Inspiring Stories
Remember the story of Edwin C. Barnes, who had a burning desire to go into partnership with Thomas Edison? It didn’t happen right away, but it did happen.

What about U.R. Darby? Do you recall that story? He and his uncle gave up and quit digging for gold just three feet short of the richest gold deposit in Colorado. But he learned his lesson and refused to give up again until he had made his fortune selling life insurance.

Inspiring stories, aren’t they?

Or are they? How many of you who read those stories found yourself thinking, ‘Yeah, well, that worked for them, back then, under those circumstances but it would never work for me.’

Suspend Disbelief
That’s why I’m going to ask you to apply the second half of the title of this piece. I’m going to ask you to suspend disbelief.

“There’s no us trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-and-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Actually, we are more fortunate than Alice. Television and movies have conditioned us to suspend disbelief and “believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

You Just Need Something to Believe In
“One sound idea is all that one needs to achieve success,” Napoleon Hill tells us in his classic Think and Grow Rich. But he issues this warning: (I am using all caps because that is the way it was printed in Hill’s book, not because I’m angry or rude) “WHEN RICHES BEGIN TO COME THEY COME SO QUICKLY, IN SUCH GREAT ABUNDANCE, THAT ONE WONDERS WHERE THEY HAVE BEEN HIDING DURING ALL THOSE LEAN YEARS.”

Do you believe that? Well, work on it because, Hill insists,
“riches begin with a state of mind, with definiteness of purpose, with little or no hard work.” He adds:

Observe very closely, as soon as you master the principles of this philosophy, and begin to follow the instructions for applying those principles, your financial status will begin to improve, and everything you touch will begin to transmute itself into an asset for your benefit. Impossible? Not at all!

Quench That Doubt
If it is so easy, then why isn’t everyone rich, you may ask.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. You haven’t suspended disbelief sufficiently.

It is all in your mind. Success comes to those who become SUCCESS CONSCIOUS. Failure comes to those who let their minds slip into the old habits of FAILURE CONSCIOUSNESS.

Perhaps part of your problem in suspending disbelief is that you are trapped in your own perspective. You believe that since it hasn’t happened to you, it can’t happen at all.

Hill was very much aware of this human tendency. As he pointed out, “Some who will read this, will believe that no one can THINK AND GROW RICH. They cannot think in terms of riches, because their thought habits have been steeped in poverty, want, misery, failure, and defeat.”

That’s like saying that people can’t fly just because you’ve never been up in an airplane.

Yesterday, as I was THINKing about GROWing RICH, I found this little ditty going through my head (over and over and over again) “Not to be greedy, but I’m tired of being needy.”

Maybe I haven’t quite managed to suspend disbelief yet, but I’m working on it. “We refuse to believe that which we do not understand,” Hill says. “We foolishly believe that our own limitations are the proper measure of limitations.”

If You Want It Badly Enough
Not so. Take a look at Henry Ford (Interesting, isn’t it that the Ford Motor Company was the only major American auto manufacturer which did not participate in the government bail-out and which continued to turn a profit during the ‘current economic downturn’.) Henry Ford decided that he wanted to produce his now famous (and infamous, for being a gas-guzzler) V-8 engine. His engineers told him that it was impossible. He told them to work on it, “and stay on the job until you succeed no matter how much time it required.”

They worked six months without success. Another six months passed with nothing happening. Ford checked with his engineers and they told him, once again, that it was impossible.

“Go ahead,” said Ford, “I want it, and I’ll have it.”

The Ford DETERMINATION won out in the end; there was a breakthrough and the “impossible” became possible.

You’ve Just Gotta Believe!
“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
When William Ernest Henley wrote those lines in 1888, he didn’t bother to explain how that may be true.

According to Napoleon Hill:

He should have told us that the ether in which this little earth floats, in which we move and have our being, is a form of energy moving at an inconceivably high rate of vibration, and that the ether is filled with a form of universal power which ADAPTS itself to the nature of the thoughts we hold in our minds; and INFLUENCES us, in natural ways, to transmute our thoughts into their physical equivalent.

Because of this energy and this power we can, indeed, Think and Grow Rich or even Build a Better World – if we can suspend disbelief.

Author's Bio: 

Sara Dillinger is a Baby Boomer herself and a newbie internet entrepreneur focusing on the Baby Boomer generation because she spent sixteen years serving as pastor in United Methodist congregations all over Kansas. Those congregations were made up primarily of Baby Boomer or older members, so Sara has developed some expertise with the Baby Boomer generation. Sara is now on leave of absence and living in Atchison, Ks. with her almost-thirty year old son and two cats. She also helps her daughter, also living in Atchison, with three sons, ages 8, 6, and 1, while their father is in Afghanistan. Her blogs are found at http://www.for-boomers.com.