THE MAGIC OF THINKING

BIG

By: David J. Schwartz, Ph.D. 

I

BELIEVE YOU CAN SUCCED AND YOU WILL 

SUCCESS means many wonderful, positive things. Success means personal prosperity: a fine home, vacations, travel, new things, financial security, giving your children maximum advantages. Success means winning admiration, leadership, being looked up to by people in your business and social life. Success means freedom: freedom from worries, fears, frustrations, and failures. Success means self-respect, continually finding more real happiness and satisfaction from life, being able to do more for those who depend on you, who are less privilege (my own).

Belief, strong belief, triggers the mind to figure ways and means and how-to. And believing you can succeed makes others place confidence in you.

A person is the product of his own thoughts. Believe Big... Launch your success offensive with honest, sincere belief that you can succeed. Believe big and grow big.

Believe in yourself, and good things do start happening.

How To Develop the Power of Belief 

Three guides to acquiring and strengthening the power of belief:

1.     Think success, don’t think failure.

Let the master thought “I can succeed” dominate your thinking process. Thinking success conditions your mind to create plan that produce success.

2.     Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Never –yes, never –sell yourself short.

3.     Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief.

Nothing – absolutely nothing – in this life gives you more satisfaction than knowing you’re on the road to success and achievement. And nothing stands as a bigger challenge than making the most of yourself.

II

CURE YOURSELF OF EXCUSITIS, THE FAILURE DISEASE 

Conquer Luck Excusitis in Two Ways:

1.     Accept the law of cause and effect.

Not luck but preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking preceded good fortune.

2.     Don’t be wishful thinker.

Success comes from doing those things and mastering those principles that produce success. 

Einstein taught a big lesson. He felt it was more important to use your mind to think than to use it as a warehouse for facts. 

Cure for age excusitis:

1.     Look at your present age positively. Think, “I’m still young,” not “I’m already old.” Practice looking forward to new horizons and gain the enthusiasm and the feel of youth.

2.     Compute how much productive time you have left. A person age 30 still has 80 percent of his productive life ahead of him. The 50 y.o. still has a big 40 percent – the best 40 percent – of his opportunity years left. Life is actually longer than most people think.

3.     Invest future time in doing what you really want to do. Think, “I’m going to start now, my best years are ahead of me.” That’s the way successful people think.

There is a cause for everything. Nothing happens without a cause. There is nothing accidental about the weather outside today. It is the result of specific causes.

III

BUILD CONFIDENCE AND DESROY FEAR 

Put These Five Procedures To Work For You: 

1.     Action cures fear. Isolate your fear and then take constructive action. Inaction – doing nothing about a situation – strengthens fear and destroys confidence.

2.     Makes supreme effort to put only positive thoughts in your memory bank. Don’t put negative, self-deprecatory thoughts grow into mental monsters. Simply refuse to recall unpleasant events or situations.

Withdraw only positive thoughts from your memory bank.

3.     Put people in proper perspective. Remember, people are more alike, much more alike, than they are different. Get a balanced view of the other fellow. He is just another human being. And develop an understanding attitude. Many people will bark, but it’s a rare one who bites. 

4.     Practice doing what your conscience tells you is right. This prevents a poisonous guilt complex from developing. Doing what’s right is a very practical rule for success.

5.     Make everything about you say, “I’m confident, really confident.” Practice these little techniques in your day-to-day activities:

Be a front seater.

Make eye contact.

Walk 25 percent faster.

Speak up.

Smile big.

IV

HOW TO THINK BIG 

Remember, It Pays In Every Way To Think Big! 

1.     Don’t sell yourself short. Conquer the crime of self-deprecation. Concentrate on your assets. You’re better than you think you are.

2.     Use the big thinker’s vocabulary. Use big, bright, cheerful words. Use words that promise victory, hope happiness, pleasure; avoid words that create unpleasant images of failure, defeat, grief.

3.     Stretch your vision. See what can be, not just what is. Practice adding value to things, to people, and to yourself.

