- The Secret to Freedom and Success
- “FEAR is the tool of a man-made devil. Self-confident faith in one's self is both the man-made weapon which defeats this devil and the man-made tool which builds a triumphant life. And it is more than that. It is a link to the irresistible forces of the universe which stand behind a man who does not believe in failure and defeat as being anything but temporary experiences.” - Napoleon Hill
- Foreword
- Your only limitations are self-imposed.
- Chapter 1: My first meeting with Andrew Carnegie
- Most real failures are due to limitations which men set up in their own minds. If they had the courage to go one step further, they would discover the error.
- Indecision is one of the worst human ailments.
- You will find happiness only by helping others find it.
- Fear is a self generating morass.
- In order to be wealthy you need to think wealthy.
- “If you want to be a success, you use first dress the part.” - Don Green
- Two entities occupy your body. One driven by fear, and int driven by faith.
- Keep the doors of your mind tightly closed against all thoughts which seek to limit you in any manner whatsoever, and you will be safe.
- “Do not permit yourself to worry about the money you will need for your immediate expenses. That will come your way you by the time you must have it.”
- Chapter 2: A new world is revealed to me
- Your only limitation is the one which you set up in your own mind.
- With every experience of temporary defeat, and every failure and every form of adversity, the seed of an equivalent benefit.
- “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and got everything you gain, you lose something else.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The whole of what we know is a system of compensations. Every defect in one manner is made up in another. Every suffering is rewarded; every sacrifice is made up; every debt is paid.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Be careful what you set your heart upon, for it surely shall be yours.
- Nothing within reason is impossible to the man who knows and relies upon his “other self.”
- Whatever man believes to be true has a way of becoming true.
- ((Passion + Talent) x Association x Action) + Faith = Success
- Chapter 3: A strange interview with the devil
- The six most effective fears are the fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age, and death.
- An unhealthy body discourages thinking.
- Cigarettes break down the power of persistence; they destroy the power of endurance; they destroy the ability to concentrate; they deaden and undermine the imaginative faculty, and help in other ways to keep people from using their minds most effectively.
- Chapter 4: Drifting with the devil
- A drifter does little to no thinking for themselves. A drifter is one who permits himself to be influenced and controlled by circumstances outside of his own mind. He would rather let the Devil occupy his mind and do his thinking than go to the trouble of thinking for himself.
- The devil enters the king of people through thoughts which they believe to be their own: fear, superstition, avarice, greed, lust, revenge, anger, vanity, and plain laziness.
- School children are taught not to develop and use their own minds, but to adopt and use the thoughts of others.
- 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
- Poverty, like physical illness, is a contagious disease.
- The non-drifter had a mind of his own and used it for all purposes.
- Chapter 5: The Confession Continues
- The devil only exists in the minds of people who have fears.
- Flattery is a bait of incomparable value to all who wish to gain control over others.
- Flattery is the chief bait through which men seduce women.
- The majority of people begin to drift as soon as they meet with opposition, and not one out of ten thousand will keep on trying after failing two or three times.
- The capacity to surmount failure without being discouraged is the chief asset of every man who attains outstanding success in any calling.
- Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.
- Propaganda is any device, plan, or method by which people can be influenced without knowing that they are being influenced, or the source of the influence.
- The Devil bribes you with love, the thirst for sex expression, covetousness for money, the obsessive desire to gain something for nothing, gambling, vanity in women, egotism in men, desire to be the masters of others, desire for intoxicants and narcotics, desire for self-expression through words and deeds, desire to imitate others, desire for perpetuation of life after death, desire to be a hero or heroine, desire for physical food.
- In today’s environment, clearly both women and men can fall victim to both vanity and egotism.
- Simple methods of self-defense:
1. Do your own thinking on all occasions.
2. Decide definitely what you want from life; then create a plan for attaining it and be willing to sacrifice everything else, if necessary, rather than accept permanent defeat.
3. Analyze temporary defeat, no matter of what nature or cause, and extract from it the seed of an equivalent advantage.
4. Be willing to render useful service equivalent to the value of all material things you demand of life, and render the service first.
5. Recognize that your brain is a receiving set that can be attuned to receive communications from the universal storehouse of infinite Intelligence, to help you transmute your desires into their physical equivalent.
6. Recognize that your greatest asset is time, the only thing except the power of thought which you own out-right, and the one thing which can be shaped into whatever material things you want.
