The Magic of Thinking Big

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3 Sentence Summary

Believe in yourself, never underestimate your own intelligence, think positively, and plan for success. The Magic of Thinking Big may come across as one of those cheezy self-help books, but if read with an open mind, you’ll find plenty of practical wisdom in Dr. Schwartz’s words. This book serves as a good reminder that confidence isn’t something that we’re born with, but rather a trait that is developed with intentional habits.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Believe that success is possible and the how-to will follow.
2. Action cures fear.
3. Never sell yourself short.
4. Surround yourself with positive influences.
5. Take the initiative to build relationships.

The Magic of Thinking Big Summary

Believe You Can Succeed and You Will

• When you believe I-can-do-it, the how-to-do-it follows suit.
• Strong belief triggers the mind to figuring ways and means and how-to. And believing you can succeed makes others place confidence in you.
• 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.
• Your mind is a thought factory. You can control whether those thoughts are positive or negative.
• Observe other successful people. Learn to do what they do.

How to Develop the Power of Belief

1. Think success, don’t think failure. Thinking success conditions your mind to create plans that produce success. Failure thinking conditions the mind to think other thoughts that produce failure.
2. Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Never sell yourself short.
3. Believe BIG. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief.

Cure Yourself of Excusitis, The Failure Disease

1. Poor health.
   • Refuse to talk about your health.
   • Refuse to worry about your health.
   • Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is.
   • Remind yourself often, “It’s better to wear out than rust out.”
2. Not smart enough.
   • Never underestimate your own intelligence or overestimate the intelligence of others.
   • Remind yourself daily that your attitude is more important than your intelligence.
   • Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts.
3. Too old.
   • Look at your present age positively.
   • Compute how much productive time you have left.
   • Invest future time in doing what you really want to do.
4. Unlucky.
   • Accept the law of cause and effect. “Good luck” is preceded by preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking.
   • Don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waste your mental energy dreaming of an effortless way to win success. Get to work instead.

Build Confidence and Destroy Fear

• Fear is real. And we must recognize it exists before we can conquer it.
• No one is born confident. Confidence is acquired, developed.
• Action cures fear.
• Indecision and postponement fertilizes fear.

2-Step Process to Cure Fear and Win Confidence

1. Isolate your fear. Pin it down. Determine exactly what you are afraid of.
2. Take action. There is always some kind of action that you can take for any kind of fear.

Build Confidence With Your Memories

• Deposit only positive thoughts in your memory bank.
• Don’t dwell on unpleasant situations.
• Count your blessings.
• Recall all your little victories and accomplishments.
• Withdraw only positive thoughts from your memory bank.

Conquer Fear of Other People By Putting Them in Proper Perspective

• The other person is important, but so are you.
• We’re all human beings with essentially the same interests, desires, and problems.
• Be understanding and give people the benefit of the doubt.

5 Exercises to Build Your Confidence

1. Sit in the front row. Make it a rule to sit as close to the front as you can.
2. Practice making eye contact.
3. Walk 25% faster.
4. Practice speaking up.
5. Smile big.

How to Think Big

• Most people think small. This means that there’s less competition than you think for a very rewarding career.
• Where success is concerned, people are measured by the size of their thinking.
• Look at things not as they are, but as they can be.
• A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present.
• The “I’m doing my job and that’s enough” attitude is small, negative thinking. Big thinkers see themselves as members of a team effort, as winning or losing with the team, not by themselves.

Measure Your True Size

1. Determine you five chief assets. Ask people you trust for their honest opinion. These could be your education, experience, technical skills, appearance, attitudes, personality, initiative, etc.
2. Underneath each asset, write the names of three people you know who have achieved large success but who do not have this asset to as great a degree as you.
3. Notice that you outrank many successful people in at least one asset. Conclusion? You are much bigger than you think you are. Never sell yourself short.

4 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.
3. Use positive language to encourage others. Compliment people personally at every opportunity.
4. Use positive words to outline plans to others. Share good news. Promise victory.

Practice Adding Value

1. To things: Look for ideas to make things worth more. Everything has value in proportion to the ideas for using it.
2. To people: As you move higher in organizations, more of your responsibility becomes “people development.” Look for ways to help your subordinates be more effective.
3. To yourself: What have you done today to make yourself more valuable?

What It Takes to Be A Good Public Speaker

1. Knowledge of what you’re talking about.
2. An intense desire to tell other people about it.

How to Think and Dream Creatively

• Creative thinking is simply finding new and improved ways to do anything.
• When you believe something is impossible, your mind goes to work for you to prove why. But, when you believe, really believe, something can be done, your mind goes to work for you and helps you to find the ways to do it.
• Eliminate the word “impossible” from your thoughts and vocabulary.
• The only thing worthy of your mental concentration is to come up with reasons why you CAN do something.
• There are no best ways of doing anything.
• If you want it done, give it to a busy man. All the successful, competent people are busy people.
• Big people monopolize the listening. Small people monopolize the talking.

