158. Outwitting The Devil Perspective

Foreign. Welcome back to Leadership In a nutshell, cracking the code of that driven mind. I'm honored to have you. Grateful to have you. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman, and this is our chance to connect. And. And this week, I'm going to do something a little bit differently. I'm gonna. I'm gonna do a little bit of a. A book review, if you will. So episode 158. I'm calling this Outwitting the Devil perspective. So Napoleon Hill wrote a great book called Outwitting the Devil. And it. He wrote it in like 19. Gosh, 1920. Something. I think it might have been 1923. Wrote it, but it didn't drop until, like, 2011 or something like that. It was fairly controversial about certain things, kind of how the church viewed it in certain areas or different things. That's for your own story. I recommend reading the book, but today I'm just gonna give you some Cliff Notes and some thoughts. It came back to my awareness. I read it a long time ago, but had a client that recently was sharing it in a group setting with some of our clients and talking about the power of distraction. And so basically the. The, you know, the concept of the book is basically, Napoleon Hill is having conversations with the devil, and the devil's talking about how, you know, how he controls his life and different things like that. So I'm not here to influence your belief system, your religion, or any, you know, any of that. I'm here for you to think about your thinking and to give you an opportunity to do so. And so there's seven main principles from the book, and I just kind of wanted to run through those with you here today and give you a chance to just check in on your own thinking. I believe that we can learn, and we can learn from each other. We can live from. Learn from Cliff Notes. But, you know, if you're down to read or listen, you might. You might check out. Check out the book. It's kind of interesting from a perspective of distraction. And so. So really, you know, there's a concept of. That there's two concepts in life in this book. There's faith and there's fear. And so what I talk about a lot, not in this book, but I talk about my divine connection. So in this book context, that would be kind of the faith, and then there's this concept of fear. And in this book, then that's the concept of, you know, the devil getting you to be afraid and being worried and distracting you and all those different types of things. And so as long as the devil can keep you distracted, then you're going to kind of operate and live in a state of fear rather than being connected and having faith and doing all those. Those different types of things. And I hope we're not kicking off World War three or something. As I'm recording this, you might hear a lot of military jets just flew over my studio here. So not sure exactly what's going on, but forgive that background noise if we're not able to pull that out a little bit. So faith and fear, what does that mean? How does that show up for you? And so what I think is Napoleon talks about that one of the number one causes of failure is to be led by fear. And that's something I want you to just be mindful of. Last week I talked about being calm in stressful times and in the face of the storm, if you will, and different things like that. It's where you've got to have faith. It's where you've got to have trust. And that's why I'm a big believer in believing in something bigger than me and having my divine connection and facilitating that and strengthening that and deepening that and those different types of things. But as a leader, regardless of your faith, like, put faith in air quotes, as far as, like, religion, I'm talking about your faith in yourself, your trust in yourself, your trust in your ability to show up and give your best and do your best every single day. And that's where people want to show up. People want to follow somebody, and people want leaders that are connected with themselves and trust themselves and in order to lead others, that's ultimately what it's all about. So let's talk about these seven principles Napoleon Hill writes about. Number one is definiteness of purpose, definiteness of purpose. So obviously some words I wouldn't personally use, but being clear about purpose, that's the first thing, right? And I'm a big believer in that. I believe that your primary purpose is everything. And, and so I think that, you know, knowing who you are, being okay with who you are at, at the core, doing the work of, you know. A few episodes back, I talked about our primary purpose exercise. Make sure you do, do the work to know who you are and why you show up in the world the way that you do. And then once you're clear about it, don't, don't apologize for it. Don't, don't go out there being an ass about it. And like, you get to be a bull in a china shop. Because now I know who I am, and I just do everything without regard for others. That's not what I'm talking about. But I'm talking about don't apologize for having your goals and having your vision and wanting the life that you want. There's no shame in that game. Just be yourself. Be who you are. But the first thing that was written about in this book is definiteness of purpose. Second thing, mastery over self. And so really, Hill talked about in this book that discipline, you know, or freedom, rather, requires discipline. And you've got to learn how to navigate this, you know, your. Yourself. And if you're, if you're just going along and just whatever, you know, the cat chasing the laser and just, you know, the monkey mind chasing you, going everywhere. And, you know, in this book with the. The conversations with the devil talked about, you know, the devil's goal was to keep you as what the book talks about as a drifter. And that's where, you know, it's interesting because there's billions of dollars around keeping you as a drifter today through different distraction mechanisms and the attention economy that everybody's trying to get your attention. Because if I can keep your attention, then I can get you to drift toward my product. Like you. Yes, I want you to listen to my podcast. Yes, we might do some podcast marketing, but I'm here to. Because if I get your attention, then I want to improve your life, period. Not here to sell you anything. I'm not here to get you to put money in my pocket or anybody else's pocket. I'm here to hopefully increase the money in your pocket, but more importantly, increase your mental freedom. That's my job in life. That's why