- Budget your time so none of it is wasted
7. Recognize the truth that fear generally is a filler with which the Devil occupies the unused portion of your mind.
- It is only a state of mind which you can control by filling the space it occupies with faith in your ability to make life provide you with whatever you demand of it.
8. When you pray, do not beg!
- Demand what you want and insist upon getting exactly that, with no substitutes.
9. Recognize that life is a cruel taskmaster and that either you master it or it masters you.
- Never accept from life anything you do not want.
- If that which you do not want is temporarily forced upon you, you can refuse, in your own mind, to accept it and it will make way for the thing you do want.
10. Lastly, remember that your dominating thoughts attract, through a definite law of nature, by the shortest and most convenient route, their physical counterpart.
- Be careful what your thoughts dwell upon.
- Be definite in everything you do and never leave unfinished thoughts in the mind. Form the habit of reaching definite decisions on all subjects.
- Chapter 6: Hypnotic rhythm
- Undesirable habits can be broken. They must be broken before they assume the proportions of rhythm.
- Whatever you have, you use it or you lose it.
- You are where you are and what you are because of your thoughts and your deeds.
- Circumstances which people do not understand are classified under the heading of luck.
- All deeds follow thoughts. There can be no deeds without their having first been patterned in thought.
- All thoughts have a tendency to clothe themselves in their physical counterpart.
- Chapter 7: Seeds of fear
- Your mind attracts that which your mind dwells upon.
- As long as you fear something, the devil has a grip on you.
- Children are forced to take on the nature of all influences of those around them unless their own thoughts are stronger than the influences.
- The person who thinks in terms of power, success, opulence, sets up a rhythm which attracts these desirable possessions. The person who thinks in terms of misery, failure, defeat, discouragement, and poverty attracts these undesirable influences. This explains why both success and failure are the result of habit. Habit establishes one's rhythm of thought, and that rhythm attracts the object of one's dominating thoughts.
- Success multiplies, with less effort, as time goes on.
- All successful people use hypnotic rhythm, either consciously or unconsciously, by expecting and demanding success. The demand becomes a habit, hypnotic rhythm takes over the habit, and the law of harmonious attraction translates it into its physical equivalent.
- Chapter 8: Definiteness of purpose
- 7 principle to attain spiritual, mental, and physical freedom:
1. Definiteness of purpose
2. Mastery over self
3. Learning from adversity
4. Controlling environmental influence (associations)
5. Time (giving permanency to positive, rather than negative thought-habits and developing wisdom)
6. Harmony (acting with definiteness of purpose to become the dominating influence in your own mental, spiritual, and physical environment)
7. Caution (thinking through your plan before you act)
- Any human being who can be definite in his aims and plans can make life hand over whatever is wanted.
- Once any person hesitates, procrastinates, or becomes indefinite about anything, he is just one step removed from the devils control.
- Love is a state of mind which beclouds reason, saps willpower, and blinds one to facts and truth.
- People who gain and maintain power must become definite in all their thoughts and all their deeds.
- Weak plans have a way of becoming strong if definitely applied.
- The person who moves with Definiteness recognizes the difference between temporary defeat and failure. When plans fail he substitutes others but he does not change his purpose. He perseveres.
- Definiteness is equivalent to intention or being goal driven or purpose driven.
- Chapter 9: Education and religion
- A life that is lived with fullness of peace of mind, contentment, and happiness always divests itself of everything it does not want. Anyone who submits to annoyance by things he does not want is not definite. He is a drifter.
- Minds which do not harmonize should never be forced to remain together in marriage or any relationship.
- The first duty of every human being is to himself.
- Unearned gifts of every nature may become a curse instead of a blessing.
- When you hear a person praying for something that he should procure through his own efforts, you may be sure you are listening to a drifter.
- Ignorance and fear are the only enemies from which men need salvation.
- Ideas are the beginning of all human achievement. Teach all students how to recognize practical ideas that may be of benefit in helping them acquire whatever they demand of life.
- Teach the students how to budget and use time, and above all teach the truth that time is the greatest asset available to human beings and the cheapest.
- Teach the student the basic motives by which all people are influenced and show how to use these motives in acquiring the necessities and the luxuries of life.
- Teach children what to eat, how much to eat, and what is the relationship between proper eating and sound health.
- Teach children the true nature and function of the emotion of sex, and above all, teach them that it can be transmuted into a driving force capable of lifting one to great heights of achievement.
- Teach children to be definite in all things, beginning with the choice of a definite major purpose in life!