3 Ways to Fight Traditional Thinking

1. Be receptive to new ideas.
2. Be an experimental person. Break up fixed routines and seek out new experiences.
3. Be progressive, not regressive. Think about how you can do it better today than you did yesterday.

3-Stage Program to Strengthen Your Creativity Through Asking and Listening

1. Encourage others to talk. You’ll soak up raw material which you can use to produce creative thoughts AND you’ll win friends.
2. Test your own views in the form of questions. Let other people help you smooth and polish your ideas.
3. Concentrate on what the other person says. Listening means letting what’s said penetrate your mind. Evaluate it.

2 Ways to Get Mental Stimulation

1. Join and meet regularly with at least one professional group that provides stimulation in your own occupational area. Rub shoulders — and minds — with other success-oriented people.
2. Join and participate in at least one group outside your occupational interests. Expand your thinking and broaden your horizons.

3 Ways to Harness and Develop Your Ideas

1. Don’t let ideas escape. Write them down. Memory is a weak slave when it comes to preserving and nurturing brand new ideas.
2. Review your ideas. File them into an active file.
3. Cultivate and fertilize your idea. Think about it. Tie the idea to related ideas. Investigate all angles. Put it to work when the time is right.

You Are What You Think You Are

• To be important, you must think you are important.
• How you think determines how you act. How you act determines how others react to you.

Dress Well

• Dress right. It always pays.
• Use clothing as a tool to lift your spirits and build confidence.
• People do evaluate you on the basis of your appearance. First impressions last.
• The better you are packaged, the more public acceptance you will receive.
• Pay twice as much and buy half as many. Quality is far more important than quantity.

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.

2 Suggestions for Getting Others to Do More for You

1. Always show positive attitudes toward your job so that your subordinates will “pick up” right thinking.
2. Ask yourself each day, “Am I worthy in every respect of being imitated? Are all my habits such that I would be glad to see them in my subordinates?”

How to Build Your “Sell Yourself to Yourself” Commercial

1. List all the things you do really well. Your assets. Your best qualities.
2. Write your commercial as if you’re talking to yourself.
3. Practice your commercial out loud in private at least once a day.
4. Read it before you tackle anything that demands courage.
5. Believe that success comes from managed thinking.

Manage Your Environment: Go First Class

• Your mind is a delicate instrument.
• The body is what the body is fed. Likewise, your mind is what the mind is fed.
• The kind of mental diet we consume determines our habits, attitudes and personality.
• People who tell you it cannot be done almost always are unsuccessful people, are strictly average or mediocre at best in terms of accomplishment. Opinions of these people can be poison.
• You are judged by the company you keep. Birds of a feather do flock together.
• Don’t let negative thinkers pull you down to their level. Cling to people who think progressively. Move upward with them.
• Make it a rule to seek advice from people who know. Successful people are often some of the most humble and eager to help.

Ways to Make Your Social Environment First Class

1. Circulate in new groups. Make new friends, join new organizations, enlarge your social orbit.
2. Select friends who have views different from your own.
3. Select friends who stand above petty, unimportant things. People who are interested in positive things and friends who want to see you succeed. Surround yourself with encouragers.

Make Your Attitudes Your Allies

• When our attitude is right, our abilities reach a maximum of effectiveness and good results inevitably follow.
• Right attitudes win for you in every situation.
• To activate others, you must first activate yourself. To get others enthusiastic, you must first be enthusiastic yourself. Enthusiasm can make something 1,000% better.
• Grow the “Service first” attitude, and watch money take care of itself. Make it a rule in everything you do, give people more than they expect to get.

Grow These 3 Attitudes

1. The attitude of I’m activated.
2. The attitude of You are important.
3. The attitude of Service first.

3 Steps to Develop the Power of Enthusiasm

1. Dig into it deeper. Learn more about it. Use this technique to develop interest in other people too. Ask them about themselves — their job, their family, their background, their ideas and ambitions. Keep digging and you’ll uncover a fascinating person.
2. In everything you do, life it up. Life up your handshake. Smile with your eyes. Talk with vitality.
3. Broadcast good news. Good news does more than get attention; good news pleases people. Good news develops enthusiasm. Tell your family what good happened today. Recall amusing, pleasant things you experienced.

Grow the You-Are-Important Attitude

• Everyone wants to feel important.
• Every human has a role to play in God’s plans.
• People do more for you when you make them feel important.
• When you help others fell important, you help yourself feel important too.
• Practice appreciation. Give positive feedback often.
• Practice calling people by their names.
• Don’t hog glory. Invest it instead.
• Ask yourself, “What can I do today to make my wife and family happy?” Give them planned attention. Don’t wait for birthdays and holidays.

