the, what I would say, your human being operating system, and the things that you're naturally good at through the careers that you were led to the college education that you had, or the lack of college education, any education that you had, the influence of your parents, there's been an intelligent design supporting you in developing a specialized skill. It's guiding you towards your unique place in the world today, or what we might call your purpose or your destiny. And it's been working for all of us. I know a lot of times people share with me that they feel like they're not unique, that they don't have purpose, that they don't have a place in the world. It's impossible that that's true because that placement of you in your unique position in the world is a part of intelligent design. It's happening for all of us. It's kind of like saying, well, some of the Trees are born without the capacity to grow and other trees are born with the capacity to grow. And it's not true. It's a natural function that you have a unique place in the world and there's an opportunity for you to actually take a moment and start to step back and assess what does that specialization look like for you? And so for me, example, I grew up in a family where I learned worry. And worry was a motivation for me to become a critical thinker and a ruminator and a deep thinker. And so that was a specialized skill that I developed even out of my own trauma and out of my own limited programming that serves me well in the work that I do today. My capacity to take a look at human evolution and to combine metaphysics and spirituality and behavioral psychology and neuroscience and entrepreneurship into well thought out frameworks that allow other people to improve their lives and improve their businesses. That's a specialization that I, I didn't have to go after and pursue, but I learned even in my drug and alcohol and sex addiction recovery. The fact that that led me to 12 step and learning the 12 step technology, which is an incredible transformative technology, which then brought me into personal growth and spiritual development, that was an encouraged specialization. Or the fact that I'm 6 foot 7 and I have a natural capacity to be articulate when I'm not stumbling over my words in one of these episodes and to be able to communicate complex concepts clearly. That was something I did early on in my career. Very early on in my career, I was working in search engine optimization where I was looking at complex concepts and big sets of data and distilling them down into more simple frameworks so that we could rank our website at the top of search engines. Well, that's the same thing I'm doing in each and every one of these episodes. And so my point is, Joseph Campbell talks about this in the Hero's Journey. My point is, is that you've been on your own hero's journey and you've been in a specialization process. So step back and assess that. And then once you do, once you take a look at like, like what people would say you're naturally good at, or you take a look at what you've learned as a result of the experiences of your life, or you look at the challenges as you've overcome them and what you've developed in terms of character traits as you've overcome the challenges in your life, or even looking at the challenges themselves and the quality of those challenges, what that's going to allow you to do is get clear on what your specialization is and then go dive deep on it. Once I got clear that this was my specialization, I started watching, doing, experiencing everything I could around personal growth and human evolution. Reading all the books, going to all the seminars, going through all the experiences. I mean, if you've listened to other episodes, you know, I went pretty deep down the rabbit trail from behavioral psychology to neuroscience to spirituality to addiction recovery. And then I started getting into things like wisdom teachings, quantum theory, numerology, sacred geometry, astrology, seeing how all the pieces come together. Getting into MDMA therapy, ayahuasca ceremonies in Costa Rica, psilocybin and mushroom journeys is a pretty deep experience because once I saw that this was my specialization, I went after it. What Napoleon Hill is saying is you go do that too. Go all in on your specialization, because then you can create massive value in the world that you will receive in the form of money, a value exchange for. The fifth principle he talks about is imagination. He says, use creative and synthetic imagination to generate ideas, solve problems, and create plans for achieving your goals. And what I would say is, it's great to sit down and do a vision board, or it's great to sit down and do a visualization, but just noticing that you're imagining all the time. And so in this fifth principle, a lot of times people will say to me, well, you know, I don't really imagine very well, or I don't visualize very well. You're actually imagining all the time. It's just that most of us are not intentional about our imagination. Imagination. And so we're imagining a future that we don't want. Like when you're in fear, you're in imagination. When you get in an argument with someone and you walk away from them and you'll start arguing with them, you're in imagination. And so what I would suggest is you're doing imagination all the time. And you can do productive imagination, meaning you create space to be living in a future that you desire to be living in the continued appreciation of the beautiful things in your life that already exist. When you implement at the prior four principles, when you're clear on what you want, when you have a burning desire. Also when you're clear on what you want when you have a burning desire, when you have faith because you know that you're living in a reality of possibility, when you do the work to start to uninstall the limiting programs and