“Faith and purpose constitute the motive-power of life. There is nothing that a strong faith and an unflinching purpose may not accomplish.” — The Path to Prosperity

In my darkest hours, when it appeared I didn’t have a whole lot to hang onto, I somehow managed to develop the most important element of success in any undertaking: Faith.

I remember driving down the road in the 12-year-old automobile I had borrowed from a friend (because I had lost mine), telling myself over and over that it was just a matter of time before my fortunes were going to improve. It was a principle that I had borrowed from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich: “Repetition of affirmation of orders to your subconscious mind is the only known method of voluntary development of the emotion of faith…This is the equivalent of saying that any impulse of thought which is repeatedly passed on to the subconscious mind is, finally, accepted and acted upon by the subconscious mind, which proceeds to translate that impulse into its physical equivalent, by the most practical procedure available.”

One of the most quoted verses of the Christian Bible is Paul’s instructions that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” That in itself tells us that we must see our desired outcome despite our present condition. In a similar way, Answers.com defines Faith as “belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.”

Faith is so important to success that Hill devoted an entire chapter to it, calling it “the second step toward riches (or success in any endeavor).” James Allen was even stronger in his statement above that “There is nothing that a strong faith and an unflinching purpose may not accomplish.”

As Napoleon Hill also tells us:

FAITH is the starting point of all accumulation of riches!
FAITH is the basis of all “miracles,” and all mysteries which cannot be analyzed by the rules of science!
FAITH is the only known antidote for FAILURE!

And that’s worth thinking about.