Title Outwitting the Devil

Author Napoleon Hill

Year Published 2011 (written in 1938)

Kind of Book Mindset/Self-help

How strongly I recommend it 8/10 

My Impressions This book was way ahead of its time. It was written in the 1930s but not released until 2011 because of its diabolical undertone. The book is written as a dialogue between a man and the devil. The devil is fear personified. Throughout the conversation the man begins to understand who fear is and how he holds most people back. The book helped me realize that a lot of the things that hold me back are not out in the world, but rather self imposed.

Date Read Sep 2019

Practical Takeaways

  • Be happy

  • Help others to find happiness

  • (to achieve abundance mindset) wean yourself away from the inferiority complex you've developed

  • (to achieve abundance mindset)Buy yourself nice/expensive things

  • (to achieve abundance mindset)Get your mind entirely off all thoughts of limitation

  • (to achieve abundance mindset) Conduct yourself as if you had all the money you could want in your pockets

  • (to achieve abundance mindset) Keep doubt and fear and worry, and all thoughts of limitation, entirely out of your mind

  • (to achieve abundance mindset) forget your difficulties for a time and help others who have greater problems

  • Give before trying to get

  • (to achieve abundance mindset) Get rid of envy

  • Pray not for more of this world's goods and greater blessings, but to be worthy of that which you already have

  • First change the nature of your own beliefs

  • Don't confuse the word 'belief' with the word 'wish'

  • Be careful what you set your heart on, (for it surely shall be yours)

  • Pray

  • Take a personal inventory of yourself once a year. Determine how many of your weaknesses you have bridged or eliminated, and ascertain what progress, if any, you have made

  • (Equation for person success)

Combine your passion with your talent and then seek the right association and take the right action. Then combine all those components with a strong faith in yourself and your mission.

  • Think and act on your own initiative

  • Break any habits that weakens your will-power to other habits (eg. Smoking, drinking, over indulgence in sex, etc.)

  • Don't smoke

  • Don't over indulge in sex

  • Know what you want from life

  • Don't just accept whatever life gives you (career, friends, etc.). Go out and get the things you want

  • Take aim

  • Have purpose

  • Teach your children to think for themselves

  • Don't drift/procrastinate

  • Complete what you begin

  • Only have opinions on what you have knowledge of

  • Cooperate with those around you

  • Learn from your mistakes

  • Be open-minded

  • Don't be a mooch

  • Only criticize something if you have a solution to offer

  • Don't avoid reaching decisions

  • Exercise

  • Don't be a glutton

  • Admit when you don't know the answer

  • Don't talk badly about people behind their backs

  • Have a major goal in life towards which you're always working

  • Extend many favors to others, but accept favors sparingly or not at all

  • Never offer an alibi for your shortcomings

  • Don't blame others for your mistakes

  • Inspire those who come in contact with you

  • Have a mind of your own

  • Wake up and give some form of service that is useful to as many people as possible

  • Do life on your own terms

  • Do your own thinking on all occasions

  • Decide definitely what you want from life

  • Create a plan for attaining what you want

  • Be willing to sacrifice everything else to attain what you want

  • Budget your time so that none is wasted

  • Analyze temporary defeat

  • Do not beg when you pray. Demand what you want and insist upon getting exactly that, with no substitutions

  • Never accept from life anything you do not want

  • Render useful service equivalent to the value of all material things you demand in life, and render the service first//give others whatever amount of value you want back from them

  • Be careful what your thoughts dwell upon

  • Be definite in everything you do

  • Form the habit of reaching definite decisions on all subjects

  • Use it (or lose it)

  • Combine your mind with other minds

  • Master yourself

  • Learn from adversity

  • Don't worry about your plan being perfect, just put it into continuous action in pursuit of a definite purpose

  • Persevere

  • Move with definiteness

  • Force children to seek and gain knowledge firsthand

  • First see to your duty to yourself to live a full and happy life. Then, if you have time and energy assume responsibility for helping others

  • Don't complain unless you are prepared to offer a practical remedy with which it can be corrected

  • Teach students how to budget and use time

  • Have your students teach you

  • Reach decisions promptly and change them, if at all, slowly and with reluctance, and never without a definite reason

  • Don't have opinions unless they are formed from facts or beliefs which may be reasonably accepted as facts

  • Don't forbid (cigarettes, alcohol, sex) from children. Just explain them

  • Don't believe something just because your parent, religious instructor, or anyone for that matter says so

  • Master your lack of self-discipline for food, sex, and expressing loosely organized opinions

  • Don't express loosely organized opinions

  • Master your desire for sex to serve you

  • Don't express uninvited opinions

  • Don't mistake temporary defeat with failure

  • Be your brother's keeper

  • Make sure everyone is benefiting in whatever relationship you're in

  • Select your close associates with great care

  • Chose your intimate associations with as much care as you chose the food you eat

  • Be careful of all forces which inspire thought

  • Choose an environment which inspires positive thought

  • Remove every influence from your environment which even remotely tends to develop negative thought-habits

  • Choose your friends (don't just choose whoever falls in your lap)

  • Choose you job (don't just do whatever falls in your lap)

  • Choose you partner (don't just choose whoever falls in your lap)

  • Carefully think through you plans before you begin them

  • Have definite policies

  • Have definite plans

  • Have definite objectives

  • Make your first duty to yourself. Then towards others (The first duty of every human being is to himself. Every person owes himself the duty of finding how to live a full and happy life. Beyond this, if one has time and energy not needed in the fulfillment of his own desires, one may assume responsibility for helping others. Pg162)

Big Ideas

  • A negative mind-set and self-doubt can be the primary obstacles to success.

  • The best way to find happiness is through helping others find it

  • Fear is a trap that we fall into

  • The only limitations we have are the ones which we set in our own mind

  • Every adversity contains within it an advantage or equal weight

  • People who don't know what they want from life drift around and go nowhere

  • You attract into your life what your mind dwells on

  • There is no such think as luck in the laws of nature

  • Hesitation, procrastination, and being indefinite about something lead people to live and fear and drift through life

  • School doesn't teach children how to think for themselves

  • We learn more about how to succeed from failures than from so-called successes

  • When living in an abundant mindset, scarcity still follows you around waiting for its chance to take over

  • Abundance and poverty are contagious (like physical illnesses)

  • 98% of people live in Scarcity mindset

  • Fear (ie. Scarcity mindset) impedes our ability to think and reason clearly

  • Love impedes our ability to think and reason clearly

  • 6 most common fears

    1.Poverty

    2.Criticism

    3.Ill health

    4.Loss of love

    5.Old age

    6.Death

  • One Bad habit leads to more bad habits

  • Creating one good habit will lead to more good habits

  • Time is our greatest asset

  • Luck has nothing to do with one's circumstances

  • Negative thinking/complaining/pessimism is addicting and pleasurable in a way

  • Children pick-up fear through absorbing their parent's fear

  • "Ignorance and fear are the only enemies from which men need salvation"

  • If people spent as much time working as they did pursuing sex they would never be in poverty

  • Living just beyond your comfort zones makes people more compassionate

  • Living just beyond your comfort zone leads to experiencing Adversity

  • Experiencing adversity leads to Humility

  • Humility leads to Compassion

  • Most important relationships in terms of their influence over you

    1.Marriage partner

    2.Business associate

    3.Close friends

  • All negative desires are nothing but frustrations of positive desires

  • The majority of people who acquire wisdom do so after they have passed the age of forty