4.     Get the big view of your job. Think, really think your present job is important. That next promotion depends mostly on how you think toward your present job.

5.     Think above trivial things. Focus your attention on big objectives. Before getting involved in a petty matter, ask yourself, “Is it really important?”

Grow big by thinking big. 

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 Thinkers Vocabulary:

1.     Use big, positive, cheerful words & phrases to describe how you feel.

Say you feel wonderful at every possible opportunity, and you will begin to feel wonderful – and bigger, too. Become known as a person who always feels great. It winds friends.

2.     Use bright, cheerful, favourable words and phrases to describe other people.

3.     Use positive language to encourage others. Compliment people personally at every opportunity: on their appearance, their work, their achievements, their families.

4.     Use positive words to outline plans to others.

Build castles, don’t dig graves!

Practice adding value to:

1.     Things – “What can I do to ‘add value’ to lot, house, business?”

2.     People – add value or bringing about the best in a person...

3.     Yourself – “What can I do to make myself more valuable today?”

V

HOW TO THINK AND DREAM CREATIVELY 

Use these Tools And Think Creatively: 

1.     Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.

Eliminate “impossible,” “won’t work,” “can’t do,” “no use trying” from thinking and speaking vocabularies.

2.     Don’t let tradition paralyse your mind. Be receptive to new ideas. Be experimental. Try new approaches. Be progressive in everything you do.

3.     Ask yourself, “How can I do better?” There is no limit to self-improvement. When you ask yourself, “How can I do better?” creative & sounds answers will appear. Try it and see.

4.     Ask yourself, “How can I do more?” Capacity is a state of mind. Asking yourself this question puts your mind to work to find intelligent shortcuts. The success combination is business is: Do what you do better (improve the quality of your output), and: Do more of what you do (increase the quantity of your output).

5.     Practice asking and listening. Ask and listen, and you’ll obtain raw material for reaching sound decisions. Remember: Big people monopolize the listening; small people monopolize the talking.

6.     Stretch your mind. Get stimulated. Associate with people who can help you think of new ideas, new ways of doing things. Mix with people of different occupational and social interests.

 Three ways to harness and develop your ideas:

1.     Don’t let ideas escape. Carry a notebook or small cards and write ideas down. 

2.     Next, review your ideas. File these ideas in active file. So long as the idea has any promise, keep it.

3.     Cultivate and fertilize your ideas. Make your idea grow. Then, when the time is ripe, put it to work for yourself, your job, your future. 

Resolve to put your ideas in saleable form. An idea written or in some sort of picture or diagram form has many times more selling power than the idea presented only in oral form.

VI

YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE 

How you think determines how you act.

How you act in turn determines:

How others react to you. 

Cement in your mind the question “ Is this the way an important person does it?” Use this question to make you bigger, more successful person.

In a nutshell, remember:

1.     Look important; it helps you think important. Your appearance talks to you. Be sure it lifts your spirits and builds your confidence. Your appearance talks to others. Make certain it says, “Here is an important person: intelligent, prosperous, and dependable.”

2.     Think your work is important. Think this way, and you will receive mental signals on how to do your job better. Think your work is important, and your subordinates will think their work is important.

3.     Give yourself a pep talk several times a day. Build a “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial. Remind yourself at every opportunity that you’re a first-class person.

4.     In all of life’s situations, ask yourself, “Is this the way an important person thinks?” Then obey the answer.

Pep talk... (with revision):

Lino Balinte, meet Lino Balinte – an important person, a really important person.

Lino, you’re a great big thinker, so think big. Think Big about Everything. You’ve got plenty of ability to do a first-class job, so do a first-class job.

Lino, you believe in Happiness, Progress, and Prosperity.

So: talk only Happiness,

      talk only Progress,

      talk only Prosperity.

Lino, you’re intelligent, prosperous, dependable & trustworthy.

So: think talk intelligently,

      Think and live a prosperous life,

      Think and act dependable and trustworthy.

You have lots of drive, Lino, lots of drive.

