Non-fiction: Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude

Overview

Published at the turn of the 1960s, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude presents W. Clement Stone and Napoleon Hill’s case that inner attitude is the master key that unlocks achievement, happiness, and health. Drawing on Hill’s earlier success philosophy and Stone’s sales and insurance career, it blends anecdote, instruction, and moral exhortation to argue that anyone can direct thought and habit toward constructive ends. The argument is pragmatic and evangelical at once: success is a learnable discipline grounded in self-responsibility, purposeful action, and a deliberate choice to cultivate a Positive Mental Attitude, or PMA.

PMA versus NMA

The central image is an “invisible talisman” each person wears, with PMA stamped on one side and NMA, Negative Mental Attitude, on the other. Which side faces outward determines how opportunities, setbacks, and other people are interpreted. PMA does not deny obstacles; it reframes them as raw material. NMA converts the same facts into excuses, cynicism, or fear. The authors insist that attitude precedes evidence: belief and expectation prime perception, attract allies, and keep effort alive long enough for results to appear.

How PMA activates the success principles

PMA is presented as the activating ingredient for a set of interlocking principles: definiteness of purpose focuses energy on a single chief aim; applied faith sustains persistence; personal initiative and self-discipline convert plans into habit; accurate thinking separates facts from opinions; controlled attention blocks distraction; going the extra mile compounds goodwill and opportunity; a pleasing personality and integrity build trust; a mastermind alliance multiplies capability through coordinated cooperation; learning from adversity transforms defeats into instruction; sound health, prudent budgeting of time and money, and creative vision support long-range progress. Without PMA these remain inert techniques; with it, they catalyze one another into a reinforcing system.

Methods, habits, and moral frame

The text translates attitude into daily practices: autosuggestion and self-talk to plant constructive directives in the subconscious; the “do it now” habit to defeat procrastination; goal statements written, memorized, and reviewed; environmental engineering, choosing influences, associations, and reading that nourish PMA; self-analysis checklists to identify NMA tendencies like self-pity, envy, or fear, and to replace them with gratitude, purposeful action, and service. Emotion is treated as energy to be directed: anger, for example, can be transmuted into disciplined effort. Throughout runs a moral thread, honesty, responsibility, and contribution, which the authors consider inseparable from sustainable success. The idea of “magnificent obsession” encapsulates this ethic: make service to others a consuming aim, and both significance and material rewards follow.

Stories and applications

Illustrative vignettes, strivers rising from poverty, salespeople reversing slumps, students overcoming handicaps, executives salvaging careers after failure, model the pattern the book champions: define a chief aim, affirm it persistently, ally with supportive people, convert each setback into a lesson, and keep moving. The examples are not offered as miracles but as accumulations of small, consistent choices shaped by PMA’s lens. Repeatedly, the narrative returns to the theme that a turning point often begins with a decision to assume agency: you are “the most important living person” in your life because only you can choose which side of the talisman to show.

Enduring message

Beneath mid-century anecdotes lies a durable claim: attitude is the pivot between circumstance and outcome. By teaching readers to monitor thought, install constructive habits, and harness cooperative relationships, Stone and Hill frame success less as luck than as a practiced response to reality. The promise is large but concrete: cultivate PMA, and you will perceive more options, persist longer, learn faster, and attract the help and opportunities that make achievement possible.