I paid $5,000 for Napoleon Hill’s BANNED book about the DEVIL

SUMMARY

Russell Brunson unveils a rare 1940 Psychology Magazine article by Napoleon Hill, featuring an early "conversation with the devil" that inspired the banned book Outwitting the Devil, revealing insights on drifting and hypnotic rhythms as key obstacles to success.

STATEMENTS

Napoleon Hill authored a controversial manuscript in the year following Think and Grow Rich, detailing a dialogue with the devil to uncover forces hindering personal success.
The devil's primary strategy for controlling humanity involves inducing "drifting," a state where individuals fail to think independently and succumb to external influences.
Hypnotic rhythm refers to repetitive patterns in daily life, either positive habits that drive success or negative ones like social media scrolling that promote drifting.
Hill's work divides people into drifters, who comprise 98% of the population and lack definite purpose, and non-drifters, the driven 2% who control their minds.
Institutions such as religion, schools, drugs, and alcohol serve as tools the devil uses to foster drifting by creating dependency and discouraging critical thinking.
Hill's wife and early Napoleon Hill Foundation leaders refused to publish Outwitting the Devil due to its explosive content, fearing it would destroy his legacy.
A time-blocking exercise, tracking activities every five minutes, exposes hidden drifting periods and reveals unproductive uses of time throughout the day.
Outwitting the Devil shifts focus from success steps in Think and Grow Rich to identifying and countering the resistances that pull people away from achievement.
The 1940 Psychology Magazine article "The Devil Confesses" serves as a precursor to the full book, blending similar dialogues with slight variations in content.
Accurate thinking, one of Hill's laws of success, emphasizes independent research over blindly accepting information from media or authority figures.

IDEAS

Hill imagined the devil compelled to confess truths in a courtroom-like interrogation, exposing how subtle manipulations derail human potential without overt evil.
Drifting isn't laziness but a hypnotic surrender to routines that erode self-control, turning ambitious individuals into passive followers of societal norms.
Modern distractions like endless phone swiping mirror the devil's hypnotic rhythm, trapping people in loops that mimic productivity but yield no real progress.
Even successful people drift in specific life areas, such as health or family, highlighting that drive is domain-specific rather than an all-or-nothing trait.
Hill's early warnings against drugs and alcohol in the 1930s positioned them as rhythmic poisons that dull the mind long before public health campaigns.
Publishing Outwitting the Devil risked Hill's career because it critiqued sacred institutions like religion and education as enablers of mental subjugation.
The rare magazine article's discovery after decades suggests hidden gems in history can still reshape contemporary understandings of motivation and resistance.
Time-blocking reveals shocking truths, like spending nearly an hour on social media, forcing a confrontation with one's drifting tendencies.
Non-drifters thrive by recognizing triggers that lead to negative patterns and intentionally crafting empowering rhythms to replace them.
Hill's work flips the success narrative: instead of adding positives, subtract the invisible "devilish" forces like fear and conformity that sabotage efforts.
The devil's control over 98% of people stems from convincing them they lack agency, making non-drifters rare rebels who claim their minds.
Conversations with the devil in Hill's writing humanize abstract barriers, making the battle for success feel like an engaging, personal showdown.

INSIGHTS

True success requires auditing personal rhythms to dismantle drifting habits, transforming unconscious patterns into deliberate drivers of purpose.
Societal tools once seen as benign, like media and substances, function as modern hypnotic agents, subtly enforcing conformity over individual agency.
Drive exists on a spectrum across life domains, urging self-assessment to elevate lagging areas without diminishing strengths.
Resistance to achievement often hides in repetitive distractions, best countered by exposing them through rigorous self-tracking.
Historical controversies in self-help reveal timeless truths: critiquing power structures empowers readers but invites suppression.
Claiming mental sovereignty—via accurate thinking—separates the elite 2% who shape their destiny from the drifting masses controlled by external forces.

QUOTES

"The devil controls 98% of the world. 98% of the people he's convinced them to drift. Only 2% of those who have a definite purpose, who are driven, who are the non-drifters."
"If you ever publish this book like you'll be destroyed. Your career will be ruined. No one's going to ever trust you again."
"It's the things that hold most people back because you can look at here's the law of success. Follow these processes... If it was just following those steps, why isn't everyone doing this?"
"There are times where I've used like hypnotic rhythm to be more successful. Like I get in these these habits, these routines, and I do something over and over again that are really positive. But I also have things I do that are very negative."
"Wow, I spent 45 minutes on Instagram, right? I spent 22 minutes just daydreaming. I spent, you know, and you start looking at like, wow, I'm only putting in an hour a day or 2 hours a day or whatever that might be."

HABITS

Track daily activities in five-minute increments using a time-block sheet to identify drifting periods and unproductive patterns.
Cultivate positive hypnotic rhythms by repeating empowering routines, such as consistent exercise or focused work sessions, to build non-drifter momentum.
Practice accurate thinking by questioning media and external influences, conducting personal research before accepting information as truth.
Regularly audit life domains like health, family, and business to pinpoint areas of drifting and implement targeted improvements.
Avoid negative triggers by pausing during small time gaps to choose beneficial patterns over automatic drifts into distractions like social media.