So put that drive to work. Nothing can stop you Lino, nothing.

Lino, you’re enthusiastic. Let your enthusiasm show through.

You look good, Lino, and you feel good. Stay that way.

Lino Balinte, you were a great fellow yesterday and you’re going to be an even greater fellow today. Now, go to it, Lino. Go forward.

 

VII

MANAGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT:

GO FIRST CLASS 

Make Your Environment Make You Successful 

1.     Be environmental-conscious. Just as body diet makes the body, mind diet makes the mind.

2.     Make your environment work for you, not against you. Don’t let suppressive forces – the negative, you-can’t-do-it people – make you think defeat.

3.     Don’t let small-thinking people you back. Jealous people want to see you stumble. Don’t give them that satisfaction.

4.     Get your advice from successful people. Your future is important. Never risk it with freelance advisors who are living failures.

5.     Get plenty of psychological sunshine. Circulate in new groups. Discover new and stimulating things to do.

6.     Throw thought poison out of your environment. Avoid gossip. Talk about people, but stay on the positive side.

7.     Go first class in everything you do. You can’t afford to go any other way.

VIII

MAKE YOU ATTITUDE YOUR ALLIES 

Grow attitude that will carry you forward to success: 

1.     Grow the “I’m activated” attitude. Results come in proportion to the enthusiasm invested. Three things to do to activate yourself are:

a.     Dig into it deeper. When you find yourself uninterested in something, dig in learn more about it. This set enthusiasm.

b.     Life up everything about you: your smile, your handshake, your talk, even your walk. Act alive.

c.      Broadcast good news. No one ever accomplished anything positive telling bad news.

2.     Grow the “You are important” attitude. People do more for you when you make them feel important. Remember to do these things:

a.     Show appreciation at every opportunity. Make people feel important.

b.     Call people by name. 

3.     Grow the “Service first” attitude, and watch money take care of itself. Make it a rule in everything you: give people more than they expect to get.

IX

THINK RIGHT TOWARD PEOPLE 

Seven Principles: 

1.     Make yourself lighter to lift. Be likable. Practice being the kind of person people like. This wins their support and puts fuel in your success-building program.

2.     Take the initiative in building friendships. Introduce yourself to others at every opportunity. Make sure you get other person’s name straight, and make certain he gets your name straight too. Drop a personal note to your new friends you want to get to know better.

3.     Accept human difference and limitations. Don’t expect anyone to be perfect. Remember, the other person has a right to be different. And don’t be a reformer.

4.     Tune in channel P (positive), the Good Thoughts Station. Find qualities to like and admire in a person, not things to dislike. And don’t let others prejudice your thinking about a third person. Think positive thoughts towards people – and get positive results.

5.     Practice conversation generosity. Be like successful people. Encourage others to talk. Let the other person talk to you about his views, his opinions, his accomplishments.

6.     Practice courtesy all the time. It makes other people feel better. It makes you feel better too.

7.     Don’t blame others when you receive a setback. Remember, how you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

A person is not pulled up to a higher level job. Rather, he is lifted up. The individual is chosen whose record makes him stand higher than the rest.

Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s Rules:

1.     Learn to remember names.

2.     Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you.

3.     Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you.

4.     Don’t be egotistical. Guard against the impression that you know it all.

5.     Cultivate the quality of being interesting so people will get something of value from their association with you.

6.     Study to get the “scratchy” elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious.

7.     Sincerely attempt to heal, on an honest basis, every misunderstanding you have had or now have. Drain off your grievances.

8.     Practice liking people until you learn to do so genuinely.

9.     Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone’s achievement, or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment.

10.                        Give spiritual strength to people, and they will give genuine affection to you.

Giving gift is a wonderful practice if the gift is backed up with genuine sincerity. Without real sincerity, the gift is often regarded as nothing more than a payoff or a bribe.

No person is all good and no person is all bad. The perfect person just doesn’t exist.

Thoughts breeds like thoughts.

Think first class about anyone around you, and you’ll received first-class results in return.