limiting belief and pull the weeds and start to use auto suggestion and incantations and affirmations to plant new seeds and plant new programs. When you realize that you've been in a design of specialized knowledge and you identify what that is, and you start to go all in on it. These are the pieces that then allow you to more naturally imagine a future that you do not want. And it is important. And Napoleon Hill gets deeper into this in a couple more of these principles. Because as you imagine you're starting to program your brain, you're starting to program your field, you're starting to put off a vibration that is essential in the coordination and the architecture of the desired results that you have. Principle number six is organized planning. So he says that success requires a practical plan of action. Now, this is important. He says you have to surround yourself with a mastermind group to support and guide your efforts. Now, it is really, really important to this because the desire for a plan is important. I think it was Eisenhower who said, planning is essential, but the plan is useless. And if you have a desire for a plan, guess what'll materialize? A plan. Now, that plan usually doesn't become the thing that actually produces the results. There's a replanning process and a revision process. But it sets you towards a North Star and allows you to begin to take action rather than living in confusion, rather than living in lack of clarity, which lead to procrastination, indecision and inaction action. So whatever it is that you want to achieve, it is worthwhile to sit down and say, okay, based on the knowledge that I have right now and the clarity that I have right now, what action steps could I take in order to produce this result? What things might I need to learn in order to produce this result? And you start moving in that direction. And it's kind of like that old adage where they say when an airplane is flying, for example, from Los Angeles to New York, it makes a course correction like 3,000 times. It's just constantly course correcting, course correcting, course correcting. But eventually it gets from Los Angeles to New York. Eventually you'll get from where you are to producing your desired result. But there's going to be a lot of course corrections around the way the plan sets things in motion and gets you taking action. Because it's only through taking action and learning from the process that life can give you the information you need in order to course correct the plan. You'll look backwards and see that there was a plan that unfolded, but it certainly wasn't the plan that you started with. Principle number seven is a principle that he calls decision he says, develop decisiveness, avoid procrastination, and take immediate, firm action toward your goals. And what he's really saying here is be bold. And I think you can be bold when you understand that there are no bad decisions. Now, I'm not saying go pick up a pipe and do heroin, that's generally a bad decision. I'm not saying go steal, that's generally a bad decision.

But as it relates to what we're trying to achieve in our goals, he's saying there really aren't any bad decisions, so be bold. Now you could say, but Dave, how could there be no capacity to make mistakes or to make bad decisions? Well, because the truth is there's no good decisions or right decisions or wrong decisions. The only really wrong decision you can make is to be an indecision and not take action. Because as you're out there making decisions and being bold and being decisive, life will course correct you. There are plenty of marketing campaigns that my wife and I implemented to try to help more people and generate more sales for our digital courses and our coaching programs that didn't work. But every time we did those things, we learned from the process. And that learning process was required in order for us to create our most successful marketing campaigns. I think about it now that I have a two and a half year old son, there's so many things that he's doing for the first time. And does he produce the result that he desires the first time he tries something? No, hardly ever. But it's a process of learning. Now would you look at those times that he didn't produce the results that he wanted, like walking or gripping something with his hand, or being able to control the crayons within the outlines of the drawing that he's trying to fill in. The failure to do that is a mistake or a bad decision. No, of course you wouldn't. So we need to start treating ourselves like hopefully we treat our children, which is that there are no mistakes, there are no bad decisions. It's a process of learning. Learning. And so in that you can start operating with boldness, you can start being decisive. I had a mentor of mine who created really an empire. Billions of dollars of wealth, helped a lot of people, became the leading expert in his space. And I asked him once, I said, hey, what do you think is one of the greatest contributing factors to everything that you've achieved? And he said, decisiveness. He says, I realized a long time ago that there are not any bad decisions. The only bad decision is to be an indecision. And I think there's a tremendous amount of truth to that. So decide. Principle number eight, and he alluded to this earlier, is the mastermind. He says, surround yourself with a group of supportive and like minded individuals who can provide guidance, collaboration and inspiration. Said you need this to get good at anything. So this is certainly true. I mean, whether it's mastering your mindset or getting good at business, or getting good at yoga, or getting good at Jiu Jitsu, you gotta surround yourself with other people. Moving in the same direction. I think about it, in order for me to transform my addiction into recovery and achieve sobriety, I had to go to three meetings a week. Week. Working