OUTWITTING THE DEVIL
Table of contents:
Chapter 1 - First Meeting with Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie, known as the Steel King, was the second richest man in the history of the world. He was the man who made the American steel industry flourish in the late 19th century.
There are millions of people in this world who have no idea, not even the slightest, about the causes of success or failure. Schools teach people to practice everything except the principles of success. They require young people to spend four to eight years accumulating abstract knowledge, but they do not teach them what to do with that knowledge.
I made it clear to Mr. Carnegie that I dreamed of going to law school, and in my mind I formed the idea of interviewing the most successful people, finding out their path to success, and writing the story for magazines.
Mr. Carnegie said: “It seems to me that this is a test for an ambitious young man like you, but ambition
is not enough for this task. The man who undertakes it must have courage and perseverance.
You should carefully analyze the thousands of people who are classed as “failures,” and by “failures” I mean those who have not yet reached the end of their lives, disappointed at not having achieved the goal they aspired to. It may sound contradictory, but you will learn how to succeed from their failures. They will teach you what not to do.
Experience has taught me that a man is nearing success when what he calls failures occurs, because it is this occasion that forces him to think. If he thinks rightly, and with perseverance, he will discover that what he calls failures is really only a sign that he must equip himself with a plan or a new purpose”.
Mr. Carnegie’s words reshaped my entire life and planted a burning purpose in my heart.
I studied 25,000 people who were classified as “failures” and more than 5,000 people who were classified as “successful”. When I found 17 reasons for success and 30 reasons for failure, I thought I had completed the task, but in fact that was my own wrong and subjective conclusion. It is just a framework and it needs “soul” to urge people to face difficulties, not avoid them.
I went through many different jobs. On November 11, 1918, I published The Golden Rule. Although I had no capital, the magazine grew rapidly and soon had a nationwide circulation of half a million copies each issue, making a profit of $3,519 at the end of the first year.
But I finally gave up The Golden Rule. Then I opened a sales training school. In less than six months I earned more than $30,000. I felt “hot-headed.” I was not happy. It became increasingly clear that no amount of money could make me happy.
It was the fall of 1923. I had been short of money many times before, but I had never been short of money to meet my personal needs. The experience stunned me. Within two months I was suffering from the worst of all human diseases: procrastination. I knew the 17 principles of success but I could not apply them.
One afternoon I suddenly felt that I wanted to go to the « open spaces » of the country to breathe the air and have time to think. I started walking, and when I had gone 7 or 8 miles I realized that I was stuck. Then a command in the form of a thought came to me: « Your lifelong mission is to complete the world’s first philosophy of personal success ».
I began to write. For almost 3 months I worked on the manuscript and completed it at the beginning of 1924.
In 1926 his friend, the journalist Donald Ring Mellett, was assassinated for exposing corruption in the police force. Napoleon was threatened with death and escaped by luck.
After a few months of such experiences, my nerves began to break down. I lost all courage. The ambition that had motivated me for so many years also left me. My reason was completely paralyzed.
Chapter 2 - Another World Opens Before My Eyes
In all my life, I have rarely had such confidence. It is a feeling that is difficult to describe to others. There are no words to describe it – only those who have experienced it can understand it.
But my patience has its limits. My list of acquaintances is exhausted and I have no more energy.
Napoleon Hill’s subconscious has mentioned an acquaintance as a potential source of investment, even if it is only someone who advertised in his magazine. You make an impression on everyone you meet, and everyone you meet makes an impression on you. You never know when one of your acquaintances may become a business partner. Your network is very powerful.
I sent a telegram addressed to Mr. Pelton of Meriden, Connecticut. When he arrived, I showed him the original manuscript of my philosophy and briefly explained its mission. He flipped through the manuscript for a few minutes, then looked up at the wall for a few seconds and said, “I will publish your books.”
Three months after Mr. Pelton came to see me in Philadelphia, a complete set of books was placed on the table in front of me and the income from the sale of the books began to meet all my daily needs. My students all over the world had the set in their hands.
