Affirmation · “The Subconscious Says Yes”
The Self-Confidence Formula
Build self-confidence and faith in attaining your definite purpose by signing, memorizing, and repeating aloud a fixed five-point creed, daily, with feeling.
Hill’s signed creed:
(1) I have the ability and will act persistently.
(2) Dominant thought becomes action — visualize my future self 30 min/day.
(3) Demand self-confidence 10 min/day.
(4) I’ve written my definite chief aim and will never quit.
(5) Success on truth, justice, and service to others. Sign it, memorize it, say it aloud daily at the mirror, with feeling.
What it is
Hill’s one fully scripted affirmation. Where the Six Steps use your own written statement, the Self-Confidence Formula is a fixed, five-point creed Hill supplies word-for-word in the Faith chapter, to be signed, memorized, and repeated aloud once a day until self-confidence and faith become habitual.
Its purpose is narrower and prior to riches: to manufacture the faith and self-reliance without which the other practices stall. Hill frames it as applied auto-suggestion — using deliberate, repeated, emotionalized self-statement to “develop faith” as a self-fulfilling state of mind.
The Method
The five points (Chapter 3, “Faith”), paraphrased with key verbatim openers:
- Ability + committed action. “I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my Definite Purpose in life; therefore I DEMAND of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment.” (A promise to act.)
- Dominant thought → physical action; daily visualization. Acknowledge that the dominating thoughts of the mind reproduce themselves in outward action; therefore concentrate thirty minutes daily on the person you intend to become, building a clear mental picture.
- Auto-suggestion for self-confidence. Acknowledge that any desire persistently held will seek expression through practical means; therefore devote ten minutes daily to demanding the development of self-confidence.
- Write the definite chief aim; never quit. “I have clearly written down a description of my DEFINITE CHIEF AIM in life,” and pledge never to stop trying until you have developed sufficient self-confidence for its attainment.
- Truth, justice, and service. “I fully realize that no wealth or position can long endure unless built upon truth and justice”; therefore engage in no transaction that does not benefit all whom it affects, and succeed by serving others. How to run it (Hill’s instructions):
- Sign your name to the formula.
- Commit it to memory and repeat it aloud once a day, “with full FAITH that it will gradually influence my THOUGHTS and ACTIONS so that I will become a self-reliant and successful person.”
- Repeat the points at a mirror, looking yourself in the eye and speaking with enthusiasm/feeling — not mechanically (the same emotionalizing rule as Auto-Suggestion). (Sourcing note: quoted phrases are from Hill’s Faith chapter, short fair-use quotation; the five points are summarized with verbatim openers, not reproduced in full.)
Source & Lineage
Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937), Chapter 3, “Faith: Visualization of, and Belief in Attainment of Desire.” It is the explicit application of the Auto-Suggestion principle to the prerequisite state of faith, and it folds the Definite Chief Aim (point 4) and ethical service (point 5) into one daily ritual. → (hill napoleon).
Common refinements
Reciting in flat self-disbelief. Said hollowly it can backfire; Hill demands feeling and enthusiasm. Pair it with small, real wins so the words have evidence.
- Skipping the signature / memorization. Hill treats signing and committing it to memory as part of the commitment, not decoration.
- Dropping the daily visualization (point 2) and self-confidence demand (point 3). The creed is the frame; those daily blocks are the work.
- Ignoring point 5. Hill builds ethics in deliberately — the practice is meant to be tied to honest service, not bare ambition.