Napoleon Hill was a pioneer in the genre of books on business success and leadership. His most famous book, Think and Grow Rich, is still on of the bestsellers of all time.

Hill believed that having a purpose or a plan is essential to attaining success. He advised readers to think their way through a failure, to view failure as a small part of a plan that will ultimately benefit them. If you analyze failure…see it as a plan with a purpose…it will prepare you for bigger challenges. In this way failure can only make you better because it prepares you for greater responsibilities.

Identify your life’s purpose and proceed with passion. Only you know what to do with it.

Hill’s official biography says he was born in a two-room cabin into wretched poverty. He began working at the age of thirteen as a reporter for small-town newspapers in rural Virgina. He later put himself through college. Meeting the powerful industrialist Andrew Carnegie and hearing his ideas led to Hill’s lifelong project, interviewing the most famous and wealthy men of all time (I will be touching base on this on a later post I have planned, using Tim Ferriss‘ approach discussed in The 4-Hour Workweek). What Hill learned from these men became the basis of his successful books.

An amazing fact is that Hill never mentioned the word “achievement” in Think and Grow Rich…he felt that readers would benefit most by discovering the keys to achieving their goals themselves as the result of his winning philosophy.

How do YOU transform your failures into success?