Magic of thinking big 🤯

David J. Schwartz

Belief

This book really emphasises on believing in the magic of thinking big. It also gives practical advice on ways to achieve more, dream bigger and excel at work, in personal spheres and in life in general. It highlights how adopting right set of attitude is critical in setting oneself up for success. It reinforces my ideas around — goal setting, 10-year horizon planning, monthly reviews, writing things down, ideation and execution. It motivates me to spend more time in meditation — “managed solitude” in directed or undirected way. I’ll try and adopt the suggestion to — do good to humans in a more holistic way; to embrace the way of going beyond the line of duty in any & every interaction with other fellow humans, something I tend to be selective and restrained at. Overall, it was a refreshing book that put in an optimistic mindset towards the way I look at life and myself.

Belief

First step towards success, growth and development is to adopt positive/optimistic mindset. It’s about believing in oneself and our capabilities. Belief that you are capable of achieving more than you think you can.

Health excusitis

Not going to think myself into bed. When I take those shots, I just praise the guys who discovered insulin.

Optimism despite being handicapped

It’s just an arm. Sure, two are better. But they just cut off my arm. My spirit is 100% intact. I’m really grateful for that.

The right attitude and one arm will beat the wrong attitude and two arms every time.

4 things to lick health excusitis

1. Refuse to talk about your health
2. Refuse to worry about your health
3. Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is
4. Remind yourself: It’s better to wear out than rust out.

I felt sorry for myself because I had ragged shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

Don’t pass up living by thinking yourself into a hospital bed.

Intelligence excusitis

The thing that guides your intelligence is more powerful than how much intelligence you have.

Knowledge is power — when you use it constructively.

3 ways to cure

1. Never underestimate your own intelligence and never overestimate the intelligence of others
2. Remember: My attitude is more important than my intelligence
3. Remember: Your ability to think is of much greater value than ability to memorise facts

Age excusitis

It’s one’s attitude towards age that makes it a blessing or a barricade

Luck excusitis

2 ways to cure it

1. Accept the law of “cause” and “effect”
2. Don’t be a wishful thinker

Build confidence and destroy Fear

Fear is real. Fear is success enemy no. 1. Fear of all kinds and sizes is a form of psychological infection.

All confidence is acquired, developed.

Action cures fear. Indecision, postponement / procrastination fertilize fear.

Next time you experience big fear or little fear, steady yourself. Then search for an answer to question: What action can I take to conquer my fear?

Your brain is much like bank. Every day you make thought deposits in your mind bank. Thought deposits grow and become your memory. Memory is basic supplier of raw material for your new thought.

Build confidence through efficient management of your memory bank

1. Deposit only positive thoughts in your memory bank
2. Withdraw only positive things from your memory bank

Negative thoughts produce needless wear and tear on your mental motor

Gratitude journaling — every night before sleeping, count your blessings.

Destroy negative thoughts before they become mental monsters.

Most individuals I try to help are operating their own private museum of mental horror.

A person can make a mental monster out of almost any unpleasant happening.

Any negative thought, fertilised with repeated recall, can develop into a real mind monster, breaking down confidence and paving the way to serious psychological difficulties.

Fear of people

1. Get a balanced view of the other fellow.
2. Develop an understanding attitude

They are important. But so are you. The mutually important attitude helps keep the situation balanced.

Underneath he’s probably a very nice guy. Most folks are.

Remember those 2 short sentences next time someone declares war on you. Hold your fire. The way to win in situations like this is to let the other fellow blow his stack, and then forget it.

To think confidently, act confidently.

Motions are precursors of emotions — Dr. George W. Crane, Applied Psychology

Per psychologists, we can change our attitudes by changing our physical actions.

If you’re shy in introducing yourselves

1. Reach for other person’s hand and clasp it warmly
2. Look directly at the other person
3. Say, “I’m very glad to know you”

Confident action produces confident thinking.

1. Be a front seater
2. Practise making eye contact

How to think Big

Develop big thinker’s vocabulary

1. Use big, positive, cheerful words & phrases to describe how you feel
2. Use bright, cheerful words to describe other people
3. Use positive language to encourage others
4. Use positive language to outline plan to others

Build castles, don’t dig graves.

