A burning desire to be and to do is the starting point from which the dreamer must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition.

In this chapter “Desire”, Napoleon hammers home the importance of a BURNING DESIRE. Having unwavering confidence that you will achieve your desired outcome is the most important step you must take in order to succeed. Napoleon starts off this chapter by talking about countless stories where desire alone brought great riches to countless men including his own son, Blair.

Wishing does not bring you riches! Wishing brings you wishes. Your dreams do at first, start out as a wish. After spending some time obsessing with you’re own desire it will become a burning desire. A burning desire transmutes into confidence and belief of having already attained your desire. Therefore desire is the starting block for your attainment of anything you can desire.

The method by which DESIRE for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent consists of six definite, practical actions:

1. Decide how much you want. Be definite about the amount that you desire and hold this figure in your mind. You cannot say “I want more money”, you MUST be definite.

2. Determine what you intend to giveback in return for the money. There is no such reality as “something for nothing”.

3. Decide on a definite date by which you will have achieved your desired amount of money.

4. Create a definite plan of action that you will adhere to in order to carry out your desire. You must begin this plan at once, whether you feel ready or not.

5. Write out a clear statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, by when you desire to have attained it, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly your plan for attainment.

6. Read your written plan aloud, twice a day. Once in the morning after you wake up, and once in the evening before you go to sleep. As you read, SEE, FEEL and BELIEVE yourself already in possession of the money.

The stories that are shared in Chapter 1 - Desire demonstrates how a burning desire to succeed is the most influential factor to your success. Napoleon documents one great story that stood out in my mind.

A warrior once made a decision which ensured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against an enemy who out numbered his own. Instead of retreating and logically analyzing the situation, the warrior ordered his men to fight and loaded his soldiers and their equipment onto boats and sailed to his enemies country.

Upon arrival, he then gave the order to burn the ships that carried them and said to his men “You see the boats going up in smoke. That means we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice. We win - or we perish!”

The army of men won.

This story highlights how burning all bridges behind you and forcing yourself into a situation where success is your only option - can bring out the very best in you. This is the level of desire Napoleon wanted to convey to us. You must be willing to burn all bridges behind you and do anything and everything to reach your goal. Once you do reach this point, success is assured.

I think the chapter Desire was placed at the very beginning of the book because of its sheer power. Desire is at the root of everything we do. You do not breathe on this planet unless you have a desire to live. You are continually coming up with new desires every single day of your existence; it is why the world keeps moving and why we continue to create new and greater things. As you live more and more contrast, more and more desires are born within you.

The real question is, what are you willing to do for those desires? And if you aren’t willing to burn all bridges behind you then are they really desires? Or are they only wishes?

Those who would win in any undertaking must be willing to burn their ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a BURNING DESIRE TO WIN, essential to success.

The 6 practical steps outlined earlier on describe clearly how you can go about acquiring money consciousness. I haven’t met a deliberate creator yet who doesn’t desire money. You shouldn’t look at wanting money as a bad thing either. Life is abundant and there is more than enough for everyone, you should want to skip across life tasting only the very best life has to offer you. Don’t settle for anything less!

Andrew Carnegie taught Napoleon those 6 practical steps which should never be underestimated. Andrew began as a laborer in the steel mills and went on to use these exact same principles to yield him a fortune of more than 100 million dollars. This great amass of wealth was mostly founded in the 1800’s which just goes to prove the sheer power of the teachings.

The steps call for no “hard labor.” They call for no “sacrifice.” They do not require one to become ridiculous or unthinking. To apply them calls for no great amount of education. But the successful completion of these six actions does call for sufficient imagination to enable one to see, and to understand, that accumulation of money cannot be left to chance, good fortune, and luck. One must realize that all who have accumulated great fortunes first did a certain amount of dreaming, hoping, wishing, DESIRING and PLANNING before they acquired money.

Napoleon goes on to mention that you will not create any great amount of wealth unless you can get yourself into a frenzy of desire and actually BELIEVE you will possess it!

In one of my successful ebooks, “Believing Is Receiving“, I speak about believing being the key attracting factor that will yield to you whatever it is that you desire. In fact without a belief that you can first attain something, you will never ever have it. So how do you REALLY believe something as true when you “know” it isn’t?

For me, visualization and meditation are the best ways that I can focus my mind on something that I want. The belief element will eventually come to you after you have spent enough time focusing on what it is that you want. This is the hard part that a lot of people often fail at doing.

Try visualizing in your mind exactly what it would feel like having that money, the car or the relationship. The more you practice doing this, the more you will believe that you can actually have it. As soon as you truly believe without a shadow of a doubt that this is yours and that you will acquire it - that is when the universe will yield to you in great quantities.

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.