- Teach children the nature of and possibilities for good and evil in the principle of habit, using as illustrations with which to dramatize the subject the everyday experiences of children and adults.
- Teach children how habits become fixed through the law of hypnotic rhythm, and influence them to adopt, while in the lower grades, habits that will lead to independent thought!
- Teach children the difference between temporary defeat and failure, and show them how to search for the seed of an equivalent advantage which comes with every defeat.
- Teach children to express their own thoughts fearlessly and to accept or reject, at will, all ideas of others, reserving to themselves, always, the privilege of relying upon their own judgment.
- Teach children to reach decisions promptly and to change them, if at all, slowly and with reluctance, and never without a definite reason.
- Teach children that the human brain is the instrument with which one receives, from the great storehouse of nature, the energy which is specialized into definite thoughts; that the brain does not think, but serves as an instrument for the interpretation of stimuli which cause thought.
- Teach children the value of harmony in their own minds and that this is attainable only through self-control. Teach children the nature and the value of self-control.
- Teach children that there is a law of increasing returns which can be and should be put into operation, as a matter of habit, by rendering always more service and better service than is expected of them.
- Teach children the true nature of the Golden Rule, and above all show them that through the operation of this principle, everything they do to and for another they do also to and for themselves.
- Teach children not to have opinions unless they are formed from facts or beliefs which may reasonably be accepted as facts.
- Teach children that cigarettes, liquor, narcotics, and overindulgence in sex destroy the power of will and lead to the habit of drifting. Do not forbid these evils-just explain them.
- Teach children the danger of believing anything merely because their parents, religious instructors, or someone else says it is so.
- Teach children to face facts, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, without resorting to subterfuge or offering alibis.
- Teach children to encourage the use of their sixth sense through which ideas present themselves in their minds from unknown sources, and to examine all such ideas carefully.
- Teach children the full import of the law of compensation as it was interpreted by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and show them how the law works in the small, everyday affairs of life.
- Teach children that definiteness of purpose, backed by definite plans persistently and continuously applied, is the most efficacious form of prayer available to human beings.
- Teach children that the space they occupy in the world is measured definitely by the quality and quantity of useful service they render the world.
- Teach children there is no problem which does not have an appropriate solution and that the solution often may be found in the circumstance creating the problem.
- Teach children that their only real limitations are those which they set up or permit others to establish in their own minds. Teach them that man can achieve whatever man can conceive and believe.
- Teach children that all schoolhouses and all textbooks are elementary implements which may be helpful in the development of their minds, but that the only school of real value is the great University of Life wherein one has the privilege oflearning from experience.
- Teach children to be true to themselves at all times and, since they cannot please everybody, therefore to do a good job of pleasing themselves.
- Sin is anything one does or thinks which causes one to be unhappy! Human beings who are in sound physical and spiritual health should be at peace with themselves and always happy. Any form of mental or physical misery indicates the presence of sin.
- It is a sin to overeat because that leads to ill health and misery. It is a sin to over-indulge in sex because that breaks down one's will power and leads to the habit of drifting. It is a sin to permit one's mind to be dominated by negative thoughts of envy, greed, fear, hatred, intolerance, vanity, self-pity, or discouragement, because these states of mind lead to the habit of drifting. It is a sin to cheat, lie, and steal, because these habits destroy self-respect, subdue one's conscience, and lead to unhappiness. It is a sin to remain in ignorance because that leads to poverty and loss of self-reliance. It is a sin to accept from life anything one does not want because that indicates an unpardonable neglect to use the mind.
- The worst sins are fear and ignorance.
- Faith is a state of mind wherein one recognizes and uses the power of positive thought as a medium by which one contacts and draws upon the universal store ofInfinite Intelligence at will.
- Faith is definiteness of purpose backed by belief in the attainment of the object of that purpose.
- Chapter 10: Self-discipline
- One must gain mastery over self. This is the second of the seven principles. The person who is not master of himself can never be master of others.
- By mastering the three appetites responsible for most of one's lack of self-discipline. The three appetites are (1) the desire for food, (2) the desire for expression of sex, (3) the desire to express loosely organized opinions.
- Self-mastery contemplates sufficient control over the appetites to enable one to feed them what they need and withhold food not needed.
- People who eat wisely and keep their body sewers clean handicap the devil because a clean body sewer generally means a sound body and a brain that functions properly.