The first royalties I received from the sale of the books were $850. When I opened the newly delivered envelope, my “other self” said to me, “Your only limitations are those you create yourself!”
I am not sure I really understand what “other self” is, but I know that those who find it and believe in it will never
fail completely.
Napoleon Hill’s work was published during the Great Depression and in fact, it helped millions of people find the hope and courage to live with the belief that they would find their own path to success. I believe that we can see many parallels between his time and ours today. These were stressful times and we had to find our inner strength. With the current economic uncertainty, people are choosing – or being forced to choose – to find new paths for themselves and their families and many have achieved great success. They will be the main characters in the great success stories that we will learn about in the next few years. Will you be a part of those stories or just a side character?
In every misfortune there is a blessing
I have made another discovery, which is the result of the awakening of my “other self”, that every problem, no matter how difficult, has a solution. And I have learned one thing: A person can overcome difficulties that seem insurmountable if they forget about them for a while and help those who are facing greater difficulties.
The value of Giving before Receiving
I am sure that all our efforts to help those in need will be rewarded. The reward may not always come from the people we directly help, but it will come, one way or another.
Faith is the starting point of all great successes
For many years, I have had the habit of “taking inventory” of myself once a year, with the aim of seeing how many weaknesses I need to overcome or eliminate and determining what progress I need to make during the coming year.
Chapter 3 - Strange Interview with the Devil
The Interview with the Devil may have occurred as Napoleon Hill sat at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. Did it really happen? For him it did, creating the framework for how he lived his life and sharing his discoveries with us, his students. Remember what he said earlier when he discovered that “Every great leader I have ever studied was surrounded by difficulties and temporary setbacks before they “reached the finish line.”
In his writings, he also describes how great leaders surrounded themselves with master minds. They overcame their inner struggles with adversity and then used the power of their master minds to achieve success. Consider how you could create a master mind group—a team—to help you overcome adversity and help you achieve success.
The Devil says, “One of the most clever devices for controlling the human mind is fear… fear of poverty, fear of criticism, fear of illness, fear of loss of love, fear of old age, and fear of death.”
• H: Which of the six fears is most beneficial to you?
• D: The first and last fear – fear of poverty and fear of death! At one time or another in life, I grip everyone with one or both of these fears. I plant these fears so deeply in people’s minds that they believe they are their own creation. I do this by making them believe that I am just standing behind the door to the next life, waiting to inflict eternal punishment upon them after they die. Of course, I cannot punish anyone unless there are fears in their minds – and fear of unreal things as well as real things is useful to me. Every fear expands the space I occupy in people’s minds.
• H: Who is your greatest enemy on Earth?
• : All those who inspire people to think and act proactively are my enemies. They are people like Socrates, Confucius, Voltaire, Emerson, Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln. And you have no nothing good to me.
• H: Is it true that you take advantage of the rich?
• : As I have told you, poverty is always my best friend because it makes people unable to think independently and instills fear in people’s minds. Some rich people support my goals, others harm me, depending on how they use their wealth. For example, the Rockefeller fortune is one of my worst enemies.
Chapter 4 - Letting Go with the Devil
• H: Describe all the ways you use to induce people to indulge. Give me a precise definition of the word and tell me exactly what you mean by it.
• D: I can best define the word “indulgence” by saying that those who think for themselves never indulge, and those who think little or not at all for themselves are the easiest to indulge. They are lazy thinkers who do not use their brains. That is why I can control their thoughts and plant my own thoughts in their minds.
• H: Tell me about the most common habits that help you control people’s minds.
• D: This is one of my most powerful tricks: Penetrating people’s minds through thoughts that they think are their own. The most useful are fear, superstition, avarice, greed, lust, revenge, anger, vanity, and sloth. Through one or more of these qualities, any mind can be penetrated at any age, but the best results are obtained when the mind is young, before its owner has learned to close any of these nine doors. Then the habits can be established that keep these doors closed forever.
The Devil says, “I make people let me rule their minds because they are too lazy and indifferent to think for themselves.”
