Nearly a century ago, a brilliant man, Napoleon Hill, decided to study how the most successful people in America-people like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie-came up with their great ideas and became successful entrepreneurs and businessmen. What he discovered has astonished people ever since and has inspired thousands to believe in the power of thought. As the years have gone by, Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich has inspired such people as Norman Vincent Peale and Jerry Hicks. Not the least of those inspired is Ray Higdon, and now Higdon has written a modern-day version of Think and Grow Rich with his new book Vibrational Money Immersion: Think and Grow Rich for Network Marketers.

Higdon quotes extensively from Napoleon Hill, but what makes this new book stand out from Hill’s classic is that it takes Hill’s ideas and applies them to the twenty-first century and specifically the field of network marketing as a means for attracting the kind of success and money people desire. Higdon also shares many of his personal stories of how believing in positive thinking and applying it have helped him to achieve success.

This is a no head-in-the-clouds type book about imagining riches. Rather, Higdon, who has been flat broke twice in his life and gone on to great financial success, is extremely honest in stating that we need to take action along with imagining the lifestyle and riches we want. As he states, “What are we talking about in this whole book? We’re talking about raising your vibrational level toward money. Persistence is an essential factor in raising that vibrational quotient, of transmuting desire into its monetary equivalent.” While Higdon clearly believes in the Law of Attraction, he also knows that you can’t get something for nothing. Not only do you have to tell the Universe what you want, but you have to decide what you are willing to do to get it, and you have to plan ahead for when you have it. As he wisely points out, most people who win the lottery end up worse off than they were before because you can’t get something for nothing and those people have not planned ahead for what to do with their money once they get it.

For Higdon, the solution of what to do in exchange for the money you will attract is network marketing, and especially real estate; he has been very successful in real estate. Of course, many people are turned off by network marketing, believing it doesn’t work or not understanding why some people succeed at it while they have tried it and failed. Higdon responds to this concern by saying that those results have to do “with people’s relationship with money, how they view money, how they view wealthy people, and how they view successful people.” Higdon explains that too many people focus on their lack of money rather than envisioning having it; plus, they have a poverty mindset that believes they can’t achieve money so they give up before they’ve even given themselves a chance. But Higdon’s book can help people to break that cycle by offering the tools needed to change our thought process to a prosperity mindset. As Higdon’s friend Mark Hoverson once said-and this is one of the most powerful sentences in the entire book-“Your poverty is not serving anyone.”

A few of the tools Higdon offers readers include learning how to quit using the past as an excuse to hold you back from a successful future, and how to use the power of affirmations to change your poverty mindset into a successful one that will attract money and all the other things you want in life.

For me, one of the most insightful statements Higdon makes is that “Knowledge is not power.” A lot of people chase after education, read a lot of books, and go to a lot of seminars, thinking they’ll find the secrets to success in those places-and they may, but a lot of them are just fooling themselves into thinking that being busy equates with being productive. He quotes Napoleon Hill to support this point: “Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end. This “missing link” in all systems of education known to civilization today, may be found in the failure of educational institutions to teach their students HOW TO ORGANIZE AND USE KNOWLEDGE AFTER THEY ACQUIRE IT.”

Perhaps my favorite part of this book is Higdon’s focus on the power of the imagination. He tells us that we have to separate what we want from our current reality: “Too many people are just observing what’s in their lives. They say, ‘Ray, I’m just telling it like it is.’ Well, telling it like it is keeps it like it is. Justifying where you are keeps you where you are. There is no imagination necessary to see your current bank account. This is about developing that imagination, believing that you’re more deserving of bigger, better, and more things. That development of the synthetic will let you tap into the creative.”

Higdon goes on to discuss many other tools that help people to develop imagination and use it to attract money, but the one that grabbed my attention the most, and which he borrows from Hill, is the idea of invisible counselors to help us. He asks us to imagine who we would like to receive advice from-anyone whom we admire for their success and, more specifically, whom we admire for their characteristics that helped them achieve that success-characteristics we would like to have. For example, if we want to be more persistent, we might choose a famous athlete as a counselor. If we want to be kinder, we might choose Jesus. We can imagine these counselors gathered with us, conversing with us. To me, this idea seems like taking the “What would Jesus do?” question and putting it on steroids to be “What would Gandhi do in this situation?” “What would Andrew Carnegie do in this situation?” “What would Abraham Lincoln do?” I absolutely loved this idea and have begun to use it in my own life as an author thinking about what other authors might do, not just authors I admire as great writers, but authors who were successful businessmen, such as Charles Dickens, as well as people in other professions I greatly admire for their personal beliefs and courage.

Higdon concludes the discussion on invisible counselors by explaining, “Too often people look at successful individuals and they say, ‘Well, if I only had their money,’ or ‘If I only had this or that.” Do you understand that all you need is their mindset, their attitude, and a little bit of their knowledge? That’s what you actually need, so that’s what you should be asking for.” That’s what I’ll be asking for and then applying, with trust that the money will follow.

Vibrational Money Immersion is filled with tons of more information about how to develop that prosperity mindset so you take inspired action to make money flow to you. Read this book and develop a prosperity mindset, and the sky will be the limit for you.