Think positively toward people and discover how wonderful, really wonderful this world is.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

When things go wrong, ask two things (- by Benjamin Fairless):

1.     Ask yourself, “What can I do to make myself more deserving of the next opportunity?” 

2.     Don’t waste time and energy being discouraged. Don’t berate yourself. Plan to win next time.  

X

GET THE ACTION HABIT 

Key Points to Practice: 

1.     Be an activationist. Be someone who does things. Be a doer, not a don’t-er.

2.     Don’t wait until conditions are perfect. They never will be. Expect future obstacles and difficulties and solve them as they arise.

3.     Remember, ideas done won’t bring success. Ideas have value only when you act upon them.

4.     Use action to cure fear and gain confidence. Do what you fear, and fear disappears. Just try it and see.

5.     Start your mental engine mechanically. Don’t wait for the spirit to move you. Take action, dig in, and you move the spirit.

6.     Think in terms of now. Tomorrow, next week, later, and similar words often are synonymous with the failure word, never. Be an, “I’m starting right now” kind of person.

7.     Get down to business – pronto. Don’t waste time getting ready to act. Start acting instead.

8.     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.

In every big decision, the mind battles with itself – to act or not to act, to do or not to do. Resolve or elect to take action and reaped big rewards

Two things to help you avoid the costly mistake of waiting until conditions are perfect before you act:

1.     Expect future obstacles and difficulties. Every venture presents risks, problems and uncertainties. You can’t eliminate them all. 

2.     Meet problems and obstacles as they arise. The test of a successful person is not the ability to eliminate all problems before he takes action, but rather the ability to find solutions to difficulties when he encounters them.

XI

HOW TO TURN DEFEAT INTO VICTORY 

The difference between success and failure is found in one’s attitudes towards setbacks, handicaps, discouragements, and other disappointing situations.

Five guideposts to help you turn defeat into victory are:

1.     Study setbacks to pave your way to success. When you lose, learn, and then go on win next time. 

2.     Have the courage to be your own constructive critic. Seek out your faults and weaknesses and then correct them. This makes you a professional.

3.     Stop blaming luck. Research each setback. Find out what went wrong. Remember, blaming luck never got anyone where he wanted to go.

4.     Blend persistence with experimentation. Stay with your goal but don’t beat your head against a stone wall. Try new approaches. Experiment.

5.     Remember, there is a good side in every situation. Find it. See the good side and whip discouragement.

Some details:

It is not possible to win high-level success without meeting opposition, hardship, and setback. But it is possible to use opposition, hardship, and setbacks to propel you forward. Salvage something from every setback.

It is true that in this complex world others may trip us. But it is also true that more often than not we trip ourselves. We lose because of personal inadequacies, some personal mistakes.... Remind yourself that you want to be as nearly perfect as is humanly possible.

Being self-critical is constructive. It helps you to build the personal strength and efficiency needed for success. Blaming others is destructive. You gain absolutely nothing from “proving” that someone else is wrong.

Persisting in one way is not a guarantee of victory. But persistence blended with experimentation does guarantee success (Edison’s way).

 When you believe there is a way you automatically convert negative energy (let’s quit, let’s go back) into positive energy (let’s keep going, let’s move ahead).

XII

USE GOALS TO HELP YOU GROW 

Successful Building Principles: 

1.     Get a clear fix on where you want to go. Create an image of yourself ten years from now. 

2.     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, and your social departments.

3.     Surrender yourself to your desires. Set goals to get more energy. Set goals to get things done. Set goals and discover the real enjoyment of living.

4.     Let your major goal be your automatic pilot. When you get your goal absorb you, you’ll find yourself making the right decisions to reach your goal.

5.     Achieve your goal one step at a time. Regard each task you perform, regardless of how small it may be, as a step toward your goal.

6.     Build-thirty day goals. Day-by-day effort pays off.

7.     Take detours in stride. A detour simply means another route. It should never mean surrendering the goal.

8.     Invest in yourself. Purchase those things that built mental power and efficiency. Invest in education. Invest in idea starters.

