Think and grow rich
Review of Napoleon Hill’s book
Hello, my climate darling ❤
Let me tell you a story.
It was 2021, I was 25 years old, and figuring out the power of having influence. At the beginning of the year, I appeared on the Forbes Under 30 List, and in April of the same year, I was on the cover of Época Negócios Magazine, one of the most important Brazilian business magazines.
This was life-changing because it connected me with another group of people. I wasn’t just talking with the young crowd anymore, I had gained access to the wealthy bubble in my country.
I think it must have been eccentric to have a young black girl from a marginalized community enter this bubble, and I started to be noticed. Very rich people wanted to understand who I was, what I was doing, and how my job was causing a social impact in the world. At that time, Perifa Sustentável was only a social project and I had just become the United Nations Youth Ambassador, with the mission to mobilize Brazilian youth to territorialize the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
I was a little star learning how to shine!
Companies and big organizations wanted me at their meetings and they started to invite me:
Amanda, we would love to hear you! Could you give a talk at our event to our collaborators?
I always said yes, because I wanted to spread the climate and racial message everywhere! However, after a while, I figured out that what I was doing for free, as a volunteer who believed in the cause, was for organizations who had enough money to pay me.
I don’t want you to victimize me, I am just sharing my story.
I am an Afro-Brazilian living in a deeply patriarchal, conservative, and racist society. In my world, there was no place to talk about money and charge for all the content that I learned over all these years. I thought that I just needed to be glad that they wanted to hear me, so I didn’t imagine I could getpaid to do what I love: question the status quo, develop social projects, and be the voice for black people’s needs.
After the initial shock, I decided to learn about money. I took courses, watched classes, and read books. The last book I read is from Napoleon Hill, called Think and Grow Rich. It is a powerful book and I would like to share some learnings with you. Let’s go? :)
As soon as I started to read Think and Grow Rich, I realized that riches is a state of mind defined by our purpose, that could attract success or failure. To attract richness, it is necessary to develop a plan, pursue it, and convince yourself that this could be for you. There is a long journey between wishing and being ready to receive it, and faith is a crucial tool to mold our subconscious mind.
“FAITH is the ‘eternal elixir’ which gives life, power, and action to the impulse of thought!” (Napoleon Hill)
Faith removes limitations. It’s a state of mind that may be induced by self-suggestion, by repeating positive affirmations. Dear reader, this is not some random method that crazy Instagram coaches use to get more followers, but this is a way to train our minds to develop the emotion of faith. Whether we are asleep or awake, our subconscious is always working, attracting the things that we think the most.
The thing is: we need to dominate our thoughts and desires. Our state of mind is the only thing that we truly have control over. As Napoleon Hill used to say:
“You are the master of your earthly destiny just as surely as you have the power to control your thoughts. You may influence, direct, and eventually control your environment, making your life what you want it to be.”
I was always told to study hard to achieve wealth. Nevertheless, knowledge alone doesn’t attract money, unless it is organized through practical plans of action and directed to a definite end. In this unequal society, vulnerable, marginalized, and peripheral people need to have access to this type of information to transform their realities.
The world is cruel, but we need to keep dreaming! Having hope, faith, courage, and tolerance will create the state of mind that will allow us to pursue our biggest desires. All that we need will come to us, we just need to be ready to receive it.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” (Napoleon Hill)
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Amanda Costa is a climate activist, young adviser to the UN Global Compact, founder of the Sustainable Perifa Institute, and presenter of #TemClimaParaisso?, a program about the climate crisis. Graduated in International Relations, Amanda was recognized as #Under30 in Forbes magazine, TEDx Speaker, LinkedIn Top Voices and Creator and in 2021 she was deputy curator of Global Shapers, the youth community of the World Economic Forum.