Think Right Toward People

• Success depends on the support of other people.
• 90% of the time, the “likeability” factor is given more weight than the technical factor.
• You are not pulled up to a higher level job. You are lifted up. Being likeable makes you lighter to lift.
• Take the initiative in building friendships — leaders always do.
• The most important person present is the one person most active in introducing himself.
• Recognize the fact that no person is perfect.
• Recognize the fact that the other fellow has a right to be different.
• Don’t be a reformer.
• If you let your thinking go uncontrolled, you can find much to dislike in almost anyone. But if you manage your thinking properly, you can find many qualities to like and admire about the same person.
• How you think when you lose determines ho long it will be until you win.

President Lyndon Johnson’s 10 Points of Likeability

1. Learn to remember names.
2. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you. Be an old-shoe, old-hat kind of individual.
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 Christian basis, every misunderstanding you have had or now have.
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.

6 Ways to Win Friends By Exercising Initiative

1. Introduce yourself to others at every possible opportunity.
2. Be sure the other person gets your name straight.
3. Be sure you can pronounce the other person’s name the way he/she pronounces it.
4. Write down the other person’s name, and be mighty sure you have it spelled correctly.
5. Drop a personal note or make a phone call to the new friends you feel you want to know better. Follow through.
6. Say pleasant things to strangers.

Be Likeable in Conversation

• The person who does the most talking and the person who is the most successful are rarely the same person.
• Successful people demonstrate conversation generosity. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• The average person would rather talk about himself more than anything else in the world. Give them the chance, and they’ll love you for it.
• Conversation generosity is the easiest, simplest, and surest way to win a friend.
• Let other people talk so you can learn from them.

Get the Action Habit

• Don’t wait until conditions are perfect.
• Use action to cure fear and gain confidence.
• People that get things done in this world don’t wait for the spirit to move them,; they move the spirit.
• Now is the magic word of success. Tomorrow, next week, later, sometime, someday are synonyms for the failure word, never.
• Be a crusader. When you see something that you believe ought to be done, pick up the ball and run.
• Be a volunteer.

How to Turn Defeat Into Victory

• All those who have succeeded in a major way have been pounded by losing situations.
• Salvage something from every setback.
• Defeat is only a state of mind, and nothing more.
• Being self-critical is constructive. It helps you build the personal strength and efficiency needed for success.
• Professionals seek out their faults and weaknesses then correct them.
• Success relies on the combination of persistence and experimentation.
• You see in any situation what you expect to see. See the good side and conquer defeat. All things do work together for good if you’ll just develop clear vision.

How to Develop Greater Power to Experiment

1. Tell yourself, “There IS a way.” Belief is important. You need to believe a solution is possible.
2. Back off and start afresh. Get away from the problem and look at it from a new angle.

Use Goals to Help You Grow

• A goal is a dream that’s being acted upon.
• Without goals, people wander through life.
• The important things is not where you are but where you want to get.
• The most important lesson in career-planning: Before you start out, know where you want to go.
• Desire, when harnessed, is power.
• Success requires heart and soul effort and you can only put your heart and soul into something you really desire.
• Most really successful people work much longer than 40 hours a week.
• Focusing on a goal provides energy.
• When we face a day with a plan, we get things done. To accomplish something, we must plan to accomplish something.
• Intense goals will keep a personal alive when nothing else will.
• Progress is made one step at a time.
• Prepare to take detours in stride.
• The biggest and most rewarding kind of investment is self-investment.

10 Year Planning Guide

1. Work: 10 years from now…
   • What income level do I want to attain?
   • What level of responsibility do I seek?
   • How much authority do I want to command?
   • How prestige do I expect to gain from my work?
2. Home: 10 years from now…
   • What kind of standard of living do I want to provide from my family and myself?
   • What kind of house do I want to live in?
   • What kind of vacations do I want to take?
   • What financial support do I want to give my children in their early adult years?
3. Social: 10 years from now…
   • What kinds of friends do I want to have?
   • What social groups do I want to join?
   • What community leadership positions would I like to hold?
   • What worthwhile causes do I want to champion?

The 5 Weapons Used to Commit Success-Suicide (Destroy Them)

1. Self-depreciation. Telling yourself that you can’t do something.
2. Security-itis. People who don’t want to risk anything.
3. Competition. Believing that the field is too crowded.
4. Parental dictation. Doing what your parents want you to do.
5. Family responsibility. Not changing due to social obligations.

How to Think Like A Leader

1. Trade minds with the people you want to influence.
2. Think: What is the human way to handle this?
3. Think progress, believe in progress, push for progress.
4. Take time out to confer with yourself.

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