See what can be, not just what is

Worth of real-estate: Don’t just sell a farm based on current state. Sell the farm alongside the idea that the farm can be converted into a horse ranch or a part-poultry part-cattle farm or something else.

It isn’t what one has that’s important. Rather, it’s how much one is planning to get that counts.

1. Practise adding value to things
2. Practise adding value to people
3. Practise adding value to yourself

Thinking about trivialities

1. Keep your eyes focused on the big objective
2. Ask “Is it really important?”
3. Don’t fall into the triviality trap

In selling, big objective is winning sales, not arguments. In marriage, the big objective is peace, tranquility, happiness — not winning quarrels or saying “I have told you so”. In working with employees, big ojective is developing their full potential, not making issues of their minor errors. In living with neighbours, the big objective is mutual respect and friendship.

It is much better to lose a battle and win the war than to win a battle and lose the war.

Resolve to keep your eyes on the big ball.

Before becoming negatively excited, always ask — Is it important enough for me to get all worked up about?

How to think and dream creatively?

Myth: Creative thinking is about science, art, technology, space, etc.

Fact: Creative thinking is simply finding new, improved ways to do anything.

E.g. low-income family devise a plan to send their kid to private school; family in least-preferred area of street turning it into hot property; figuring out ways to keep children occupied constructively

Where there is a will, there is a way

When you believe, your mind finds ways to do it. Your mind will create a way if you let it. Believe it can be done.

Remove from your vocabulary: “It’s impossible; it can’t be done; won’t work”

Traditional thinking vs Creating thinking

Traditional thinking freezes your mind, blocks your progress and prevents from developing creative power.

1. Become receptive to ideas. Welcome new ideas. Destroy thought repellants.
2. Be experimental. Break up fixed routines. Expose to new experiences
3. Be progressive/forward, not regressive/backward.

Each day, before you begin work, devote 10 minutes to thinking:

1. How can I do a better job today?
2. What can I do today to improve X?
3. How can I increase my personal efficiency?

Capacity is a state of mind

Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion — Parkinson’s law.

Success = Do what you do better (Quality)+ Do more of what you do (Quantity)

Listening > talking

Big people monopolise the listening. Small people monopolise the talking.

Encourage others to talk. Little urges — “Tell me about your experience”, “WDYT should be done about”, “WDYT is key point”

1. Test your views in form of questions E.g. RFC [Request for Comment]
2. Concentrate on what others say

Listening is more than just keeping your mouth shut. Listening means letting what’s said penetrate your mind.

Most often, people don’t listen. They are just waiting for a chance to take the mic and do the talking.

Mental stimulation for Idea seeding

1. Join & meet regularly with 1+ professional group in your own occupational area
2. Do the same as 1 outside your occupational interests

Ideas are fruits of your thinking. But they’ve got to be harnessed and put to work to have any value.

Ideas are like bushels from oak tree. Out of 100 bushels that fall from oak tree, only 2–3 acorns end up into a tree. Most are destroyed by squirrels or the hard ground. Likewise for ideas, if we’re not on guard, squirrels [negative-thinking-people] will destroy most of them.

1. Don’t let ideas escape. Document them.
2. Review ideas. Filter out signal from noise.
3. Cultivate/Fertilize your idea. Read, investigate, put it to work. Put it on paper.

You are what you think you are

We receive kind of treatment what we think we deserve. Thinking regulates action. If you feel inferior, you’ll act inferior.

Pay twice as much and buy half as many

Appearance is important. You owe it to others — but more important, you owe it to yourself — to look your best.

How you think determines how you act. How you act determines: How others react to you

Never leave home without feeling certain that you look the kind of person you want to be.

Dress right, you can’t afford not to. Dress right, it always pays.

Look important — it helps you think important. Your appearance “talks”.

Like appearance, what you think about your work says things about you to your superiors, peers, colleagues and everyone whom you come in contact.

Person who thinks his job is important receives mental signals on how to do job better; And a better job means more promotion, more money, more prestige and more happiness.