the 12 steps, sharing, speaking, having lunch with other people who are trying to get sober. If you want to get good at anything, you have to hang out with people who are trying to get good at the same thing. My brother is now, I think he's a purple belt now in Jiu Jitsu. I'm really, really proud of him. Something that he took on years ago. And he trains four or five times a week. He's got to get in the dojo or wherever they train the studio, and he's got to get on the mat and he's got to practice with other Jiu Jitsu practitioners and he's got to hang out with them and exchange ideas with with them. And so it just makes sense that whatever it is that you desire, hang out with other people who are desiring the same kinds of things. It's why I participate in coaching programs for entrepreneurs. It's why I join other masterminds. It's why I hang out with other people that I've collected over time who are really focused on developing themselves spiritually and personally and professionally. Because who you surround yourself with is who you become. But it's even more to that because there's a power to the collective vibration. And so you think about it, if everybody is kind of thinking the same thoughts and feeling the same feelings and moving in a direction and having similar types of burning desires, it's like a power plant. It's like hanging out at an energetic frequency of the future that you desire. And so you want to be able to spend time with other people whose nervous systems are active and programmed with the vibration of what you want to create. That's how you become supercharged. It's why at my seminars, I actually teach the mastermind technology. Because as entrepreneurs, it's very, very important that we align ourselves with other people who are trying to produce the same results that we're Wanting to produce principle number nine. Nine says the subconscious mind. Says train your subconscious mind. This is the second time this is showing up in his 13 principles to work in your favor by feeding it positive thoughts, emotions and visualizations. So this is very similar to what he talked about. And I think it was principle number three, auto suggestion. But more importantly, he's speaking to the silent tool that can support or hurt us, which materializes as timing, synchronicities and coincidences. And what I mean by that is your subconscious mind is determining the sequence of your life and your subconscious mind is always, always influencing you according to what you believe. I'll give you a quick example here. As I mentioned, we work with a lot of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs want to grow their businesses, they want to attract clients. And so a client of mine was sharing a story with me once where she said, I just don't understand. I continue to attract people who are really interested in working with me, but they don't have the money to be able to do it. And I said, well, give me an example. She said, well, I was at a seminar last weekend continuing to develop her specialized knowledge. And she said, I sat down next to a person who needed exactly what I had. They were growing their business. She's a marketing consultant. They needed branding, they needed sales and marketing support. And then when we had a follow up conversation, they said, well, I just don't have the resources to work with you now because I've been working with this client for a while. I knew that part of her programming was she's not worthy of making a lot of money. She feels that her message or her voice is not worthy of being heard. She feels that people won't find the value in what she has to offer. And so I said, look, your subconscious mind is working in profoundly sophisticated ways. It's determining what time it wakes you up. It's determining what time you go to the restroom and how long you relieve yourself from for. It's determining what you select for breakfast. And all of these micro decisions which seem completely unrelated to whether or not you attract clients who have the money to work with you or not. All of those sequences that morning you went to this event led you to a place where you selected a chair to sit down next to a person who would be very excited to work with you but not have the financial resources. The thing is, you think you chose that chair randomly, but you didn't. That chair was predestined for you to sit in. And that predestiny is architected through the timing of Your life and the timing of your life is determined by your subconscious mind. Because there are so many decisions that your making on a daily basis that are influencing what time you get in your car, what time you leave, and ultimately when you arrive, what you do is you get into the registration for the event, who else you speak to, whether you decide to grab a snack or not, and ultimately what seat you select. All of these things are influencing the outcomes of your life. And so this is where Napoleon Hill talks about the power of the subconscious mind. And remember, he studied people like John D. Rockefeller, J.P. morgan, Thomas Edison. And when you read the biographies of these people, you see that there's unbelievable coincidences taking place that are essential and them achieving the dynasties and the empires that they created, created. But those coincidences and synchronicities are not random. They're highly architected situations and circumstances that are determined by the timing of your life, which are determined by what it is that you believe and what your subconscious mind is trying to achieve. Principle number 10. Hill talks about the brain as a very specific focus. In his 13 principles, he talks about the brain as a broadcasting and receiving station for thoughts. Now this is where he really starts to get innovative. This is where he starts to get into the quantum conversation, the conversation in neuroscience that