Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success
Napoleon Hill, 2011
Why do some people spend years just letting life happen, while others know exactly what they want? Napoleon Hill, the author of “Think and Grow Rich”, wrote an unusual book about this in 1938: an imaginary conversation with the Devil, who confesses how he controls people. Here you will learn how fear and the habit of drifting keep a person captive, and which principles Hill offers against them.
Who it is for
For anyone who often starts something new and then quits, just lets life happen and feels that life is passing them by. And for anyone curious why habit turns out to be stronger than good intentions.
In my own pockets I carried the matches with which I lit my misfortunes.
A Teacher of Success Who Couldn't Afford a Christmas Tree
It is late autumn, 1923, in the city of Columbus, Ohio. Napoleon Hill is coming home after a long walk outside town. His three little sons are standing at the window, watching the neighbors' children decorate a Christmas tree. There will be no tree in their house: there is no money at all.
And yet Hill has spent many years studying why some people succeed and others do not. He knows seventeen principles of success. But for almost two months he cannot decide anything, and he admits that he does not know how to apply these principles to himself.
Later Hill, the author of the famous book “Think and Grow Rich”, wrote the strangest work of his life. It is an imaginary conversation with the Devil. In the book, Hill supposedly cracks the Devil's secret code and makes him confess how he controls people. Hill himself writes honestly: the Devil may be real, or he may be a figment of the imagination. What matters to Hill is something else: whether what was said in this conversation is useful to people. In essence, it is a literary device. Through the Devil's words, Hill explains why, in his view, people lose their way.
Hill's main idea is this. What ruins a person is more often not bad luck but the habit of living without a purpose and thinking other people's thoughts. Such a habit begins with fear and temptation. And repetition fixes it so firmly that getting out becomes very hard.
Next you will learn how this habit begins, how fear and temptation get into a person's thoughts, and why repetition turns into a trap. You will also learn about the principles Hill offers against it, and why failure can become a way out. Let's start with the trick the Devil in the book calls his cleverest.
The Cleverest Trick: Drifting
Until that autumn, Hill's life looked like a series of escapes. He was advertising manager at a university in Chicago, but after a year he grew sick of the job and left. Then he ran a candy company and left because of quarrels with his partners. He founded a school of advertising and abandoned it when America entered the First World War. He published a magazine that sold about half a million copies, and handed it over to his partners. He opened a school for salespeople, earned more than $30,000 in six months and once again walked away from the business. His friends decided he had lost his mind. Hill admits he agreed with them.
In the conversation, the Devil explains what happened. By his account, he flattered Hill's desire to express himself and played on his urges. Because of this, Hill dropped the main purpose of his life again and again. This is the trick the Devil calls his cleverest: the habit of drifting.
Who drifts? According to the Devil, everyone who does not think for themselves. Such a person accepts whatever life hands them and does not know what they want. They have plenty of thoughts in their head, but not one of them is their own. And habits are linked to one another: give up on one area of life, and soon the others stop mattering too. The Devil agrees that indifference and putting things off mean the same thing.
The habit of drifting begins in childhood. The Devil gives the example of parents who finish a child's sentences or do the child's homework. The child concludes: “My parents think I can't manage on my own. So why should I try?” At school, according to the Devil, children are taught to accept other people's thoughts, not to use their own. Then the young person takes the first job that comes along, just to earn a living.
The Devil gives a long list of signs that give away a person without a purpose. Such a person starts many things and finishes none of them. They avoid decisions, and if they are forced to make one, they change their mind at the first chance. A person with a purpose is the opposite: they have one main goal and many small ones that lead to it. When asked a question, they give a straight answer.
The main difference between the two, according to the Devil, is not in the talents they were born with, but in something both of them have: the right to use their own mind and think for themselves.
About the author
Napoleon Hill was an American writer, the author of “Think and Grow Rich”. For more than twenty-five years he studied the causes of success and failure; the industrialist Andrew Carnegie advised him to begin this work in 1908.
All books by this author: Napoleon Hill
Terms from the book
- Columbus
- Master Mind
- Carnegie
- Edison
- Ford
- Devil: The one Hill talks with in the book. It is a literary device: the author himself writes that the Devil may be a figment of his imagination. Through the Devil's confessions, Hill sets out his own views.
- Mellett: Don Mellett, a newspaper publisher in the city of Canton, Ohio, and Hill's business partner. He was shot dead in 1926 after articles about the ties between bootleggers and the police.
- West Virginia: A state in the east of the USA. Hill hid there with relatives after Mellett's murder.
- Hypnotic rhythm: An image from the book, not a scientific term. It is Hill's name for the force of repetition that makes a habit permanent.
- Fifth Avenue: One of the main streets of New York, known for its expensive shops and buildings.
- Mastery over self: The ability to be in control of yourself. In Hill's book it is the second of seven principles.
- Canton: A city in Ohio where Hill worked together with Mellett.
All terms
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