Don’t fear the devil inside you:

Don’t fear the devil inside you.

It’s inside all of us.

It prays on our fears and makes us believe we can’t do anything. It makes us question ourselves and believe in the negative.

It stops us from reaching for our dreams.

It’s that little voice inside our heads, put there by other people, telling us we’re not good enough, we’ll never accomplish anything and the world is a terrible place.

Currently listening to a book right now called ‘Outwitting the Devil’ by Napolean Hill, the same guy who wrote Think and Grow Rich and How to Own Your Own Mind. 

Hill wrote this book at the same time as the others in 1937 but it wasn’t published for 50 years because it was considered too controversial.

His wife didn’t want him to publish it because he questioned the school system and organized religion for being what he thought was destructive – a way to make people into robots that blindly followed what was told to them by their parents or society.

It’s a fantastic listen because it explains to you how to master your mind and outwit the devil inside of you. (listen for free here)

Every one of us has a devil inside of us, but those who are successful choose to conquer it every day.

It’s a concept I’ve heard Steven Pressfield talk about in his book ‘War of Art.’ He calls the devil the ‘resistance’ or muse, which has to be conquered every day. It’s the voice inside of you criticizing you before you start, telling you you’re not good enough and pushing all these negative thoughts.

Everyone deals with this, including me. The only way to push through it is to just start. 

It’s to do something consistently over long periods of time to get to a point where you stop listening to the criticism. One of the ways I got over it was to understand the concept that no one else’s opinion of you should be greater than your own opinion of you.

Many people live their lives always paying attention to what people think of them. Social media has amplified this because now we’re traveling or doing things specifically to show it to our followers. 

Meanwhile, our followers could care less about what we’re doing. They’ll look at a picture for a brief second, be jealous of what’s happening, and then move on. People are too concerned with themselves to really care about your beach picture in Jamaica or how cool the sunset you saw is.

No one cares about you. We’re all in our own heads every day worried about what the world thinks of us when the world couldn’t care less. 

If you die, it doesn't matter. The world moves on without you.

This is the realization that took me so long to get to appreciate – you have to make the life you want. You have the ability to control your own thoughts and actions to make a life that you want. 

It’s in your control, more so today than any other time in history because of the Internet.

But you have to conquer the devil inside you and that’s the toughest challenge of them all. 

People don’t want to look at themselves. 

They don’t want to objectively place themselves compared to the rest of society. They don’t want to call themselves fat, lazy or tired. They want to continue to make excuses for how the world has wronged them their entire lives.

Nah dude, that’s all in your head. 

The world owes you nothing.

Yes people get significant advantages in life by being born into certain circumstances, but that doesn’t mean they have any better chance of conquering their own minds.

Everyone has the ability to look at themselves and change their circumstances. Poor people often struggle moving up not only because of lack of opportunity but also lack of mindset. 

If you believe you’re poor, you will be poor. If you believe you’ll be rich and successful, you’ll be rich and successful. 

This concept was pioneered by Napoleon Hill in the 1930s following the Great Depression and I’m a strong believer that it still holds true today. 

It got popularized in the 2000s with the book titled the Secret, but it’s the same thing. 

The law of attraction is really powerful. If you can train your subconscious mind into believing something, it’ll figure out a way to get there.

It won’t be as you expected. It may take much longer than you think. But if you train your subconscious, it’ll get you there.

I wish we were taught these concepts at a young age but society pollutes our thinking early on. First it’s with our parents telling us what to believe, then it’s school and/or religion and our environment.

Question everything. 

Just because everyone has told you to believe something doesn’t mean you should blindly believe it. 

Search for the answers yourself. No one really knows anything. Adults pretend to know based on what they’ve seen and believed their whole lives, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.

That’s what I’ve realized in my process of self-discovery. 

There are so many unknowns in the world that people will never tell you. You have to go searching for answers yourself and it’s a lonely road. 

It’s easy to follow the path that other people want for you or believe what everyone around you believes. It’s very difficult to question everything and tell everyone around you their wrong.

But it’s worth it. It’s worth it for your own mind. It’s worth searching for answers to questions that have always bothered you. It’s worth it to try and do something everyone thinks is impossible.

But first you have to conquer the devil inside of you. It won’t be easy, but it sure as hell will be worth it.