Some details...:

A goal is an objective, a purpose. A goal is more than a dream; it’s a dream being acted upon. A goal is more than a hazy “Oh, I wish I could.” A goal is a clear “This is what I’m working toward.”

“The important thing is not where you were or where you want to get” (Dave Mahoney).

 Most important in career planning: Before you start out, know where you want to go.... Demand of yourself clear, precise answers to these questions:

What do I want to accomplish with my life? What do I want to be? What does it take to satisfy me? What level of responsibility do I seek? What worthwhile causes do I want to champion?

Success requires heart-and-soul effort, and you can put your heart and soul only into something you really desire (or make you happy & contented).

The power of goals:

When you surrender yourself to your desires, when you let yourself become obsessed with a goal, you receive the physical power, energy, and enthusiasm needed to accomplish your goal. But you receive something else, something equally valuable. You receive the “automatic instrumentation” needed to keep you going straight to your objective.

To accomplish something, we must plan to accomplish something.... Press forward to success, set goals: deadlines, target dates, self-imposed quotas. You will accomplish only what you want to accomplish.

Goals, intense goals, can keep a person alive when nothing else will.

The step-by-step method is the only intelligent way to attain any objective.... Just as a beautiful building is created from pieces of stone, each of which in itself appears insignificant, in like manner the successful life is constructed.

 

XIII

HOW TO THINK LIKE A LEADER 

To Be More Effective Leader,

Put These Four Leadership Principles to Work: 

1.     Trade minds with the people you want to influence. It’s easy to get others to do what you want them to do if you’ll see things through their eyes. Ask yourself this question before you act: “What would I think of this if I exchanged places with the other person?”

2.     Apply the “Be-Human” rule in your dealings with others. Ask, “What is the human way to handle this?” “What is the human way to deal with people?” In everything you do, show that you put other people first. Just give the other people the kind of treatment you like to receive. You’ll be rewarded.

3.     Think progress, believe in progress, push for progress. Think improvement in everything you do. Over a period of time subordinates tend to become carbon copies of their chief. Be sure the master copy is worth duplicating. Make this a personal resolution: “At home, at work, in community life, if it’s progress I’m for it.”

4.     Take time out to confer with yourself and tap your supreme thinking power. Managed solitude pays off. Use to release your creative power. Use to find solutions to personal and business problems. So spend some time alone everyday just for thinking. Use the thinking technique all great leaders use: confer with yourself (& confer with God). 

Some details:

Remind yourself: you are not pulled to high levels of success. Rather, you are lifted there by those working beside and below you.

Numerous political candidates lose elections because they fail to look at themselves through the minds of the typical voters.

Thinking of the interests of the people we want to influence is an excellent thought rule in every situation.

Whoever is under a man’s power is under his protection, too.

How to correct people who committed mistake so as not to hurt their feelings or make them feel small and embarrassed. Four simple steps:

a.     1^st, Talk to them privately.

b.     2^nd, Praise them for what they are doing well.

c.      3^rd, Point out the one thing at the moment that they could do better and help them find the way.

d.     4^th, Praise them on their good points. 

Two special things you can do to develop your progressive outlook:

1.     Think improvement in everything you do.

2.     Think high standards in everything you do.

 

Check the example you set (self-imposed test). Guide:

What kind of world (church, company, community)

would this world (church, company, community) be,

If everyone in it

were just like me? 

Think, talk, act, live the way you want your subordinates (followers, faithful) to think, talk, act, live – and they will.

Am I a Progressive Thinker? Checklist:

A.   Do I Think Progressively Toward My Work?

1.     Do I appraise my work with the “how can we do it better?” attitude?

2.     Do I praise my company (church), the people in it, and the products (church’s wonderful traditions and teachings) it sells at every possible opportunity?

3.     Are my personal standards with reference to the quantity and quality of my output higher now than three or six months ago?