FACTS

Napoleon Hill completed Outwitting the Devil shortly after Think and Grow Rich in 1938 but withheld publication during his lifetime due to its controversial nature.
The 1940 Psychology Magazine issue, acquired for $5,000, contains the earliest known public version of Hill's "conversation with the devil" dialogue.
Hill's wife, Annie Lou Hill, inherited the manuscript and deemed it too risky to publish, fearing it would tarnish his legacy after his death.
The Napoleon Hill Foundation delayed releasing Outwitting the Devil for decades until Sharon Lechter edited a modern version, now praised as his finest work.
Hill estimated that only 2% of people are non-drifters with definite purpose, while 98% succumb to the devil's influence through drifting.

REFERENCES

Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill, edited by Sharon Lechter, available as an audiobook for its dynamic dialogue.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, focusing on success steps contrasted with the resistances in Outwitting the Devil.
"The Devil Confesses" article in the January 1940 issue of Psychology Magazine, a precursor to the full book manuscript.

HOW TO APPLY

Begin by obtaining a time-block sheet and marking your day in five-minute intervals, noting every activity from waking to sleeping to expose drifting.
Review the tracked data to categorize time into productive, drifting, and family/health domains, calculating percentages spent in each.
Identify negative hypnotic rhythms, such as social media scrolling or daydreaming, by linking them to triggers like boredom or stress breaks.
Replace identified drifts with positive routines, committing to repeat them daily, such as a 30-minute reading session instead of phone time.
Reassess weekly using accurate thinking: question external influences in your life and research alternatives to build non-drifter habits across all areas.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Combat drifting by breaking hypnotic rhythms through self-tracking to unlock the driven 2% potential within.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Read or listen to Sharon Lechter's edition of Outwitting the Devil to grasp the devil's tactics and apply them to personal barriers.
Perform monthly time-blocking exercises to quantify drifting and redirect time toward definite purposes in health, business, and relationships.
Cultivate accurate thinking by verifying information sources independently, reducing susceptibility to media-driven hypnotic influences.
Download and study rare interviews like "The Devil Confesses" to contrast early ideas with modern applications for deeper insights.
Audit life domains quarterly, elevating drifting areas by designing empowering rhythms that foster sustained non-drifter momentum.

MEMO

In a dusty vault of forgotten manuscripts, Russell Brunson, the entrepreneur behind ClickFunnels and a self-proclaimed Napoleon Hill devotee, unearthed a literary relic that pulses with timeless urgency. For $5,000, he acquired a brittle January 1940 issue of Psychology Magazine, its pages whispering secrets long suppressed. Inside lies "The Devil Confesses," an audacious article by Hill himself—a philosopher grilling the infernal in a imagined tribunal, extracting confessions on humanity's hidden chains. This piece, penned amid the shadows of the Great Depression, predates or parallels Hill's notorious Outwitting the Devil, a book so incendiary that neither he nor his widow dared release it during their lifetimes.

Hill's devil isn't a horned specter but a cunning architect of inertia, wielding "drifting" as his masterstroke. Drifters, Hill posits, comprise 98% of us: minds adrift on currents of conformity, news bites, and numbing vices, forsaking the rudder of independent thought. Non-drifters, that elusive 2%, clutch a definite purpose like a lifeline, navigating life's tempests with deliberate force. Brunson, reflecting on his own empire-building, admits to selective drifting—masterful in business yet prone to lapses in health and family. The magazine's dialogue, crisp and confrontational, mirrors the full manuscript's rhythm: Hill probes, the devil divulges, unveiling hypnotic patterns that ensnare the ambitious in loops of distraction, from tobacco's haze in Hill's era to today's smartphone sirens.

What elevates this discovery is its prescience. Hill's warnings against drugs and alcohol, radical in the 1930s, prefigured public reckonings, framing them as rhythmic poisons that erode resolve. Institutions—schools drilling obedience, religions peddling fear—emerge as unwitting accomplices, lulling souls into passivity. Brunson shares a stark exercise from his teachings: arm yourself with paper and pen, chronicle every five minutes of your day. The revelation stings: 45 minutes lost to Instagram, 22 to reverie. This audit, painful yet illuminating, spotlights the gaps where purpose frays, urging a pivot from surrender to sovereignty.

Yet hope flickers in the counterstroke. Hill's framework inverts the success gospel of Think and Grow Rich, which charts paths upward; here, he maps the undertow pulling us down. By naming the resistance—call it devil, laziness, or algorithm— we disarm it. Brunson, ever the practitioner, advocates pausing at triggers, forging new rhythms: swap scrolling for strategy sessions, daydreams for deliberate dreams. The Napoleon Hill Foundation, after decades of hesitation, finally unleashed the book under editor Sharon Lechter, its audiobook a theatrical clash of wills. For Brunson, this isn't mere history; it's a manifesto for the driven, a call to audit our drifts and claim the 2%.

As digital tempests rage, Hill's voice from 1940 resonates anew. In an age of infinite scrolls and echo chambers, his devil's playbook feels eerily current, a reminder that true flourishing demands vigilant self-mastery. Brunson closes with an invitation: download the confession, listen to the audiobook, confront your own shadows. In doing so, perhaps we'll tip the scales from the drifting 98% toward the purposeful few, outwitting not just a devil, but the subtler demons within.