Cherry's Corner: Triumphing over evil with Napoleon Hill
By Cherish Little
Cherry’s Corner is a brand new column dedicated to providing entertainment.
“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” -Napoleon Hill In 1938, Napoleon Hill, self-help author, wrote a fiction novel examining the tools constructed by the devil to keep society in chains and in a constant state of fear. He then used what he uncovered to figure out the key to escaping from the devil’s clutches, thus attaining freedom. For decades, Hill’s words were silenced, and Outwitting the Devil: The Secrets to Freedom and Success did not see shelves until 2011.Not all of his novels were silenced, however. One in particular, called Think and Grow Rich, largely contributed to his reputation as one of the best self-help authors of all time. Think and Grow Rich being as successful as it was, and setting the standard for motivational thinking, is why millions upon millions of consumers were eager to take in more knowledge from the late Napoleon Hill. |
In Outwitting the Devil, Hill engages in a one-on-one conversation with the devil. It’s disputed whether or not the devil he claims to have spoken to was real or a mere figment of his imagination, but in the grand scheme of things, the answer is of no relevance. What matters is the content itself, and the information revealed in Outwitting the Devil pertains to every facet of life, and is truthful no matter how it is examined. Hill goads the devil into revealing his biggest secrets, and what he reveals is the difference between those who flounder in society and those who unlock human potential.
Nothing frightens the devil more than a free-thinker who is aware of his or her infinite potential in life. So to combat these spirited individuals, obstacles are placed in the human consciousness to deter anyone else from joining them, and few are able to escape from the prison of their own mind. These obstacles include, but are not limited to, procrastination, anger, jealousy and fear. And of these obstacles, fear is the strongest because fear has multiple subsections: the fears of failure, criticism and poverty, to name a few. In Outwitting the Devil, Hill describes the human body as having two entities within, and he says that “one of these entities is motivated by and responds to the impulse of fear. The other is motivated by and responds to the impulse of faith.” At the time the novel was written, more people gave in to the former than the latter, and that’s unfortunately just as true in today’s society as it was in Hill’s society.
Readers going into this novel with an unwillingness to change would be doing themselves a huge disservice. So all in all, Outwitting the Devil is a must-read for anyone who is willing and ready to adopt a new mindset.
Nothing frightens the devil more than a free-thinker who is aware of his or her infinite potential in life. So to combat these spirited individuals, obstacles are placed in the human consciousness to deter anyone else from joining them, and few are able to escape from the prison of their own mind. These obstacles include, but are not limited to, procrastination, anger, jealousy and fear. And of these obstacles, fear is the strongest because fear has multiple subsections: the fears of failure, criticism and poverty, to name a few. In Outwitting the Devil, Hill describes the human body as having two entities within, and he says that “one of these entities is motivated by and responds to the impulse of fear. The other is motivated by and responds to the impulse of faith.” At the time the novel was written, more people gave in to the former than the latter, and that’s unfortunately just as true in today’s society as it was in Hill’s society.
Readers going into this novel with an unwillingness to change would be doing themselves a huge disservice. So all in all, Outwitting the Devil is a must-read for anyone who is willing and ready to adopt a new mindset.