Give yourself a pep talk several times daily.

Practice uplifting self-praise. Don’t practise belittling self-punishment.

Build your own sell-yourself-on-yourself commercial.

Chai | Sell yourself on yourself commercial

In any given situation, take a step back and check if the way you’re thinking is what an important person would.

Manage your environment

Make your environment for you, not against you. Don’t let suppressive forces — negative, you-cant-do-it people — make you think defeat.

Don’t let small thinking people hold you back.

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

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

Through thought-poison ☠️ out of your environment.

Avoid gossip 🙊
Talk about people but stay on the positive side 😊

Make your attitude your allies

How we think shows through in how we act. Attitudes are mirrors of the mind. They reflect thinking.

When our attitude is right, our abilities reach a maximum of effectiveness and good results inevitably follow.

To activate others, you must first activate yourself. Enthusiasm is the key to activation.

Results come in proportion to enthusiasm applied.

Activating the enthusiasm

1. Dig into it deeper
2. In everything you do, LIFE it up
3. Broadcast good news

“I’ve got some good news” — immediate attention grab.

Make it a habit to speak favourably about the weather, regardless of what the weather actually is. ⛈️☔️🌪️🌫️

I met one of your good friends last week. He said to tell you hello

Whenever you leave a person, ask yourself, “Does that person honestly feel better because he has talked with me?”

Since I was here last, big things have happened. Over 350,000 new babies were born last month, and more babies mean more business for both of us.

Grow the you-are-important attitude

Each human, regardless of age, sex, place of birth, culture, background, aptitude, IQ level, has this desire: They want to feel important.

Satisfying the craving, the hunger to be important carries you forward to success. I ti s basic equipment in your success tool chest. Even though it costs nothing, few people use it.

Regardless of the status and income level, every human is important.

1. People do more for you when you make them feel important
2. When you help others feel important, you help yourself feel important too.

How to do that?

1. Practise appreciation — by letting others know how you depend on them.
   Never never let anyone feel he/she is taken for granted
   Practice appreciation with warm smile.
   Practice appreciation with honest, personalized compliments.
   Don’t waste time classifying people as important vs non-important. Make no exceptions.
2. Practise calling people by their names
3. Don’t hog glory, invest it instead
   Pass on the mic / praise to subordinates / peers.
   Praise is power. Invet the praise you receive from your superior.
4. Put-service-first; not money first.

People with money-first attitude become so money conscious that they forget money can’t be harvested unless they plant the seeds that grow the money. Seed of money is service.

Plant the money seed = Service.

Good quality movie becomes highest grossing film. Good performance in company gives you a promotion.

Promotions are a lagging indicator of performance not leading.

Think right toward people

Success depends on the support of other people.

The only hurdle between you and what you want to be is the support of others.

When choosing right candidate for a particular job / role, ‘likeability’ factor is given far more weight than technical factor.

A person is not pulled up to a higher level job; he is lifted up.

• Learn to remember names
• Be a comfortable person so there’s no strain in being with you
• Acquire quality of relaxed easy-going so things don’t ruffle you
• Don’t be egotistical. Guard against impression that you ‘know it all’
• Cultivate quality of being interesting, so people get value from their association with you
• Study to get ‘scratchy’ elements out of your personality, even ones you’re unconscious of
• Sincerely attempt to heal every misunderstanding you have had. Drain off grievances
• Practise liking people until you do so genuinely
• Never miss opportunity to congratulate someone on their achievement / express sympathy in sorrow/disappointment
• Give spiritual strength to people & they’ll give genuine affection to you

Friendships can’t be bought. When we try, we lose 2 ways

1. We waste money
2. We create contempt

Take initiative in building friendships — leaders always do.

Don’t go into natural trap of “Let him make the first move”

Don’t be a conversation hog. Practise conversation generosity.

Listen and learn.

Benjamin Franklin on handling defeat / when things go wrong

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.

Get the action habit

Avoid costly mistake of waiting until conditions are perfect before you act:

1. Expect future obstacles and difficulties
2. Meet problems and obstacles as they arise