That ends today.
I have been listening to the book Outwitting The Devil for a few weeks now. I typically put a bunch of CD's into the player in my car and just let them run forever. In this case, I put in the 5 audio CD's of the book. I think I have listened to the entire audio book at least 5-7 times now. I'll have it memorized very soon.
I was first introduced to Napoleon Hill when I was presented or rather inherited, a note book.
My life changed when I inherited my grandfather’s notebook in 2009. He passed away in 1986 when I was 15 years old. He had suffered through multiple heart attacks, open heart surgery and countless days in the hospital. My grandmother finally said enough is enough, that’s just how she was, and she told the doctors to let him go in peace.
My grandmother found his notebook when she was going through his belongings and held onto it until her death in 1999. The notebook contained a number of intimate writings that were seemingly very religious of nature and also very prophetic. Old school Xerox photocopies of the notebooks were made for each of the 7 daughters. Every sister cherished her copy, reading them over and over again until new copies had to be made.
After my grandmother’s passing the notebook was passed to my mother. She kept it in a ziplock bag locked in a fireproof lockbox for the next 10 years. She never took the original out. She only read and reread the photocopied version. In 2009 she approached me and asked if I could do anything to preserve it.
Immediately, I began to scan the pages with my HP Officejet copier/fax/scanner. I knew this was something powerful and something to be shared. The writings were teaching a philosophy that few knew and even fewer actually enacted.
Over the course of the next few weeks I spent every extra minute I had retyping the pages of the notebook into Microsoft Word. I didn’t at the time know what the end game was but I had to get it typed. I had a sense of DEFINITE PURPOSE. I just didn’t know what it was, how I got it or where it would take me and I didn’t care. I trusted it and had FAITH that it would end well.
As I typed up my grandfather’s personal notes I kept having a feeling that this was much bigger than my grandfather. I knew he was an incredibly intelligent man but the words and the thoughts didn’t sound like the man I knew. Needless to say I had a feeling that these notes were his process of learning. A methodology that he had undertaken and these notes were his way of remembering the concepts.
I maintained my focus on getting the notebook typed and replicated despite my questions about it. Which was nothing like me. Usually, I will stop midstream and get sidetracked (drifting, if you will) down the path of questions and not finish the project. Eventually I did finish though. And the result was amazing. After weeks of typing I had replicated the entire notebook.
Then the big question. What to do with it?
I had self-published my memoir (became an Amazon Bestseller in Nov 2012) through Amazon using Creatspace so I knew how easy it was to publish and make it available to the world. I took the scanned pages of the notebook and began to organize them along with all the pages that I had typed. The manuscript was soon complete but I needed to explore my findings before I could click the publish button.
When I finally began to research the origins of the writings what I discovered was astounding to me. Using the modern wonder of the world known as Google. I was able to identify very quickly that the writings were the teachings of Napoleon Hill, primarily from TAGR. I realized that TAGR was past the end of its copyright law protection and from a legal standpoint I could republish what I had typed. Somehow that didn’t feel right and after looking on Amazon I realized that a lot of people were trying to capitalize on the teachings merely by republishing the book. That didn’t seem right to me.
I published the book and printed 25 copies to be distributed to my immediate family (the 7 Aunts and all my cousins). I then set the book back to draft status so that it would not be available any longer on Amazon. I had to share my Grandfathers work with my family but I could NOT fathom selling the book as an original work.
In reality, my burning desire was to turn it into a much larger and modern version. I wanted to prove the same concepts and principles using modern day examples of success.
“I want to serve the world and show them what my grandfather
learned from Napoleon Hill.”
I have now set my vision and had the DESIRE to reach my goal.
