From Napoleon Hill's Wisdom, our YouTube channel · about 11 weeks left in 2026
Chain check: how many X's this week? Reply with the number, then draw your next 7 boxes.
This is the time of year when worry gets loud.
The holiday bills are on their way. The evenings are getting shorter. The news is full of AI and what it might do to people's jobs. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice keeps count: another year, nearly gone.
So let me start with some good news, from an actual study.
91.4%
Psychologists Lucas LaFreniere and Michelle Newman at Penn State worked with 29 people with generalized anxiety disorder, people who worry more than almost anyone. They had them write their worries down as they came, and then record, one by one, whether each worry actually happened.
91.4% of the worries never came true. For many of the participants, not a single one did.
Read that again the next time you're lying awake at 3 a.m.
Hill's six fears, with what we know now
Napoleon Hill wrote that most of our worries grow out of six basic fears: the fear of poverty, of criticism, of ill health, of losing someone's love, of old age, and of death. He listed them in 1937. Research has since put hard numbers on three of them.
Poverty. In 2013, researchers tested 464 sugarcane farmers in India twice: just before harvest, when money was tight, and just after, when it wasn't. The same farmers did worse on thinking tests before the harvest. Money worry doesn't only feel bad. It takes up room in your head that you need for good decisions.
Criticism. In a Cornell experiment, students walked into a room wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt. They guessed about half the people there would notice. The real number was about a quarter or less. People are thinking about you far less than you think.
Old age. A Yale team followed 660 people aged 50 and over. Those with a positive view of getting older lived 7.5 years longer on average, even after accounting for their health, income and loneliness. What you believe about aging may matter more than your birthday.
The two minute test
Answer yes or no. Two yes answers in one group means that fear is active in you.
Poverty
Have you been waiting for "the right time" to start something for so long that the waiting has become a habit?
Do you think and talk more about how things could fail than about how they could work?
Criticism
Have you kept an idea to yourself because you were afraid of being laughed at?
Do you agree with people to avoid an argument, before you've really thought about what they said?
Ill health
Do you often talk about symptoms and illnesses, yours or other people's?
Do you read about diseases and then watch yourself for signs of them?
Losing someone's love
Are you suspicious of people you love without real evidence?
Do you spend more than you can afford on others, hoping to be loved more?
Old age
Do you call yourself "too old" for something you'd secretly love to do?
Have you stopped starting new things because you think your best years are behind you?
Death
Do you think about the end of life more than about how to spend the rest of it?
Do your days lack a purpose that really absorbs you?
What to do this week
Take the test and find your top fear.
Start a worry log, the same tool the Penn State study used. Each time a worry shows up this week, write it down with the date. Four weeks from today, read the list and tick the ones that actually happened.
Make the decision that starves your top fear. Hill's answer to every fear was a decision, because he believed indecision is where fear grows. Poverty: write a plan for your money for the rest of this year. Criticism: say one honest opinion you've been holding back. Ill health: take anything real to a doctor, then stop rehearsing it. Losing love: stop keeping score. Old age: start one new thing, however small. Death: give one day this week to something that truly matters to you.
Add that decision to the sentence you read every night, and keep your chain going.
And if you want one decision that covers all six, Hill had it: nothing that life has to offer is worth the price of worry.
A question to carry this week
Which fear came out on top, and did it surprise you?
Reply and tell me. A fear is easier to face once you've written it down for someone else to read.
Talk soon,
P.S. Next week the clocks go back, first in Europe and a week later in the US. It's the stretch of the year when most plans quietly die. Next letter: why picturing your goal may have been holding you back, and the four line fix.