I exist, to elevate consciousness of humanity, beginning with myself. And I do so primarily in the blue collar trades, in the space. That's where I'm at. It's what it's about. And I'm so honored that you're here with me. But you gotta create some mastery over yourself. Number three, Napoleon talks about learning from adversity. Interesting enough. In my book, the Success Laws, Blue Collar Success Laws, the law number three is problems hold solutions. And so if I can learn from adversity, in Napoleon Hill's words, now I'm able to garner those lessons. You know, I talk about it on this podcast a lot. I talk about it with my clients a lot. You gotta make mistakes, and it's okay. It's experience. I invest in experiences in my life. I'm an experienced investor more than anything. I'm not A big stock market fan, I'm a big, my own businesses fan. I invest in and I invest in people that are around me and I invest in experiences. Those are the areas that I invest. So if I'm willing to invest in people and experiences, then guess what? I'm willing to invest in mistakes, or what the world calls mistakes, because that's education. And so keep that in mind in this book that, you know, he talks about learning from adversity. So if you get pushed back, if you have those different types of things, number four, control environmental influence. Now again, we're talking about a book that was written in the 20s. What does that mean? Be mindful of your peer group. That's what that means. It means if you have a bunch of negative people around you, you are going to become more negative, period. That's what it's about. It's the MIT study that was done that said you're a sum total of the five closest friends around you. Sorry, I need a little, little water there. So, you know, I get fired up about this because it's like, my God, this book was written in the 20s or whatever and who you hang out with matters. He says it in words I would. Controlling environmental influence. What does that mean? Just hang around people that are, are supporting you. Don't, don't, don't be accountable to people that don't support you. The people don't, that don't help you. The people that don't have your best interest. You know, I don't believe you'll ever find people trying to wreck your dream that are, quote, doing better than you. Nobody ever dogs your money if they have more money than you. Nobody ever dogs your goals if they have bigger goals than you. If, you know, and it's not about measurement like that. I'm just saying that, you know, I, I come from a place of having some peers with massive scarcity and small minded, small town, small minded mentality. And that was tough. And I don't judge them now. I did for a minute, but I, I get it, that's where they're at, that's their perspective. But it doesn't mean I belong there. Doesn't mean I belong in that peer group. Not that I'm better, it's just that it's different. And I want to be happy, I want to be healthy, I want to be well adjusted, I want to grow wealth, I want to grow people, I want to grow income, I want to grow freedom, I want to grow influence and I need to be around people that support that in order for me to do that, otherwise I drift as this book talks about. And that's what the devil wants you to do in this book. Number five, time. Time is one of those things that we all, you know, share in equality. I'll say there's 86,400 seconds in a day. I think maybe it's 86 too. I forget the math. But you know, it's like, hey, we've all got the same amount of time. What are you doing with it? Is what Hill talks about in this book. And so be mindful of your time. You know, what does that look like? So I'm not going to spend a lot of time there because you get it. Number six, harmony. I love harmony and I justified my being out of balance for part of my life of being in harmony. And yet what I know is it's hard to remain in balance. Like, you know, the body's constantly moving, everything's constantly shifting, the weather's always changing. But when I realized there's divine harmony, that everything is in harmony, that it takes the rain to grow the flowers and all the different things and you know, the desert, we've had just an incredible bloom season this year because there's been so much rain and everything's just working exactly the way it's meant to. And I'm not minimizing your pain if you're struggling right now, if you're in a bit of pain, but you're exactly where you're meant to be. And I want you to continue to lean into that and continue to work through that in a state of harmony. So how you, you know, kind of balance things for yourself, that's one of the reasons I have my self care ritual is so I can remain in harmony with myself as I go out through the world. I need to be like kind of that bubble boy movie, if you will, where I, I've got my little bubble around me based on that's my harmony and my inner connectivity and my divine connectivity. And then I go out in the world and the world tries to pop my balloon and tries to poke me and do different things and I just learn from it, baby. That' it's all about. And then seventh and certainly not last. It's caution. Napoleon talks about always act, but think before you act. Be mindful before you act. I think it was, it was last week when I talked about stop, look, listen and then respond and flow and like that's, that's what we're talking about here. It's about, you know, consciousness it's about being aware. Yes, you're always going to take action, but be cautious first. Slow down for a second. Right? See what this means to you? See how this feels. So I don't usually do kind of book reviews, if you will, or Cliff note versions. I might do a little more of this in the future. But this one just hit me. It's not even a book. I didn't even read it again recently. It just hit me that it was so powerful to my client that he reads it every year and he was sharing it with this group that I run, and I was like, you know what? Let me share that with our listeners and see if any of that resonates with you. 1. Definite of purpose. 2. Mastery over self. 3. Learning from adversity. 4. Controlling environmental influence, meaning your peers, five times. 6. Harmony. 7. Caution. Be mindful. Stay connected, not distracted. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you. Learn what you can do. Be who you are. Lean into your greatness. Share this episode with somebody, and until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week. I'll see you next time. Thanks so much for being here. I appreciate you.