really precedes needed where he was. So he discusses the brain as a broadcasting and a receiving station for thoughts. He said, keep your mind attuned to positive frequencies to attract opportunities. And so here he starts to bridge into the metaphysical. And this is really his biggest idea, that thoughts are things and they create your reality that everything is actually vibration, and that through the vibration that you've practiced, meaning the thoughts that you've practiced and the emotions that you've practiced. Because your brain is a transmission device and your nervous system is a transmission device, not only are you determining what additional thoughts you attract to you, but you're broadcasting out. And other people at subconscious levels receive these influences and it determines what they do at an unconscious level. So he's going even deeper into how coincidences and synchronicities are architected. Because in that story I told you a moment ago, there's two participants here. One participant is my client, but the other participant is the woman that she sat down next to, who was very excited to work with her, but didn't have the resources to do it. So that woman has her own timing, driven by her own subconscious mind. But her subconscious mind can become influenced by the thoughts and ideas of my client. We are broadcasting and receiving into a collective consciousness. Or a collective reality. And so you are being influenced by other people, and other people are being influenced by you through the power of this extraordinary technology between your ears, which is radioactive. It is a receiving and broadcast station called the brain. In Principle 11, Hill continues with this idea of the sixth sense. He says you have to cultivate intuition and a higher level of awareness, and the sixth sense sense develops as a result of mastering the other principles and enables better decision making. And so this is a really, really profound idea that you have access to thoughts and ideas beyond your personal experience. And remember, Neville Goddard talked about all ideas exist in the field right here, right now, so you have the ability to tune into those thoughts and ideas. So what I would suggest is that Elon Musk didn't have the idea for SpaceX or Tesla. He tuned into the idea for SpaceX or Tesla that had always existed in the field. Gandhi didn't invent the idea of a free and independent India. The idea of a free and independent India always existed in the field or existed within the God of possibility. And as a result of the specific experiences of his life and the specific thoughts and ways that Gandhi programmed himself, he was able to tune into the idea of a free and independent India and materialize that into his reality. Now, what we're also learning through a lot of the research around heart math, for example, and heart and brain coherence is that this is really quite groundbreaking is that the brain tunes into information or works with information that already exists. The heart is what actually receives information that's new. And so the way that we're supposed to operate is the heart is a sensory organ that allows us to receive hunches and intuition. It comes as kind of thoughts and ideas that may not be directly related to the desires that we want to materialize, but they put us in place and they create circumstances and situations that expose us to new environments that then inspire us to take different action or inspire us to do different things. And so that information comes through the heart, and then the mind takes that information and it organizes it into a psychological dynamic. Real thoughts and real ideas that come from hunches and emotions and intuition. The information gets pulled in through the heart, and then the mind processes that information. But what happens is that most of us are living in an overactive mental space. So the heart becomes atrophied or neutered in terms of its sensory capacity. And that's why we end up living the same life over and over again. And we're looking for solutions, new ideas to the problems that we have where we're trying to figure out the plan or the how to create our burning desires and we get stuck. And that's because we have an overactive mental space. And we need to start utilizing the heart sensory organ even more so again, Napoleon is talking about what the sixth sense. He's talking about intuition and a higher level of awareness. What I'm sharing is that awareness is actually something that the heart brings in and that as we start to down regulate the psychological activity and the over dominance of our mind, we start to have access to this heart based information. How do we downregulate the overactivity of our mind? Through the other principles that Napoleon has already shared with us. Principle number 12 is about overcoming fear. He says fear is a significant obstacle to success. And he identifies six basic fears. Poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death. And he explains how to master them through faith, focus and action. And so what's happening here is we are spiritual beings who are moving into our next evolution of growth. But in many ways we still have a primal nervous system. And so the primal mind is, is naturally focused and attuned to worry, fear, solving the problem, external threat. And so a lot of what Napoleon Hill is encouraging if you take these 13 principles and you put them into practice, is the development of the spiritual human being who understands these principles and is no longer living in fear, but living in faith. Is no longer living according to their old programs, but is living according to incantations and affirmations of a new identity. Is no longer, longer living according to oh, there's nothing that life has planned for me but living according to know that you've been on a specialized development journey and that life