Napoleon Hill wrote this book in 1938, just after publication of his all-time bestseller, Think and Grow Rich. This powerful tale has never been published, considered too controversial by his family and friends.

Using his legendary ability to get to the root of human potential, Napoleon Hill digs deep to identify the greatest obstacles we face in reaching personal goals: fear, procrastination, anger, and jealousy, as tools of the Devil. These hidden methods of control can lead us to ruin, and Hill reveals the seven principles of good that will allow us to triumph over them and succeed.

The book starts out with Napoleon Hill giving an abridged biography detailing his meeting with Andrew Carnegie, his various defeats, and how he overcame them. This abridged biography is to set the stage for his interview with the Devil. The rest of the book is written in a question and answer formate, with Hill as the interviewer and the Devil as the reluctant subject. Through out the book Hill forces the Prince of Darkness to reveal how he holds countless people in bondage to fear, superstition, greed, avarice, lust, revenge, anger, vanity, and laziness. He then forces the Devil to reveal the seven principles that can help overcome the before mentioned obstacles. These principles will not be revealed here, because I don’t want to deprive anyone of the pleasure of reading this book for themselves.

Beginning with chapter three and continuing to the end of the book, Napoleon Hill conducted an interview or discussion with the Devil. In this interview, he learned how the devil is able to control so many people. More importantly, he learned what to do to stay out of the devil’s control and lead a successful life.

Napoleon interviews the Devil in full dialog. The Devil says he exists as the “negative part of the atom”. This means he has to exist and is part of the human condition. Regardless of the religious connotations here, one thing is for certain – with success comes failure and failure success. Understanding that positive and negative exists in every facet of life is empowering once you free your mind from limitation and accept it as part of the ground rules for living. Being conscious of this fact is the first step to master it. In rudimentary terms, you cannot play football with a hockey stick. You have to understand the ground rules.

The Devil reveals that he controls negative thought while GOD controls positive thought. In his own words – “One of my cleverest devices for mind control is fear, the fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death.” Remember – this book was written in the early 1930’s. Do any of these fears sound familiar? These fears fall right into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which are; physiological, safety, love/belonging, Esteem and Self-actualization. The Devil’s fears hammer right at the foundation of these needs.

The greatest trick of the devil plays is convincing people he does not exit. The clever move here is that school teachers, religious leaders and parents use fear as a tool to educate about the devil. The problem is that this inhibits accurate thinking. The devil uses this to his advantage because fear is what paralyzes people into the habit of drifting. The greatest of all fears implanted into children is the fear of “hell”.

Devil – “Accurate thought is the death of me……” Thus we can combat drifting with accurate thought.

Paraphrasing the Devil, “I cause people to allow me to do their thinking for them because they are too lazy and too indifferent to think for themselves.” “Laziness + Indifference = Procrastination = Drifting”
The good news is that there is a prescription to avoid all of this. In the book, Hill discussed seven principles for gaining freedom from the devil. The principles begin with definiteness of purpose. It is important to know what your intent is and then start controlling your actions to meet this intent. This means having a plan as opposed to walking around aimlessly. Surround yourself with good people who can help you control your environment. As Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Also, everything takes time to develop, you must wait patiently and keep putting the work in.

In the book, Hill discussed seven principles for gaining freedom from the devil. These principles are:
1. Definiteness of purpose
2. Mastery over self
3. Learning from adversity
4. Controlling environmental influence
5. Time
6. Harmony
7. Caution

The point of the book is self reflection and improvement. If you approach this work with that in mind then I believe you are in a position to glean some useful inspiration and information from this intriguing work. This book is a must read and will open your eyes. The key is to control your thoughts and your habits. Be aware of what is happening and stop sleep walking through life. It’s good to celebrate like Homer Simpson every once in a while but make it a habit and life falls apart.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!

Think and Grow Rich was written in 1937 by Napoleon Hill, promoted as a personal development and self-improvement book. Hill writes that he was inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and later-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. While the book’s title and much of the text concerns increased income, the author insists that the philosophy taught in the book can help people succeed in any line of work, to do and be anything they can imagine. First published during the Great Depression, at the time of Hill’s death in 1970, Think and Grow Rich had sold more than 20 million copies, and by 2015 over 100 million copies had been sold worldwide. It remains the biggest seller of Napoleon Hill’s books. BusinessWeek magazine’s Best-Seller List ranked it the sixth best-selling paperback business book 70 years after it was published.Think and Grow Rich is listed in John C. Maxwell’s A Lifetime “Must Read” Books List.

Hill studied their habits and evolved 16 “laws” to be applied to achieve success. Think and Grow Rich condenses them, providing the reader with 13 principles in the form of a “Philosophy of Achievement”. Mark Hansen has said time has shown that two of the laws/principles are most important: 1) The MasterMind principle/process and 2) “Know very clearly where you want to go.”

The book asserts that desire, faith and persistence can propel one to great heights if one can suppress negative thoughts and focus on long-term goals.

The 13 “steps” listed in the book are:

Step 1: Desire
After the first chapter, I felt some pretty serious trepidation about the remainder of this book, so I read on with some caution, fearing that the first step in this path to success was merely to want something. Not so. Hill basically says that one should use deep desire as a goal. Is there a job you want? An amount of money you want? Define that goal clearly, then set down a specific plan to get there. In a nutshell, this isn’t really different than many of the financial planning topics I talk about on The Simple Dollar.

