One of the most inspiring stories in Napoleon Hill’s life was his own son’s. Blair was born without external ears; doctors feared that he would be deaf and mute for his entire life.
Hill, of course, refused to accept this negative diagnosis. “The outlook was far from encouraging,” he wrote, “but desire backed by faith knows no such word as impossible.”
Hill challenged the doctor’s opinion and decided that Blair would hear and speak – he did not accept the reality of his son’s affliction. “More than anything else, I decided that my son would not be a deaf mute,” Hill exclaimed. He wanted to find a way to transplant into the child’s mind the burning desire to convey sound to his brain without the aid of ears.
Through a positive mental attitude and a burning desire for a specific outcome, Hill set about helping Blair. As soon as he was old enough, his father filled his mind with a burning desire to hear. Every day, Napoleon renewed the pledge he made to himself, not to accept a deaf mute for a son.
Napoleon’s plan included: creating bedtime stories for Blair with themes designed to develop in him self-reliance, imagination, and a keen desire to hear and to be normal, as well as to establish the belief that his affliction was not a liability, but an asset of great value.
As Blair grew older, he took notice of things around him and never doubted that he would hear and speak one day. His father was convinced that if he could even hear slightly, he might develop a hearing capacity.
The little deaf boy went through the grades, high school, and college without being able to hear his teachers, excepting when they shouted loudly, at close range. He did not go to a school for the deaf. His parents were determined that he should live a normal life, and associate with normal children.
Eventually, Blair acquired limited hearing with the help of a phonograph, picking up sound vibrations via bone conduction, enabling him to “hear” music. Blair had tried hearing aids, but had never found a device which worked for him. In his last year of college, he tested an Acousticon hearing aid, which was specifically designed for him by the Dictograph Products Company.
The hearing aid proved to be absolutely perfect for Blair, improving his hearing to 100 percent, and thereby enabling him to hear and to converse at normal levels of conversation.
This was the most important turning point in Blair’s life, for his and Napoleon’s dream of normal hearing and speech was now fulfilled.
Blair next sought was to determine a practical plan for converting his former handicap into an equivalent asset of value to others. He wrote to Dictograph to provide grateful feedback on their design. In response, he was invited to visit their headquarters and to tour their factory.
Next, Blair devoted a full month to researching Dictograph’s marketing system and to devising a two-year plan for reaching out to those with hearing difficulties worldwide. Accepting Blair’s proposal, Dictograph promptly hired him to implement the new plan.
Thus, Blair’s long journey to wholeness found fruition, as his seeming limitation finally, through faith and perseverance, was converted into a priceless asset, of value not just to himself, but to multitudes.
Life Lesson: The starting point of all achievement is to have a burning desire, followed by a persistent desire, backed up with enduring faith and belief. No matter what happen to us, our thinking and thoughts make us who we become.
Who was Napoleon Hill? In 1937, Napoleon Hill published his most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, which remains one of the leading books on personal motivation and self-help to this day.
Hill’s focus was not simply wealth, however; he provided tips and ideas for achieving any goal through self-confidence, enthusiasm, cooperation and tolerance.