has a very specific place and a beautiful place for you. So if you really go back and look at the previous 11 principles, they're principles for greater spiritual development. And in this 12th principle where he's talking about overcoming fear, as we live these principles on a daily basis, we become fearless people. And this is the same thing that the ninth step promises in Alcoholics Anonymous. It says fear of financial insecurity and of other people will leave us. Not as you try to not be afraid, but as you incorporate these principles. Whether it's the 12 steps or the 12 principles we've covered so far from Napoleon Hill into a daily practice of living. You start to downregulate your nervous system and live more in the parasympathetic or rest or relaxation state of your nervous system versus the fight or flight of the primal man. Now this 13 principle is really the principle that most people tend to overlook. And this is the glue that holds it all to together. And it's persistence. And so while the other principles, like desire or faith and imagination often grab attention and persistence doesn't feel that sexy, it is the quiet force that determines whether someone turns their goals into a reality. It's literally the glue that holds all the other principles together. Because without persistence, meaning staying the course of the other 12 principles, even the most powerful desires and plans crumble when faced with challenges. And so Napoleon emphasized, is that many people give up just steps away from success because they lack the determination to keep going. Success demands what he calls sustained effort. And we can cultivate resilience and perseverance even in the face of setbacks or challenges. And so that's where it's important to know going into life that things are not going to go as planned. I shared this before with the marketing activities that we implemented, or the many dates that I went on before I met my wife, or the many health protocols calls that I implemented before I started feeling better, or the many times that I tried different businesses before I truly found my purpose. Things will not go as planned. But it's important to understand that things not going as planned is the plan. Things not going as planned is the plan. Because there is a an intelligence at work that is so far greater than your localized individual thinking. It is an infinite intelligence. It is an omniscient intelligence. It is an intelligence intelligence that is able to see the past, the present, and the future all at once. It is an intelligence that understands what you decided you wanted even before you came into this physical body. And it is an intelligence that understands the most efficient way to help deliver you to the materialized life that you desire. And so you will have thoughts and ideas to pursue certain things, and you must pursue them. As we talked about, you must have an objective plan, but you have to be relaxed in your execution of the plan. You have to know that there is a larger plan at work, that your plan is not the plan, but there is a divine. And so you chart a course and you move towards it and you become flexible. Bruce Lee talks about this. He says you must become like the bamboo. The bamboo is strong, but it's able to bend in the wind if you become too rigid and too attached, that whatever it is that you're doing must, in this round, produce the result that you want. You'll snap, you'll break. And so you have to be flexible. And in that flexibility, you can find persistence you wake up every day and you say, yes sir, reporting for duty, sir. Whatever the plan is for me, I'm willing to execute on it today, knowing that it may not seem like it's going to take me to my desired outcome, but that my thinking is a smaller, smaller thinking. That there is a greater thinking at work and I'm being guided by that greater thinking or by God. And I'm being guided in a direction that ultimately, as long as I am humble and as long as I am resilient, and as long as I am persistent and I don't judge my current situation, I will be taken to the promised land of the materialization of my desired result. So that is Napoleon Hill's central message, is that success begins in the mind. I am 100 in agreement with that. Mind is root cause. Everything else is just an effective mind. And by mastering these principles, anyone can achieve their desires. So look, that's just what Hill thinks. That's just what I think. I'd love to know what you think. I hope you love this episode as much as I love sharing it with you. And do me a favor. If there's somebody who needs to hear this, you're excited to share, share the episode with somebody. If you're listening on the audio platforms and you haven't subscribed yet, please do and leave me a rating or a review. I get so excited when my team forwards me those ratings and reviews. And if you're following along on YouTube, do me a favor, subscribe, leave me a comment, let me know what you think. I try to read all of them and answer as many questions as I can and I enjoy being here with you. It's such a great privilege and an honor to be on the journey with you. I love you very, very much. I'm excited to continue to support you and I will see you in the next episode. Hey, it's David. One more thing. If you want to go even deeper on everything we've talked about on today's episode, don't forget to jump over to www.DavidBear.com. you can find the link in the show notes and subscribe to our newsletter. A couple of times a week, I'm going to be sending you the latest episodes that we've released, along with additional free trainings. You'll get immediate access to my free Mind Hack ebook and go even deeper into all the tools, the technologies, the frameworks that have helped tens of thousands of people establish a changed mind. Don't forget to jump on over to the site and I will see you in the next episode.