The Magic of Thinking Big
Never sell yourself short.
Getting back regularly to the key ideas of this book helps prime yourself for success and cure “excusitis” and fear - with action. “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David Schwarz is a loud call for action, as thinking big is worth nothing if you do not act big.
Believe you can succeed and you will
Belief triggers the mind to figure ways and means and how-to. And believing you can succeed makes others place confidence in you.
Those who believe they can move mountains, do. Those who believe they can't, cannot. Belief triggers the power to do.
Disbelief is negative power. When the mind disbelieves or doubts, the mind attracts "reasons" to support the disbelief. Doubt, disbelief, the subconscious will to fail, the not really wanting to succeed, is responsible for most failures.
A person is the product of his own thoughts. Believe BIG.
No one else is going to believe in you until you believe in yourself.
Remind yourself regularly that you're better than you think you are. Never sell yourself short.
Believe big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success.
Have your plan for self-development and growth: the What, the How and the Results. Your laboratory is all around you. You will do what every scientist does: observe and experiment.
2. Cure yourself of excusitis, the failure disease
People are quick to explain why they haven't, why they don't, why they can't, and why they aren't.
The Four most common forms of excusitis:
"My Health Isn't Good". The right attitude and one arm will beat the wrong attitude and two arms every time. Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is. Take care of it. Remind yourself often, It's better to wear out than rust out.
"But You've Got to have brains to succeed". Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence: We underestimate our own brainpower. We overestimate the other fellow's brainpower. What really matters is not how much intelligence you have but how you use what you do have. The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you have. Just enough sense to stick with something - a project, a chore, a task - until it's completed pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence is of genius caliber. Knowledge is only potential power. It is power only when put to use - and then only when the use made of it is constructive. The ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts. Never underestimate your own intelligence, and never overestimate the intelligence of others. Don't sell yourself short. Concentrate on your assets. Discover your superior talents. Attitude is more important than intelligence. The ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts.
"It's no use. I'm too old (or too young)." Look at your present age positively. Compute how much productive time you have left. Invest future time doing what you really want to do. Start now. Your best years are ahead of you.
"But my case is different; I attract bad luck." Accept the law of cause and effect. Take a second look at what appears to be someone's good luck. You'll find that not luck but preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking preceded his good fortune. Don’t be wishful thinking. Don't waste your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success.
3. Build confidence and destroy fear
Fear is real. Fear is success enemy number one.
Action cures fear. Indecision, postponement fertilize fear.
Hope is not enough. Hope is a start. But hope needs action to win victories.
Quit acting like a drowning man.
Isolate your fear. Pin it down. Determine exactly what you are afraid of. Then take action. There is some kind of action for any kind of fear.
Much lack of self-confidence can be traced directly to a mismanaged memory. Deposit only positive thoughts in your memory bank. Count your blessings before you go to sleep. Withdraw only positive things from your memory bank. Destroy negative thoughts before those thoughts become mental monsters. Your mind wants to forget the unpleasant. It really is easy to forget the unpleasant if we simply refuse to recall it.
Put people you fear in proper perspective. Get a balanced view of them. Develop an understanding attitude.
To think confidently, act confidently. Motions are precursors of emotions. You can't control the latter directly but only through your choice of motions or actions.
Act the way you want to feel. Be a front seater. Practice making eye contact. Walk 25% faster. Practice speaking up and never worry about looking foolish. Smile big.
4. How to think big
The tendency for so many people to think small means there is much less competition than you think for a very rewarding career.
Probably the greatest human weakness is self-deprecation - that is, selling oneself short.
Philosophers for thousands of years have issued good advice: Know thyself. But most people, it seems, interpret this suggestion to mean Know only thy negative self.
Determine your five chief assets. Next under each asset, write the names of three persons you know who have achieved large success but who do not have this asset to as great a degree as you. When you've completed this exercise, you'll find you outrank many successful people on at least one asset.
You're bigger than you think. So fit your thinking to your true size.
We do not think in words and phrases. We think only in pictures and/or images. When you speak or write, you are, in a sense, a projector showing movies in the minds of others. Suppose you say, "We face a problem". You have created a picture in the minds of others of something difficult, unpleasant to solve. Instead say, "We face a challenge", and you create a mental picture of fun, sport, something pleasant to do.
Big thinkers are specialists in creating positive, forward-looking, optimistic pictures in their own minds and in the minds of others. To think big, we must use words and phrases that produce big, positive mental images.