Laziness + indifference = Indecision = Drifting
This formula by Napoleon Hill describes a drifter accurately. Since I have been a sloucher for most of my life, it is very familiar to me. I like to use the excuse that I work best under pressure – but it’s really just an excuse for why I always hesitate.
Chapter 5 - The Devil Continues to Confess
• H: Tell me more about your other tricks to make people slack in life.
• D: One of my most effective tricks is failure! Most people start slacking off as soon as they are in trouble, and less than one in ten continues to try after failing two or three times.
• H: So your job is to make people fail whenever possible?
• D: You are right. Failure breaks the spirit, closes the imagination, and drives away the definiteness of human purpose.
Without these qualities, no one can achieve lasting success in any undertaking. The world has produced thousands of inventors with abilities far superior to the late Thomas A. Edison. But we never know their names, while Edison’s name will live on forever because he turned failure into a stepping stone to success while others used it as an excuse to justify their lack of success.
Chapter 6 - Hypnotic Rhythm
• H: What mystical law did you use to permanently control the human body, even before you controlled their minds? The whole world would like to know more about this law and how it works.
• D: It will be difficult to explain to you what that law is, but you can call it “hypnotic rhythm”. It is the law that will hypnotize many people.
• H: Go on, but your story must be limited to simple illustrations and within the scope of my own experience and knowledge of natural laws.
• D: Very well, I will do my best. Of course you know that nature maintains a perfect balance between all elements and energies in the universe.
You can see that the stars and planets move with perfect precision, each planet or star keeping its place in space. You can see that the seasons come and go with perfect regularity. You can see that an oak tree grows from an acorn and a pine tree grows from the seed of its ancestors. An acorn never produces a pine tree and a pine seed cannot grow into an oak tree.
These are simple things that everyone can understand, but what people do not see is the universal law by which nature maintains its perfect balance throughout the vast universe.
You humans grasped a fragmentary idea of this great universal law when Newton discovered that it was the same law that held the Earth in place and caused all matter to be drawn to the center of the Earth. He called it the Law of Gravitation.
But he did not go far enough in his study of this law. If he had, he would have discovered that the very law that holds your Earth in place and maintains perfect balance throughout the four seasons of the year – which includes all matter and all energy – is the spider’s web that I weave to trap and control the human mind.
• H: Which fear of man is most helpful to your purpose?
• D: The fear of death.
• H: Why is the fear of death your favorite weapon?
• D: Because no one knows and by the very nature of the universal law – no one can prove with certainty what happens when people die. It is this uncertainty that makes people panic.
Those who allow fear to invade their minds – any fear – neglect to use their minds and begin to drift. They will eventually drift into a hypnotic spiral from which they will never escape.
Instead of spending their time in fear, if they act in the opposite way, they will have everything they want in the material world and save themselves from me after they die.
• H: Now let us return to the techniques you use to bind your victims to the habit of drifting. What is the first step a drifter must take to break that habit?
• D: A burning desire to break that habit! Of course you know that no one can be hypnotized by another unless his will is hypnotized. The will can affect a general indifference to life, such as lack of ambition, fear, lack of definite goals, and many other forms. Remember this: With everything you have, either use it or lose it.
• H: You remind me that I must make you say more about yourself. Where else do you operate besides the human mind?
• : I operate wherever there is something for me to control and seize. I have told you that I am the negative pole of all material electrons.
• I am the explosion of lightning.
• I am the pain in sickness and physical pain.
• I am the unseen general in war.
• I am the representative of hunger and poverty.
• I am the inspirer of sensual desires.
• I am the father of jealousy, envy, and greed.
• I am the mastermind of all fear.
• I am the genius who can turn man’s scientific achievements into instruments of death.
• I am the destroyer of harmony in all human relationships.
• I am the enemy of justice.
• I am the force that motivates all immoral behavior.
• I am the one who drives the Good into a corner.
• I am anxiety, suspense, superstition, and madness.
• I am the destroyer of faith and hope.
• I am the inspirer of negative rumors and scandals.
• I am the one who suppresses independent and self-reliant thinking.
