37. The Magic of Thinking Big - David Schwartz (📖)

15 Nov 2017

Reading Notes:

The “Okay-I’ll-give-it-a-try-but-I-don’t-think-it-will-work” attitude produces failures.

It is well to respect the leader. Learn from him. Observe him. Study him. But don’t worship him. Believe you can surpass. Believe you can go beyond.

Others see in us what we see in ourselves.

A person is a product of his thoughts. Believe Big and grow big.

Step One: Believe in yourself, believe you can succeed.

Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are.

Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed belief in themselves and what they do. Never–yes, never–sell yourself short.

Isn’t it surprising to you that most people understand so little about why people act as they do even though they are surrounded by people all their lives? Most people are not trained observes. One important purpose of this book is to help you train yourself to observe, to develop deep sight into human action.

It’s fun to feel yourself growing more confident, more effective, more successful day by day, month by month. 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.

Go deep into your study of people and you’ll discover unsuccessful peple suffer a mind-deadening thought disease. We call this disease excusitis.

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

One may get a little sympathy, but one doesn’t get respect and loyalty for being a chronic complainer.

Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence:

1. We underestimate our own brainpower.
2. we overestimate the other fellow’s brainpower.

The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.

Just enough sense to stick with something - a chore, task, project–until it’s completed pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence be of genius caliber.

For stickability is 95% of ability.

It’s a rare case when we pass up a young fellow because he lacks brains. Nearly always it’s attitude.

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

The ability of 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 other. Don’t sell yourself short.

Plays and magazine articles on the topic “Why You Are Washed Up at 40” are popular, not because they present true facts, but because they appeal to many worried minds looking for an excuse.

Life is actually longer than most people think!

Think, “I’m going to start now. my best years are ahead of me.”

Action cures fear.

To think confidently, act confidently.

Psychologists tell us we can change our attitude by changing our physical actions.

You can feel more superior when you make yourself stand tall than when you slouch.

Psychologists link slovenly posture and sluggish walking to unpleasant attitudes towards oneself, work, and the people around us.

Then there’s a third group. Their walk tells the world, “I’ve got someplace important to go, something important to do. What’s more, I will succeed at what I will do fifteen minutes from now.”

One of the main things we want to determine in the screening interview is the individuals motivation. We want to find out if he or she is the kind of person who can, in a few years, direct major projects.

The tendency for so many people to think small means there is much less competition than you think for a very rewarding career.

Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches or pounds or college degrees, or family backgrounds; they are measured by the size of their thinking. How big we think determines the size of our accomplishments.

You’re bigger than you think. So fit your thinking to your true size. Think as big as you really are! Never, never, never sell yourself short!

We do not think in words and phrases. We think only in pictures and/or images. When spoken or read, that amazing instrument, the mind, automatically converts words and phrases into mind pictures.

Say you feel wonderful at every possible opportunity. Become known as a person who always feels great.

Compliment people personally at every opportunity.

Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present.

I’ve made up my mind to look at myself as a person I’m going to be in a few short years.

And when I look at myself that way, I feel bigger and think bigger.

As you move higher and higher in the world of success, more and more of your job becomes “people development.”

Big things that make a good speaker: knowledge of what he’s going to talk about and an increase desire to tell it to other people.

Yet all these successful public-speakers have one thing in common: They have something to say and they feel a burning desire for other people to hear it.

Remember, It pays in every way to think big!

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

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

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 find the ways to do it.

Just by conscientiously asking myself, ‘How can I do a better job?’ I find the answers.

Top success is reserved for the I-can-do-t-better kind of person.

Capacity is a state of mind. How much we can do depends on how much we think we can do. When you really believe you can do more, your mind thinks creatively and shows you the way.

Others see in us what we see in ourselves. We recieve the kind of treatment we think we deserve.

To gain the respect of others, you must first think you deserve respect. And the more respect you have for yourself, the more respect others will have for you.

Remember, your appearance “talks.”

“Dress Right. You Can’t Afford Not To!”

Look at yourself through your superior’s eyes, your associates eyes.

Your physical exterior affects your mental interior. How you look on the outside affects how you think and feel on the inside.

The well-dressed person’s appearance says positive things. It tells people, “Here is an important person: intelligent, prosperous, and dependable. This man can be looked up to, admired, trusted. He respects himself, and I respect him.”

When I worry: Would an important person worry about this?

When I lose my temper: Would an important person get mad at what I’m mad at?

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

People go along with the fellow who believes what he says.

And when you put your life in your talk, you automatically put more life in you.

Everyone, yes, everyone– your neighbor, you, your partner, your boss – has a natural desire to feel he is “somebody.” The desire to be important is man’s strongest, most compelling nonbiological hunger.

It pays to make “little” people feel like big people.

You must feel important to succeed. Helping others to feel important rewards you because it makes you feel more important.

And the seed of money is service. That’s why “put service first” is an attitude that creates wealth. Put servicec fist, and money takes care of itself.

Spend some time each day answering this question: “How can I give more than is expected of me?” Then apply the answers.

Success depends on the support of other people. The only hurdle between you and what you want to be is the support of others.

The person who does the most talking and the person who is the most successful are rarely the same person. Almost without exception, the more successful the person, the more he practices conversation generosity, that is, he encourages the other person to talk about himself, his views, his accomplishments, his family, his job, his problems.

Remember this, the average person would rather talk about himself than anything else in this world.

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

A simple pencil is the greatest concentration tool money can buy. If I had to choose between an ultrafancy, deeply carpeted, beautifully decorated, sound-proof office and a pencil and paper, I’d choose the pencil and paper everytime.

When you write a thought on paper, your full attention is automatically focussed on that thought. That’s because the mind is not designed to think one thought and write another at the same time.

A goal is an objective, a purpose. A goal is a clear “This is what I’m working towards.”

The important thing is not where you were or where you are but where you want to get.

People these days are measured by the size of their dreams. No one accomplishes more than he sets out to accomplish.

To accomplish something, we must plan to accomplish to something.

Remind yourself once again that you are not pulled to high levels of success. Rather, you are lifted there by those working beside or below you.

When you take over the leadership of a group, the persons in that group immediately begin to adjust themselves to the standards you set.

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

The simplest way to get high-level performance is to be sure the master copy is worth duplicating.

Leading universities require professors to lecture as few as five hours per week so that the professor has time to think.

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.

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.

Concentrate on your assets. Build a sell-yourself-to-yourself commercial and use it.

In the words of Publilius Syrus: A wise man will be the master of his mind, a fool will be its slave.