Lesson in the title, Think and Grow Rich

Last year I had this epiphany as I drove home from work to pick up a daughter and take her to school.

There is more to the title "Think and Grow Rich" than what seems to be be.

The obvious attributed meaning is that simply by thinking about becoming rich one can become rich. This is where people fail and say that it doesn't work. This is wishful thinking, and wishful thinking doesn't work.

The epiphany came with the word "grow."

If we simply think about growing a garden, it won't grow. We're just wishful thinking about the garden. We can desire the garden to grow all we want. We can imagine it, visualize it. We can recite affirmations about how great and beautiful and productive the garden will be. We can make demands on the universe or our subconscious. But the garden won't grow until something else happens.

The growing doesn't start until we have made the effort. We need to do, to act.

The thinking part is vital. It's needed to imagine, visualize and become emotionally involved with the idea. We can visually plan how we want the garden to look. We can see in our mind's eye how we want the end result.

But the growing doesn't start until we make some efforts first, with the primary effort being to plant the seeds.

However, if we just haphazardly throw seeds on the ground, they may or may not grow. And the resulting vegetation may not look very good, and definitely won't be anything like what we may have envisioned.

We need to not just visualize how the end result looks, but create a plan. Where do we want the garden beds? Where does various produce get planted?

We may not know exactly how we get to the end result. We probably don't know all the details of the plan. But we start making the efforts to get there.

While all the visualizing and emotion is essential, these won't produce the end result without us actually taking action. To grow, the seed needs to be planted. Then we need to nurture it. Water, probably some fertilizer, weeding.

If you've ever planted any kind of garden it seems to take a long time to start growing. A few spots of green appear, including weeds. Then it can seem there's a bunch of green. Before too many weeks some plants are beginning to bear some of their first harvest.

To me, it can then seem like, before I'm ready, other plants and then everything is needing to be picked and harvested.

I claim no special skill in gardening. I'm a definite amateur, mostly because I don't take the time I should. But there is one thing our garden usually produces really well: tomatoes.

Our tomatoes always grow and produce much more than we can use. The biggest reason is because I learned years ago to help the tomato plant develop strong deep roots. Before transplanting the little plant, the lower branches are pinched off and then the plant is buried with only the small top portion showing. The hairy stems that are buried become additional roots. The plant takes a little longer to begin producing tomatoes, but the resulting harvest is much greater because there are more roots and they run deeper.

A bit of a life lesson, to take the little extra effort to establish deeper roots. It may take a little longer to see the harvest, but the harvest will be greater because of the deeper roots.

After "think" the key is to "grow" and this implies effort. Stagnant doesn't imply growth. In fact, if something isn't growing it's probably stopped and is starting to die.

Just like we can't think about a garden growing and have it grow from nothing, we cannot grow anything in our lives without at least some effort towards the desired end.

In the scriptures this is part of the Law of the Harvest, where we reap what is sown. We cannot expect to harvest from plants whose seeds were never planted and then nourished and tended.

If we simply think about getting rich the riches won't come. We need to decide to take action towards that end.

And while it is possible to get rich, riches really come from two main directions.

The first is having multiple sources of money flow. All wealthy people have multiple income streams and they are not reliant on a single job. They are not reliant on money only coming to them in the working hours of a weekday.

The second is revenue coming from the type(s) of job(s) you do, or which you provide services for. This is based on the law of compensation. The higher the need for the job, the higher the income can be expected. As your ability (either through yourself or your company) to service the need increases you become more valuable and money increases. Then as it becomes more difficult to replace you, the money further increases.

So, if your service isn't as a high demand, but it is needed, and you become highly specialized in it, you can earn a good income. You may not get rich, but you'll do better than those who aren't specialized.

And if you become the difficult-to-replace expert income can further increase. 

But it will never be as high as if your service is in great demand (high need) for what you do AND you have a high ability to perform that service AND your service is difficult to replace.

The title "Think and Grow Rich" is not passive. It is action-oriented.

Now for the little grammar lesson.

Most of the time people think of "grow" in the intransitive sense, where the verb is characterized by not having or containing a direct object (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intransitive). Examples from the online Merriam-Webster dictionary include:

"1a: to spring up and develop to maturity
b: to be able to grow in some place or situation
// trees that grow in the tropics
c: to assume some relation through or as if through a process of natural growth
// ferns growing from the rocks
2a: to increase in size by assimilation of material into the living organism or by accretion of material in a nonbiological process (such as crystallization)
// The tree grew to an immense size.
b: INCREASE, EXPAND
// grows in wisdom
3: to develop from a parent source
// the book grew out of a series of lectures
4a: to pass into a condition : BECOME
// grew pale
b: to have an increasing influence
// habit grows on a person
c: to become increasingly acceptable or attractive
// didn't like it at first, but it grew on him"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grow

But the transitive form is interesting because transitive is defined as
(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transitive)

1: characterized by having or containing a direct object
// a transitive verb
2: being or relating to a relation with the property that if the relation holds between a first element and a second and between the second element and a third, it holds between the first and third elements
// equality is a transitive relation
3: of, relating to, or characterized by transition

Even though some people may not think it's correct, the transitive form of grow has been used for centuries in such as "grow the crops" and in the modern phrase "grow the economy."

I'm not an English or grammar teacher so I can't definitely state what is proper. But to me the intransitive form is more of an indirect result of the action (object). This is more what most people think of when they hear "think and grow rich." That is, they imagine that by thinking about getting rich they will become rich. The "grow" has the indirect object of "rich." By the action of thinking about riches, riches will indirectly be the result.

But in the the transitive form, grow is as much an action verb that we perform as directly as thinking about riches. Meaning not only do we have to think (visualize, internalize, emotionalize) how we see ourselves as rich, but we have to also perform the actions that actually start the growing process.

In "Think and Grow Rich," "grow" is the same form as "grow my garden" or "grow my business" and it implies doing what is necessary to grow whatever the object is, which in this case is riches.

The "think" part is important, but don't forget that "grow" involves doing.

And while "rich" is often understood to be money, it can be anything that makes life richer.