• In short, I am the creator of all human suffering, the mastermind of all disappointments and frustrationsH
Chapter 7 - The Seed of Fear
• H: Does each individual have his own rhythm of thinking?
• D: Yes. And that is the biggest difference between individuals. The person who thinks about power, success, wealth will create a rhythm that attracts those desirable things. The person who thinks only about suffering, failure, mistakes, destruction and poverty will attract those undesirable influences. This explains why success and failure are both the result of habits. Habits create a rhythm of thinking for a person and that rhythm attracts the goals in his superior thoughts.
• H: Hypnotic rhythm is like a magnet that attracts things like it. Is that true?
• : Yes. That is why poor people often gather together in a community. That explains the saying “Birds of a feather flock together”. It also explains why people who start out successful in any endeavor find that success multiplying without much effort.
All successful people use hypnotic rhythm, either consciously or unconsciously, by expecting and demanding success. The demand becomes a habit, the hypnotic rhythm takes over the habit and the law of attraction synchronizes it into its physical equivalent.
Chapter 8 - Defining Goals
• H: Are definite goals something that one is born with or something that one has to strive for?
• : As I told you before, everyone is born with the privilege of definiteness, but 98% of people have lost that privilege because they have put it aside. The privilege of definiteness can only be maintained by using it as a means by which one will act in all areas of life.
A person, as soon as he hesitates, hesitates or is undecided about anything, he immediately falls under my control.
The abstract and spiritual aspect of the author’s philosophy is shown in the Devil’s reactions. What he calls “definiteness” is now commonly known as “purpose” or “goal-oriented” and “goal-oriented”.
“Every habit, except the habit of loving definiteness, can lead to the habit of drifting”
Chapter 9 - Education and Religion
“A life filled with peace, contentment, and happiness always rejects everything it desires.”
How many of us are truly satisfied with our lives? In a world where so many people are trying to “keep up with their neighbors,” is there anything we can all learn from this? Is there anything you need to eliminate in your life? Make a commitment to restrain yourself when you feel angry… and remember the words of the Devil: “Anyone who accepts the discomfort caused by things he does not want to cause is indecisive. He is a drifter.”
• H: Name some common forms of evil.
• D: Overeating is also an evil because it leads to illness and sadness. Overindulgence in sex is also an evil because it breaks down the willpower of a person and leads to the habit of drifting.
Allowing one’s mind to be dominated by negative thoughts of envy, greed, fear, hatred, anger, pride, self-pity or discouragement is a sin because it leads to the habit of self-indulgence.
Cheating, lying, stealing are sins because these habits destroy one’s self-respect, defeat one’s conscience and make one miserable.
To remain ignorant is a sin because it leads to poverty and lack of independence.
To accept anything from life that one does not want is a sin because it is an expression of neglecting the use of one’s mind.
• H: If one just lets life go on without a definite purpose, plan or goal, is it a sin?
• D: Yes, because this habit leads to poverty and destroys the privilege of self-determination. It also takes away the privilege of using one’s mind as a medium to communicate with Infinite Intelligence.
• H: Of all evils, which is the most common and destructive?
• : Fear and ignorance.
Chapter 10 - Self-Discipline
“He who cannot control himself will never control others.”
How true this is. Think of our political leaders who have lost their civility because they could not control their behavior. How can we trust them to control us?
• H: Where should one begin if one wants to control oneself?
• D: Begin by controlling the three desires that have the greatest influence on whether one has self-discipline or not. These three desires are (1) the desire for food and drink, (2) the desire for sex, and (3) the desire to express one’s own opinions freely.
• H: Are there any other desires that one needs to control?
• D: Yes, there are many, but first of all, one must control the three desires. Once a person has mastered these three desires, he will develop enough self-discipline to control the less important desires easily.
• H: But these are instinctive human desires. If we want to be healthy and happy, we must satisfy these three desires.
• : Obviously, these are instinctive human desires, but they are also very dangerous because people who do not master themselves will fall into them. Self-control will control these desires and help people to “feed” them what they need and prevent them from “feeding” what they do not need.