- If humans would control their sex desires and transmute them into a driving force with which to carry on their occupation-that is, if they spent on their work one half the time they dissipate in pursuit of sex, they would never know poverty.
- The person who has self-discipline understands the emotion of sex, respects it, and learns to control and transmute it into constructive activities.
- Controlled sex supplies the magnetic force that attracts people to one another. It is the most important factor of a pleasing personality. It gives quality to the tone of voice and enables one to convey through the voice any feeling desired. It serves, as nothing else can serve, to give motive-power to one's desires. It keeps the nervous system charged with the energy needed to carry on the work of maintaining the body. It sharpens the imagination and enables one to create useful ideas. It gives quickness and definiteness to one's physical and mental movements. It gives one persistence and perseverance in the pursuit of one's major purpose in life. It is a great antidote for all fear. It gives one immunity against discouragement. It helps to master laziness and procrastination. It gives one physical and mental endurance while undergoing any form of opposition or defeat. It gives one the fighting qualities necessary under all circumstances for self-defense. In brief, it makes winners and not quitters!
- Sex is a virtue when controlled and directed to the attainment of desirable ends. It is a fault when neglected and permitted to lead to acts of lust.
- Accurate thinking comes first because it is the solution to all man's problems, the answer to all his prayers, the source of opulence and all material possessions. Accurate thinking is aided by properly controlled and directed sex emotion because sex emotion is the same energy as that with which one thinks.
- The person who talks too much informs the world of his aims and plans and gives to others the opportunity to profit by his ideas. Wise men keep their plans to themselves and refrain from expressing uninvited opinions. This prevents others from appropriating their ideas and makes it difficult for others to interfere with their plans.
- The habit is one way of expressing egotism and van-ity. The desire for self-expression is inborn in people. The motive behind the habit is to attract the attention of others and to impress them favorably. Actually it has just the opposite effect. When the self-invited speaker attracts attention, it usually is unfavorable.
- The person who insists on talking seldom has an opportunity to learn by listening to others.
- The power of their own thoughts. The only power they can control and may rely upon. The only power which cannot be perverted, colored, modified, and falsified by their dishonest fellow human beings.
- We tend to want yo change other people when we can truly only change ourselves and how we react to others.
- Chapter 11: Learning from adversity
- Every adversity brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage.
- Success usually is but one short step beyond the point where one quits fighting.
- Failure often serves as a blessing in disguise because it breaks the grip of hypnotic rhythm and frees the mind for a fresh start.
- Failure is a man-made circumstance. It is never real until it has been accepted by man as permanent.
- Failure is a state of mind; therefore, it is something an individual can control until he neglects to exercise this privilege.
- Nature does not force people to fail. But nature does impose her law of hypnotic rhythm upon all minds and through this law gives permanency to the thoughts which dominate those minds.
- One is good or bad because of the knitting together of his thoughts and deeds through hypnotic rhythm. One is bound by poverty or blessed with abundance because his aims, plans, and desires, or lack of them, have been made permanent and real by hypnotic rhythm.
- Harmonious relationship with the law consists entirely of the individual changing his habits so they represent the circumstances and the things the individual wants and is willing to accept.
- No one can change the law of hypnotic rhythm any more than one can change the law of gravity, but everyone can change himself.
- All human relationships are made and maintained by the habits of the individuals related.
- The proper relationship is one that brings to all connected with it, or affected by it, some form of benefit.
- Take a moment to inventory your relationships, at home, at work, and at play. List the relationships that seem in need of improvement and keep them in your mind as you continue reading.
- An improper relationship is any relationship between people which damages anyone or brings any form of misery or unhappiness to any of the individuals.
- Adversity forces one to recognize the need for intelligence not available except from sources outside of one's own mind.
- Adversity breaks old habits of thought and gives one an opportunity to form new habits; therefore, it may serve to break the hold of hypnotic rhythm and change its operation from negative to positive ends.
- The greatest benefit of adversity is that it may, and generally does, force one to change one's thought-habits, thus breaking and redirecting the force of hypnotic rhythm.
- The loss of material things may teach many needed lessons, none greater, however, than the truth that man has control over nothing and has no assurance of the permanent use of anything except his own power of thought.
- The nondrifter meets with temporary defeat and failure, but his reaction to all forms of adversity is positive. He fights instead of giving up, and usually wins.
- Life gives no one immunity against adversity, but life gives to everyone the power of positive thought, which is sufficient to master all circumstances of adversity and convert them into benefits.
