Chapter 14 – The Sixth Sense

Napoleon Hill spends this chapter discussing the sixth sense. This is our natural ability to create hunches, inspirations or flashes of insight. We all have them, but depending on our religious and cultural upbringing, may have been taught that this ability is a form of evil that should be shunned. I was brought up in one of those religions, but the one thing that always puzzled me as a child was why should I be considered evil just because I sometimes knew things that were about to happen ahead of time. I wasn't seeking the occult or doing things that were bad, so what was the big deal? I learned, however, that this is a big deal to many people, so I learned very early to keep my insights to myself and only shared them with my niece, Alisa, and my father.

Many times this sixth sense has helped me out of jams that I would otherwise not have been able to escape a couple of situations unscathed. We have to acknowledge that there are things that we don't understand, but not understanding doesn't make it any less of a fact. The sixth sense is very powerful, but it cannot operate in a vacuum. It receives information through our brain based upon our observations and emotions regarding what we are seeing. We have to train our sixth sense, the same way that we train our other muscles. Yes, the majority of the population is gifted with sight, however how many people have true powers of observation. The same is true with our sixth sense. We all possess it to one degree or another, but if we don't make a conscious effort to train it so that it is available when we need it.

This chapter highlighted to me the need to assemble my own mental team of counselors. I think that I have already found one in the person of Napoleon Hill. I really admire his tenacity and dedication to helping others to understand that the power to succeed is and has always been within their hands, if they only reached out and grabbed it. Reading books about financial success is very new genre for me, so I am sure that I will discover more leaders to add to the group. I'm meeting many of these leaders right now in our mentoring group and in my business. I am also going to spend more time reading about people that I admire and learning how they accomplished the things that they did. I look forward to seeing what else my sixth sense can come up with after it has been properly nourished and exercised.