Chapter 11 - Learning from Adversity
• H: Does failure benefit a person?
• D: Yes. In fact, learning from adversity is the third of the seven principles we have discussed. But few people know that every adversity carries within it the seed of an equivalent benefit. Even fewer know the difference between temporary defeat and failure. If most people knew this, we would be deprived of one of the most powerful weapons for controlling people.
• H: What role does failure play in helping a person break the grip of the hypnotic rhythm after his mind has been bound by it?
• D: Failure creates a climax from which a person has the privilege of clearing his mind of fear and making a fresh start in a different direction. Failure clearly proves that something is wrong with a person’s goal or plan for achieving it.
Failure is a dead end in the habitual path that a person has been following, and when he reaches it, he is forced to leave that path and continue on another path, thus creating a new rhythm.
But failure does more than that. It gives people the opportunity to test themselves to see how strong their willpower is. Failure also forces people to learn many truths that they would otherwise never have discovered. Failure also often makes people understand the power of self-discipline, without which no one can turn back once they have fallen victim to the hypnotic rhythm.
Study the lives of all those who have achieved outstanding success in any field and observe and learn whether their success is usually in exact proportion to the experiences of failure before their success.
• H: What is the greatest benefit that people receive through adversity?
• D: The greatest benefit of adversity is that it can – and often does – force a person to change his thinking habits, and thus it can also disrupt and readjust the power of the hypnotic rhythm.
• H: What benefit does a person get from being deprived of material possessions – such as money?
• : The loss of material possessions can teach a person many necessary lessons, but nothing is more important than the fact that a person has no control over anything and cannot be sure that he will be able to use anything forever except the power of his own mind.
Chapter 12 - Environment, Time, Harmony and Care
• H: What is the most important part of a person’s environment?
• D: The most important part of a person’s environment is created by his contact with other people. Everyone absorbs and inherits, consciously or unconsciously, the thinking habits of those with whom he frequently interacts.
• H: Do you mean that constant contact with a person who has negative thinking habits will cause one to form negative thinking habits?
• D: Yes, the law of hypnotic rhythm forces a person to form thinking habits that are in harmony with the dominant influences in his environment, especially that part of the environment created by his own contact with other minds.
• H: That is to say, the choice of friends, partners or associates is very important and we must pay great attention to it, right?
• D: Yes, it is as important to choose the people with whom you associate as it is to choose the food for your body, and you should aim to associate with people whose dominant mindset is positive, friendly, and harmonious.
• H: What kind of friends and associates have the greatest influence on a person?
• D: Your spouse at home and your business associates. Then come your close friends and acquaintances. Casual acquaintances and strangers have the least influence on a person.
• H: What is wisdom?
• D: Wisdom is the ability to align yourself with the laws of nature so that you can see them serving you, and the ability to connect yourself with others so that they will cooperate harmoniously with you so that life will give you everything you ask for.
• H: Does time change and adjust the values of knowledge?
• D: Yes, time changes and adjusts all values. The knowledge that is correct today may become useless and useless tomorrow because time has rearranged facts and values. Time changes all human relationships, for better or worse, depending on the way people relate themselves to others.
In the realm of thinking, there is a right time to sow the seeds of thought and there is also a right time to harvest those thoughts, just as when you sow any seed of a plant at one time and harvest it at another time on Earth. If you do not calculate the exact time between sowing and harvesting, nature will change or take over the fruits of that sowing.
• H: We begin to understand why successful business leaders are so careful in choosing their business partners. Successful people in any field usually create their own environment by surrounding themselves with successful people who think and act successfully. Is that what you mean?
• D: Exactly. Notice and learn that all successful people have harmonious relationships with their business partners. Another characteristic of successful people is that they tend to have definite goals and require their partners to have definite goals. Once you understand these two things, you will understand the biggest difference between Henry Ford and a day laborer.
• H: Now tell me about the last principle.
• D: The last principle is caution. After self-indulgence, the most dangerous trait in man is carelessness.
I hope what Napoleon Hill wrote will give you hope, courage and most importantly, definite goals for your life… Good luck!