It is difficult to speak about the science of success without mentioning Napoleon Hill. The author of Think and Grow Rich, a bestseller, has impacted on millions of lives by simplifying the laws of success after meeting and studying the ways of rich successful people for a staggering twenty five years. Born into absolute poverty, Hill worked his way hard and eventually became a journalist.
It is difficult to speak about the science of success without mentioning Napoleon Hill. The author of Think and Grow Rich, a bestseller, has impacted on millions of lives by simplifying the laws of success after meeting and studying the ways of rich successful people for a staggering twenty five years.
Born into absolute poverty, Hill worked his way hard and eventually became a journalist. In one interview, Andrew Carnegie commissioned him to interview five hundred millionaires when Hill asked him the secret to his wealth.
These millionaires included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt, William Wrigley Jr, Woodrow Wilson, John D. Rockefeller, F. W. Woolworth among others.
Carnegie himself was typical rags to riches self made man whose life span from Steel industrialist to scholar and philanthropist.
One of his astonishing findings was that knowledge, by and of itself, has little, if any value. Knowledge only becomes valuable in its application. He found the assumption that knowledge is power, wrong.
It is applied knowledge that begets power, wealth and the advancement of humanity. He goes on to explain that we go to school to get education because we want to be successful and to be wealthy yet in schools nobody teaches us to be wealthy.
This simple explanation is the reason why some of the most acclaimed academics die poor people while people of little education who have the desire and will to get rich, acquire the knowledge to do so and make up for what they do not know by hiring those who have specialized knowledge that they seek.
Some of these statements may sound reactionary, especially in the nice comfortable world that we live in but if you look around today at the truly very successful people, you will struggle to discover those that have not followed these simple laws. So since we really want to be rich, why are we not doing the things that make made other people rich?
In most African societies, it is almost an unspoken taboo to work solely towards immense wealth. Such people are seen as hopeless dreamers and if they succeed, reasons other than their own effort will be excused for his wealth and used against him.
Meanwhile in the west rich people go to Oprah’s talk show to flaunt their wealth. Wealthy people who openly show it are taken to be arrogant or are though to have the intention of rubbing it in the wounds of the poor.
The truth of the matter is that very many believe that poverty is a way of life and are quite scared to try growing out of it with all the desire and the faith that immense wealth requires.
Above all many people are afraid of taking risks. This is not necessarily an African phenomenon because many Africans have become rich legally.
Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese entrepreneur is one such African who went through traditional formal education worked in telecommunications companies to amass experience before starting the giant pan African telecommunication company Celtel.
Patrice Motsepe, the chairman of African Rainbow minerals learnt his first business tricks while selling liquor with his father in South Africa.
He later specialized in mining and business law and later used his knowledge to buy up some unprofitable gold mines in 1997 which have turned out to be very good investment.
He is now ranked by Forbes magazine as the 503rd richest person in the world and South Africa’s first black billionaire with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion dollars.
Rwanda is strewn with our own self made individuals like Rujugiro of the UTC fame. So what is the best education? Plato, the Greek philosopher advised that, "Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” Napoleon Hill summarizes the issue of education well.
"Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.”
To sum it up, perseverance, desire and faith are key in accumulating wealth or achieving success in every sphere of life but knowledge can only be useful if it can be used to move closer to success.