- Chapter 12: Environment, time, harmony, and caution
- The material on which thoughts are fed comes from one’s environment. Thought-habits are made permanent by hypnotic rhythm.
- The most important part of one's environment is that created by his association with others. All people absorb and take over, either consciously or unconsciously, the thought-habits of those with whom they associate closely.
- Ones intimate associates should be chosen with as much care as one chooses the food with which he feeds his body, with the object always of associating with people whose dominating thoughts are positive, friendly, and harmonious.
- No human being owes another any degree of duty which robs him of his privilege of building his thought-habits in a positive environment. On the other hand, every human being is duty bound to himself to remove from his environment every influence which even remotely tends to develop negative thought-habits.
- Only the strong survive. No one can be strong without removing himself from all influences which develop negative thought-habits. Negative thought-habits result in the loss of the privilege of self-determination, no matter what or who may cause those habits. Positive thought-habits may be controlled by the individual and made to serve his aims and purposes. Negative thought-habits control the individual and deprive him of the privilege of self-determination.
- Desires are organized impulses of energy called thoughts. Desires that are mixed with emotional feeling magnetize the brain cells in which they are stored and prepare those cells to be taken over and directed by the law of hypnotic rhythm. When any thought appears in the brain or is created there, and is mixed with keen emotional feeling of desire, the law of hypnotic rhythm begins, at once, to translate it into its physical counter-part. Dominating thoughts, which are acted upon first by the law of hypnotic rhythm, are those with which are mixed the strongest desires and the most intense feelings. Thoughthabits are established by the repetition of the same thoughts.
- The ten most common motivated, those which inspire most of one’s thought-action:
1. The desire for sex expression and love
2. The desire for physical food
3. The desire for spiritual, mental, and physical self-expres-sion
4. The desire for perpetuation of life after death
5. The desire for power over others
6. The desire for material wealth
7. The desire for knowledge
8. The desire to imitate others
9. The desire to excel others
10. The seven basic fears
- When the individual does not use the brain for the expression of positive, creative thoughts, nature fills the vacuum by forcing the brain to act upon negative thoughts. There can be no idleness in the brain.
- People are not born with wisdom, but they are born with the capacity to think, and they may, through the lapse of time, think their way into wisdom.
- Wisdom is the ability to relate yourself to nature's laws so as to make them serve you, and the ability to relate yourself to other people so as to gain their harmoni-ous, willing cooperation in helping you to make life yield whatever you demand of it.
- Definite ness of purpose is the starting point from which an individual may establish his own environment.
- The person who exercises due caution in the choice of associates never allows himself to be closely associated with any person who does not bring to him, through the association, some definite mental, spir-itual, or economic benefit.
- Nothing contributes more to one's success and happiness than carefully chosen associates. Caution in the selection of associates becomes, therefore, the duty of every person who wishes to become happy and successful.
- Summary
- The three important factors are the habit of drifting, the law of hypnotic rhythm through which all habits are made permanent, and the element of time.
- Most of the difficulties in which people find themselves are of their own making.
- One's dominating desires can be crystallized into their physical equivalents through definiteness of purpose backed by definiteness of plans, with the aid ofnature's law of hypnotic rhythm and time!
- Afterword
- Let us not fight with the mind; let us appreciate its nuances, its intuitions, its utmost capacities with the understanding that mind is the key to being self-dir-ected, self-empowered, self-confident.
- Next to 'drifting,' the most dangerous human trait Hill describes is the 'lack of caution,' or what we might call a lack of discernment. Discernment is a relative of wisdom, which causes us to think of the repercussions before we take action, as well as to honestly observe the results of our choice-making. Thus we may create our own path to freedom.
- In reflection
- For individuals who made the personal choice to succeed in life, who resisted the temptations and weaknesses of irreligion and sought, instead, the help of God (called by various names in the book), there was no limit to how far they might go. Limits were self-imposed, or imposed by the negative outside force of evil, personified by the Devil.
- As you go forward in your life and find obstacles in your way, it may serve you to review Hill's seven principles for Outwitting the Devil in your life.
1. Definiteness of purpose
2. Mastery over self
3. Learningfrom adversity
4. Controlling environmental influence (associations)
5. Time (giving permanency to positive) rather than negative thought-habits and developing wisdom)
6. Harmony (acting with definiteness of purpose to become the dominating influence in your own mental) spiritua~ and physical environment)
7. Caution (thinking through your plan before you act)