Four ways to develop the big thinker's vocabulary: (1) Use big, positive, cheerful words and phrases to describe how you feel. (2) Use bright, cheerful, favorable words and phrases to describe other people. Make it a rule to have a big, positive word for all your friends and associates. (3) Use positive language to encourage others. Compliment people personally at every opportunity. Have a special good word for your wife or husband every day. (4) Use positive words to outline plans to others: "Here is some good news. We face a genuine opportunity…" Promise victory and watch eyes light up.
See what can be, not just what is. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn't stuck with the present.
Get a big view of your job. Think, really think your present job is important. The next promotion depends mostly on how you think about your present job. Practice adding value to things, people, and yourself. See the company's interest as identical to your own. Probably only a very few persons working in large companies have a sincere, unselfish interest in their company. But after all, only a relatively few persons qualify as big thinkers. And these few are the ones eventually rewarded with the most responsible, best-paying jobs.
When speaking in public, most people concentrate on the small, trivial things of speaking at the expense of big, important things. All the successful public speakers have one thing in common: they have something important to say and they feel a burning desire for other people to hear it.
Before complaining or accusing or reprimanding someone or launching a counter-attack in self-defense, ask yourself: "Is it really important?"
Keep your eyes focused on the big objective. Ask, is it really important? Don't fall into the triviality trap.
5. How to think and dream creatively
Creative thinking is simply finding new, improved ways to do anything.
Believe it can be done. To do anything, we must first believe it can be done. When you believe, your mind finds ways to do it. When there is a will, there is a way.
Eliminate the word “impossible” from your thinking and speaking vocabulary.
Think of something special you've been wanting to do but felt you couldn't. Now make a list of reasons why you CAN do it.
Man belongs where man wants to go.
Become receptive to ideas. Welcome new ideas.
Be an experimental person. Break up fixed routines.
Be progressive, not regressive.
Each day before you begin work, devote ten minutes to thinking "How can I do a better job today?"
Capacity is a state of mind.
It never pays to turn down what looks like an opportunity. Eagerly accept the opportunity to do more. Next, concentrate on "How can I do more?
Big people monopolize the listening. Small people monopolize the talking. Encourage others to talk. Test your own views in the form of questions. Concentrate on what the other person says
Don't let ideas escape. Write them down.
Review your ideas. File these ideas in an active file.
Cultivate and fertilize your idea, make it grow, think about it, tie it to related ideas.
6. You are what you think you are
Others see in us what we see in ourselves. We receive the kind of treatment we think we deserve. To be important and respected, we must think we are important, really think so, then others will think so too.
How you think determines how you act. How you act in turn determines how others react to you.
Look important. It helps you think about important. It costs little to be neat. Pay twice as much and buy half as many. You owe it to yourself to look your best.
Think your work is important. A person who thinks his job is important receives mental signals on how to do his job better; and a better job means more promotions, more money, more prestige, more happiness. The way we think about our jobs determines how our subordinates think about their jobs.
Think enthusiastically. Give yourself a pep talk several times daily. Build your own "sell yourself to yourself" commercial.
Upgrade your thinking. Think like important people think. When you worry, would an important person worry about this? When you have an idea, what would an important person do if he had this idea? Do you look like someone who has maximum self-respect? Do you use the language of successful people? If you get mad, would an important person get mad at it?
7. Manage your environment: Go First Class
The mind reflects what its environment feeds it just as surely as the body reflects the food you feed it. Be environment conscious. Just as body diet makes the body, mind diet makes the mind.
The person you are today, your personality, ambitions, present status in life, are largely the result of your psychological environment.
Make your environment work for you, not against you. Don't let negative thinking people destroy your plan to think yourself to success. Be sure that you're in the flock that thinks right.
Make it a rule to seek advice from people who know.
Get plenty of psychological sunshine. Circulate in new groups. Select friends who have views different from your own. Select friends who stand above petty, unimportant things.
Go first class in everything you do.
8. Make your attitudes your allies
To activate others, to get them to be enthusiastic, you must first be enthusiastic yourself.
Enthusiasm can make things 1,000 percent better.
To get enthusiastic, learn more about the thing you are not enthusiastic about.
In everything you do, life it up. Your handshake, your smile, your 'thank you's", your talk.
Broadcast good news.
Grow 'you are important' attitude. People do more for you when you make them feel important. When you help others feel important, you help yourself feel important too.
Practice appreciation, with honest, personalized compliments.
Practice calling people by their names.
Don't hog glory, invest it instead: talk about your people, your team, not about yourself.
Put service first, and money takes care of itself - always. Give people more than they expect to get.
9. Think right toward people
Success depends on the support of other people.
Being likable makes you lighter to lift.
Learn to remember names. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you.
Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you.
Don't be egotistical.
Study to get the "scratchy" elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious.
Sincerely attempt to heal, on an honest basis, every misunderstanding you have had or now have.
