As I close the year 2015 and reflect back on the progress I’ve made on rezooming my career, I need to share with you a book I’ve read several times over these past 5 years that has made a huge impact on my journey. The book is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

If you haven’t heard of it nor read it you should put it on the short list of books to read in 2016. It is on John C. Maxwell’s A Lifetime “Must Read” Book List. It singlehandedly provided me with the framework and focus to rezoom my practice of law. It has 17 wonderful steps, you can use as guideposts and suggestions to navigate rezooming your career. This article will act as a teaser. It will cover only three of the seventeen points covered by Napoleon Hill in his bestseller. Hopefully it will entice you to read the rest of this important book, underwritten by Andrew Carnegie and originally published in 1937 yet still relevant today.

Point One: Definiteness of purpose

This is the first key Napoleon Hill discusses in his book. He admonishes everyone to have a definiteness of purpose. You don’t necessarily have to have a plan in place to reach your purpose but you definitely have to have a definite purpose in place in order to implement your plans fully. The plan can always be adjusted as you go and as your purpose unfolds. What is needed is purpose. If you have no definite purpose, Hill believes you have no heart or skin in the game. It is the definiteness of your purpose that makes you get up every morning and rezoom your career. The plan is just a means of implementing your purpose and means nothing if it precedes your clarity of purpose.

Point Two: Mastermind

I have spoken about this piece a few times over the years. Becoming a part of a mastermind group is the second key and arguably equally important to definiteness of purpose in Hill’s book. You must find people to work with in a mastermind group who will assist you in reestablishing yourself as an attorney. You cannot do it alone. If you think you can you are starting the process wrong.

These people do not need to be attorneys. They do need to be willing to hire you and/or recommend you to others. This faith and trust will help you get back in the saddle and rezoom your legal career. They provide you with invaluable, objective insight into what you are currently doing right/wrong. How they observe what you are doing and suggest course corrections can maintain focus on your definiteness of purpose.

Have a mastermind group of one, two or three people off whom you can bounce ideas. That group must be committed to each other for the long haul and joint success. Trust their observations and opinions and they must trust yours. You all need to be rowing the boat in the same direction. Differing fields of work within a mastermind often makes rowing together easier. The group must only know what each members definiteness of purpose is so they can help you focus toward achieve it.

Point Three: Applied Faith

This is always a tricky one which was even more so in 1937. We are now at least aware of, if not embracing, the idea that we can use intuition to guide ourselves in making decisions. Several successful business men of late (Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Steve Jobs) have acknowledged their belief in ‘following their gut’ which is another way of saying intuitive. Often you can think they are crazy if things go wrong. Yet you always learn more from those disasters than from easy successes.

To employ applied faith you only need to learn how to listen. Remember the last time things worked out for you? It seemed as if all good things just fell into place all at once. Each step you took made logical sense from the last. This was your intuitive guide helping you get there. You had faith and the rest came easy.

Hill said, “if you don’t believe you can do it, it can’t be done.” If you believe, you will easily find the path of least resistance for what you want or something even better. I say, I want this or something better. Five years ago, when I started rezooming my practice, I couldn’t have imagined the great things that were about to happen to me because I thought too small.

In 2016, if you are thinking of resuming your legal career, do yourself a big favor; buy and read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The book is 78 years old, yet as important today as it was then. It speaks to creating your own reality, being able to see what you want then believing you will find the means to do it.

You must know why you are rezooming, have a definite purpose first, then plan to reach that purpose. Get yourself in a mastermind group, connect with like-minded people who want to succeed and who will give you honest feedback. Finally, adapt applied faith to your purpose and mastermind. Understand you can be guided to do great things if you enable your intuitive side to speak.

All of this may sound a little woo woo to we pragmatic attorneys. However, if we do what it is we feel, following our purpose, getting colleague input and trusting our intuitive guidance, we will succeed. Now go out there and rezoom.