The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz
It’s a classic in the field of motivation
and psychology of motivation.
One of the great things about this book is
just prompting us to think bigger because
truth of the matter is if you are someone
who is thinking small compared to being someone
who is thinking big.
If you had two people, one was a small thinker,
one was a big thinker, where would you bet
your money?
Where would you put your dollars?
You would bet it on the guy who is thinking
big, who is going to take action, he dreams
big.
That is what this book is about.
Thinking bigger, and acting bigger, and making
our lives bigger.
So what are the strategies in order to do
that?
What are some ways in we can live a bigger
life?
We can think bigger, and act bigger, and live
bigger lives.
The first big idea is to make your environment
make you successful.
What that means is design your environment
such that it forces you to be successful.
Make your environment such that no matter
what, the default condition is that you will
be successful.
Now example is, let’s say if you are hanging
out with people, certain kinds of people but
none of them are as successful as you are
and not going in the same direction as you
are going in life.
What do you think will happen?
More than likely you are not going to succeed.
Your environment has not been designed to
make you successful.
Now what could you do instead?
You could say I’m going to hangout, im going
to create an environment such I spend time
with people who are more successful than I
am or who are at a higher level than I am
because that will ensure that I am successful.
I am designing my environment in order to
make me a bigger person, to make me successful,
to make me walk with these giants.
That is what you want to do.
A simple example of this is in the area of
fitness and nutrition, if someone wants to
lose weight or build a better body, one of
the key things is you want to clean your house
of all the junk food, all the temptations
that are around there because if you do not
have any temptations, you will not eat them.
But if you have cookies, and chips, and sodas,
and alcohol lying around the house, more than
likely you will end up consuming it and find
yourself in a situation where the environment
is failing you.
It is an amazing thing about us human beings
that we can design our environment and our
environment in turn design us.
They make us.
It is our job, it is a requirement for us
to design the environment that we are after
design the environment, the big thinking environment.
Design your environment that thinks big.
That is what the magic of thinking big is,
right?
The next big idea, he calls it action but
I want to call it attack.
What that means is that in life there are
so many times that we need to take action.
We need to go after things that we want but
somehow we find ourselves not taking the actions
that we need to take.
We stop ourselves from taking the action we
need to take.
We somehow feel like we need to be more prepared.
We need to have all our dots lined up but
that is not the case.
The truth is that the longer we wait, the
more fearful we become.
The biggest friend of fear is time.
The more time you give yourself to think about
the situation and how you want to handle it,
the more your fear will grow stronger.
Inaction basically feeds fear.
Time feeds fear.
So action is the one that kills fear.
The law of nature is that action precedes
action.
In order to move anything, you got to take
action.
Not just think but act.
Attack the problem that is in front of you
rather than just wait for some magic to happen
to move the things for you.
And a great example comes from the life of
Napoleon Bonaparte, the great French warrior.
At one time when they were in the battlefields,
his general comes up to him and he says, “Sir
the conditions of the war is just not right
right now so I recommend that we wait two
days later” and Napoleon got furious he
said, “I don’t care about the circumstances,
hell, I make circumstances.
You got to attack right now.
I’m not going to wait.
I’m going to make these circumstances move
according to me.
So you got to attack.”
And a great lesson that Napoleon is teaching
us is that in any situation you have the option
to go on and keep getting ready, just attack,
take action.
Another great warrior, another great general
of modern times is George Patton and he said,
he talked about planning because sometimes
he spends too much time planning and not taking
action he said, a good plan executed today
is better than a plan executed a week from
now.
Take action no matter what.
Take action on this good plan.
You are not just going to wait for the perfect
plan to materialize because by that time you
probably would have lost the battle.
Another example comes from the book Pilgrim’s
Progress and he said there is this character
the protagonist in the book.
He has this magical shield, but in order for
the shield to manifest itself and show that
it will protect him he has to run right in
the face of his demons, in the face of his
fears, in the face of his problems.
Jump into it and then the shield will open
up, then the shield will protect him, so the
shield will not protect him unless he jumps
into that, unless he goes for it, unless he
fights what is scaring him.
Once he fights it, the shield appears and
it will protect him every time.
Another great idea about this book is that
you are selling yourself.
What that means is that sometimes in life
we get stopped because we think that we are
not good enough, that we are not worthy enough,
that we don’t have the qualities that we
need.
So what David Schwartz is saying is identify
the challenge in front of you and then write
down all your great qualities which will ensure
that you will win at this challenge.
Write down all your great qualities.
And then write a commercial about yourself,
write an advertisement about yourself.
Sell yourself to yourself.
Prove it to yourself that you are amazing.
Prove it to yourself that you are amazing.
Sell yourself and convince yourself that you
are not to be deterred by this challenge.
You are not to be deterred by this problem.
And do this in the morning, do this in the
afternoon, do this at night time.
Repeat this again and again to yourself and
what you will find is that as you sell yourself
to yourself, you will have found the confidence
that feeling that yes I can do it because
I have all these qualities.
And the last thing I want to talk about is
the idea of your true size.
Sometimes in life we stop ourselves from doing
great things because we say well I don’t
have these assets, I don’t have these qualities
that these great people have, I don’t have
the intelligence, I don’t have the will
power, I am not young enough, I am not technically
smart enough, I am not good looking enough,
I am not smart enough, I am not tall enough.
Whatever it is you have all these ideas in
your head and you make up all these excuses
in your life because you assume yourself to
be smarter than you really are.
So the exercise for you is to identify your
5 chief assets at what you are really outstanding,
5 things that you really believe in yourself,
you are proud of those assets, and then under
each of those assets, write the names of people
who have succeeded who are not even as close
to you on these assets.
So if you think you have to be intelligent,
you’re not intelligent enough or if you
think one of your assets is street smart,
and you make a list of 5 other people who
are not even as street smart as you are, or
close to being as street smart as you are,
then maybe you make a list of you think you’re
not good looking enough to get the girl and
then you go ahead and make a list of 5 people
who are nowhere as close to being as good
looking as you are but who are highly successful
or who are way better or were way more successful
than you are when it comes to this endeavor
in life.
So identify people in your life who are way
more successful than you are or not even in
your life but in other areas in your life
that you see who are way more successful who
don’t necessarily have the qualities that
you have.
So that will give you an estimation of your
true size of your true potential in this world
and why you must not stop yourself from going
after the big dreams in your life