Practice liking people until you learn to do so genuinely.
Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone's achievement.
Give spiritual strength to people.
Don't try to buy friendship. It's not for sale.
Take initiative in building friendships. Make the first move.
Introduce yourself to others at every possible opportunity.
Be sure the other person gets your name straight.
Be sure you can pronounce the other person's name the way he pronounces it.
People have a fetish for the correct spelling of their own names.
Drop a personal note or make a phone call to the new friends you want to know better.
Say pleasant things to strangers.
Accept human differences and limitations. Recognize that no person is perfect. Recognize the fact that the other person has a right to be different. Don't be a reformer - put a little more "live and let live" in your philosophy. What a dull world this would be if people were all alike and everybody was perfect.
The person who does the most talking and the person who is the most successful are rarely the same person. Practice conversation generosity: encourage the other person to talk about herself. Conversation generosity wins friends and helps you learn about people.
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win. Don't blame others when you receive a setback.
Practice courtesy all the time.
10. Get the action habit
There is a shortage of top-flight, expertly qualified persons to fill key positions. There really is plenty of room at the top. There are many almost-qualified people, but there is one success ingredient often missing: that is the ability to get things done, to get results.
Everything we have in this world is just an idea acted upon.
Mr. Activationist does. Mr. Passivationist is going to do but doesn't. Be an activationist.
Don't wait until the conditions are perfect. The test of a successful person is not the ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise.
Expect future obstacles and difficulties. Meet problems and obstacles as they arise.
Use action to cure fear and gain confidence.
Use the mechanical way to accomplish simple but sometimes unpleasant business. Rather than think about the unpleasant features of the task, jump right in and get going without a lot of deliberation.
Use the mechanical way to create ideas, map out plans, solve problems, and do other work that requires top mental performance. Rather than wait for the spirit to move you, sit down and move your spirit. Use a pencil and paper.
Now is the magic word of success. Tomorrow, next week, later, sometimes, someday often are synonyms for the failure word, never.
Get down to business - pronto. Don't waste time getting ready to act. Start acting instead.
Seize the initiative. Be a crusader. Pick up the ball and run, Be a volunteer. Show that you have the ability and ambition to do.
11. How to turn defeat into victory
Salvage something from every setback.
Tell yourself, There IS a way.
Back off and start afresh. Often we stay so close to a problem for so long that we can't see new solutions or new approaches.
Have the courage to be your own constructive critic. Seek out your faults and weaknesses and then correct them. This makes you a professional.
Stop blaming luck. Research each setback. Find out what went wrong.
Blend persistence with experimentation. Stay with your goal but don't beat your head against a stone wall. Try new approaches. Experiment.
Remember, there is a good side to every situation. Find it. See the good side and whip discouragement.
12. Use goals to keep you grow
The important thing is not where you were or where you are but where you want to get. Get a clear fix on where you want to go. Create an image of yourself ten years from now.
Write out your ten-year plan. Your life is too important to be left to chance. Put down on paper what you want to accomplish in your work, your home, your social relationships.
Five weapons are used to commit success suicide. Destroy them: (1) self-deprecation (2) security-it is (3) competition, (4) parental dictation, (5) family responsibility.
Energy increases and multiplies when you set the desired goal and resolve to work toward that goal.
Use goals to live longer. No medicine in the world is as powerful in bringing about long life as is the desire to do something.
Let your major goal be your automatic pilot. When you let your goal absorb you, you'll find yourself making the right decisions to reach your goal.
Progress is made one step at a time. Regard each task you perform, regardless of how small it may seem, as a step toward your goal. Build thirty-day goals. The day-by-day effort pays off.
Take detours in stride. A detour simply means another goal. It should never mean surrendering the goal.
Invest in yourself. Invest in education. Invest in idea starters.
13. How to think like a leader
You are not pulled to high levels of success. You are lifted there by those working beside and below you.
Trade minds with people you want to influence. Imagine yourself in their shoes & ask yourself the right questions, taking their perspective: if I were in his situation, how would I react to this?
Think: what is the human way to handle this? Let your action show you put people first.
Think progress, believe in progress, push for progress. Think improvement in everything you do. Think high standards in everything you do.
Take time out to confer with yourself and develop your supreme thinking power. Managed solitude pays off. Use it to release your creative power. Spend time alone every day just for thinking.
When little people try to drive you down, THINK BIG.
When that "I-haven't-got-what-it-takes" feeling creeps up on you, THINK BIG.
When an argument or quarrel seems inevitable, THINK BIG.
When you feel defeated, THINK BIG.
A wise man will be master of his mind, a fool will be its slave.