Step 2: Faith
By faith, Hill isn’t really referring to belief in a higher power, but instead faith that the future holds better things for you – a truly confident outlook. If you take to heart the perspective that the future holds greater things for you – or any other greater belief that you hold – then your future has a greater likelihood of holding these things. Why? They’re consistently on your mind – thus you pay more attention to the factors that will make them happen.

Step 3: Autosuggestion
Although the title of this chapter screams “scam” to me, I was surprised to find that I actually already use most of the ideas within. Basically, the idea is that if you keep repeating your plan for success to yourself, it has a greater chance of actually coming true. Why? Again, embedding a thought deeply within yourself – and repetition does the trick – increases the chance that the thought will come up at the right time when you need it. Think of it as cramming for a college exam – you study a ton hoping that the right answer will come up when you need it.

Step 4: Specialized Knowledge
Guess what? Getting an education is important, whether it’s a formal education at an institute of higher learning or merely an education at the hands of a mentor. I tend to find that finding a mentor is often really useful for figuring out exactly how to succeed in a certain area, even if you do have a strong formal education.

Step 5: Imagination
Another key element is imagination, or the ability to take a vague idea and transform it into something concrete. I think that, for many, this is one of the key stumbling blocks on their path to success. They see the goal, they see where they are at now, but they lack the imagination to construct the path between here and there. How can you do it? Break it down. Just focus on figuring out the next step, and then the step after that and the one after that…

Step 6: Organized Planning
This chapter is a large mishmash of various ideas on how you can effectively “plan” to be successful – in other words, put other pieces into place beyond just thinking about it that will lead to success. First and foremost, one should surround themselves with a team of support – people who have both knowledge of how to go down the path you want to go, but also care about helping you. Second, write a killer resume that will get you the job you need to start building towards success – Hill even recommends internships, though the language to describe it doesn’t really seem to have existed when this book was written. Third, step up to the plate often and regularly and get the job done well. Finally, practice the traits of leadership, of which Hill lists an abundance. This was a very strong chapter, one that did quite a bit to overcome the slight trepidation that I felt about many of the other chapters. I felt this chapter was key to the whole book, a reminder that in the end, your dreams do take hard work (though a good mindset helps a great deal).

Step 7: Decision
When it comes time to make decisions, make them. Don’t defer to others and don’t delay the decision. This is perhaps the biggest part of becoming a leader and a person that people will depend on and follow. It’s fine to gather information, but when the time comes, be decisive: come up with a firm decision and stick with it.

Step 8: Persistence
Persistence means that you know you’re following the right path for you and that you won’t allow a few mis-steps or stumbles along the way keep you from achieving your goal. Many people give up the first time they’re dealt a blow, but sit down sometime and read a biography of a great leader and see how many times they were knocked down – and how viciously it happens. I recently read a great biography of Winston Churchill and I was actually stunned how true this was in his life – he had a lot of missteps and at least one complete collapse (where he basically had to start again from square one) during his political career, but he was persistent about it and eventually wound up as Prime Minister. Don’t let some bumps in the road keep you from following the path, even if they seem like huge stumbling blocks that you are going to have incredible difficulty surpassing.

Step 9: Power of the Master Mind
The title of this chapter set off warning bells, but it actually just refers to being able to pick the minds of others for ideas, and often sharing them in fair exchange. You remember the suggestion for surrounding yourself with people who can support you? This group should include as many smart people that you know, especially ones that you trust well enough to bounce ideas off of. Basically, find the smartest people in your life that you trust, and utilize them to help you think through your plans.

Step 10: The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
This chapter was perhaps the vaguest in the book; it advises tapping into your sex drive in order to drive yourself to further success. The book offers several tips on how to do this, but I generally feel like many of those would lead to frustration for many people rather than success. For me, the love and support of a caring partner is reallly the best spur to success that you can really have, regardless of the details of one’s sex life.

Step 11: The Subconscious Mind
Whenever you think a negative thought about your dreams, immediately and forcefully remind yourself that not only is such a thought a waste of time, it actually just pulls the dream out of your grasp. Instead, make an effort to think in positive ways about your plan, slowly training your mind to not pull up negative thoughts about achieving what you want to achieve.

Step 12: The Brain
Although the terminology is as fuzzy as can be here, the basic idea is that most people send a lot of nonverbal cues about what they’re thinking, and putting extra effort into trying to pick up on those cues can pay enormous dividends. I will say that quite often I have a terrible time with nonverbal cues that others give me – perhaps that’s why I enjoy blogging so much, because I don’t really have to worry too much about nonverbal cues.

Step 13: The Sixth Sense
Again, buried under a lot of New Age-esque terminology is a really simple idea: meditate. Simply sit back, close your eyes, and let thoughts slip away. Once your mind is empty, the chapter gives a number of things to think about, but I often find that some of my best ideas come from the moments when I really do let all of my thoughts completely slip away from me – the good ideas just appear.

“Think and Grow Rich” was a great read and packed full of powerful content, but it is not without its flaws. Hill does a fantastic job of writing in a style that is easy to read and accessible to almost any reader, while still thoroughly examining and explaining the topic at hand. There are frequent examples and anecdotes throughout each chapter that provide qualitative evidence of the importance of each lesson, as well as illustrating how to go about applying that lesson to your life.

Considering the fact that this self-improvement masterpiece is still widely read more than 75 years since its initial publication, you know that the information to be gained from its message is valuable. If you read, study, and apply the 13 lessons to be learned from its pages, you will find it much easier to build success in any part of your life.

Top 100 books to read if you wanna become rich!