4.     Am I setting an excellent example for my subordinates, associates, and others I work with?

 

B.   Do I Think Progressively Toward My Family?

1.     Do I set an example of a “progressive,” a supporter of progress, (an inspiration of good Christian living), for the members of the family (clan)

C.   Do I Think Progressively Toward Myself?

1.     Can I honestly say I am a more valuable person today than three or six months ago?

2.     Am I following an organized self-imposed program to increase my value to others?

3.     Do I have forward-looking goals for at least five years in the future? Or ten years in the future?

4.     Am I a booster in every organization or group to which I belong?

5.     Am I resolved to set aside at least thirty minutes each day to be completely by myself? To spend some time in managed solitude every day and think myself to success? Or to ask myself, “How can do better? What should be my nest move?”

D.   Do I Think Progressively Toward My Community?

1.     Have I done anything in the past six months that I honestly feel has improved my community (neighbourhood, churches, schools, etc.)?

2.     Do I boost worthwhile community projects rather than object, criticize, or complain?

3.     Have I ever taken the lead in bringing about some worthwhile improvement in my community?

4.     Do I speak well of my neighbours and fellow citizens?

 

BOOK SUMMARY....:

HOW TO USE THE MAGIC OF THINKING BIG IN

LIFE’S MOST CRUCIAL SITUATIONS 

There is a magic in thinking big. When you hit some rough spots, there is danger that your thinking will shrink size. And when it does, you lose.

Some brief guides for staying big when you’re tempted to use the small approach:

A.   When Little People Try To Drive You down, THINK BIG 

To be sure, there are some people who want you to lose, to experience misfortune, to be reprimanded. But these people can’t hurt you if you’ll remember three things:

1.     You win when you refuse to fight petty people. Fighting little people reduces you to their size. Stay big.

2.     Expect to be sniped at. It’s proof you’re growing.

3.     Remind yourself that snipers are psychologically sick. Be big. Feel sorry for them.

Think Big Enough to be immune to the attacks of petty people.

B.   When That “I-Haven’t-Got-What-It-Takes” Feeling Creeps Up on You, THINK BIG

Remember: if you think you are weak, you are. If you think you’re inadequate, you are. If you think you’re second-class, you are.

Whip that natural tendency to sell yourself short with these tools:

1.     Look important. It helps you think important. How you look on the outside has a lot to do with how you feel on the inside.

2.     Concentrate on your assets. Build a sell-yourself-to-yourself commercial and use it. Learn to supercharge yourself. Know your positive self.

3.     Put other people in proper prospective. The other person is just another human being, so why be afraid of him? 

Think Big Enough to see how good you really are.

C.   When an Argument or Quarrel Seems Inevitable, THINK BIG

Successfully resist the temptation to argue and quarrel by:

1.     Asking yourself, “Honestly now, is this thing really important enough to argue about?”

2.     Reminding yourself, you never gain anything from an argument but you always lose something.

Think Big Enough to see that quarrels, arguments, feuds, and fusses will never help you get where you want to go.

D.   When You Feel Defeated, THINK BIG

It is not possible to achieve large success without hardships and setbacks. But it is possible to live the rest of your life without defeat. Big thinkers react to setbacks this way:

1.     Regards the setback as a lesson. Learn from it. Research it. Use it to propel you forward. Salvage something from every setback.

2.     Blend persistence with experimentation. Back off and start afresh with a new approach. 

Think Big Enough to see that defeat is a state of mind, nothing more.

E.   When You Feel Progress on the Job Is Slowing Down, THINK BIG

No matter what you do and regardless of your occupation, higher status, higher pay come from one thing: increasing the quality and quantity of your output. Do this:

Think, “I can do better.” The best is not unattainable. There are room for doing everything better. Nothing in this world is being done as well as it could be. And when we think, “I can do better,” ways to do better will appear. Thinking “I can do better” switches on your creative power.

Think Big Enough to see that if you put service first, money takes care of itself.

In the words of Publilius Syrus:

A wise man will be master of his mind,

A fool will be its slave.