I recently enjoyed Linda Ryan’s 8-week coaching program on Napoleon Hill’s ‘Outwitting The Devil’. Hill wrote the manuscript in 1938 (just after ‘Think And Grow Rich’) but it was so controversial, due to its view of the churches, education system, and politics of the time that his family refused to allow publication for over 70 years.

The book is structured around an interview Hill has with the Devil in which he is able to force the Devil to reveal all the methods by which he prevents people thinking for themselves and so become ‘drifters’ who fall under the Devil’s power. Only the 2% who are ‘non-drifters’ escape his spell, think for themselves with ‘definitiveness of purpose’ and so succeed in life. This proportion matches Hill’s observations over decades of successful and unsuccessful people which was the basis of ‘Think And Grow Rich’.

It is interesting the way the interview with the Devil starts out as quite confrontational but by the end of the book Hill is more overtly using the Devil’s words to express his own understanding of how to be successful in all aspects of life.

Linda’s program included homework exercises designed to help us to clarify, absorb, and apply the lessons of the book. We also had the audio version and listened to a particular chapter every day in the week leading up to the relevant lesson.

This really helped in absorbing Hill’s ideas. I could see areas of my life where there had been ‘definiteness of purpose’ and others where ‘drifting’ had led me close to disaster.

Here is my one-sentence summary of the book (another of Linda’s exercises):

The most important factor for success in any area of life is definiteness of purpose, backed up by action based on definite plans.

Contemporaneously I have been engaged in a Quantum-Touch Practitioners Training Program. This was about setting up and growing a practice as opposed to the regular workshops which teach Quantum-Touch® itself.

One of the most useful sections is a series of interviews with experienced practitioners and instructors talking about how they developed their work. Each interview had a number of questions to be answered after listening to the interview.

There were also suggestions for contacting other practitioners, including those in different modalities.

One useful suggestion (with accompanying worksheet to evidence having accepted it!) was to have a daily Quantum-Touch session to work on oneself and one’s practice.

Shortly after starting this I had a lady phone me asking me to give a talk and demonstration to a session of a weekly group which she runs. That should be interesting.