Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big by David J Schwartz

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big 

The key points of The Magic of Thinking Big are: 

1. Successful people are just like you, they just habitually think bigger. 
2. To increase your confidence, focus on positivity and allow negativity to drain from your mind. 
3. No one can be successful by themselves. Be respectful of others so they support you. Create a team to help and support you. 
4. Don’t fall prey to “Excusitis” a habitual way of thinking that looks for excuses for our failures instead of ways that we can succeed. 
5. Formulate a plan and make changes as needed as you go along and encounter obstacles along the way. 

Introduction 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Think of the people who earn five times as much as you. Are they five times smarter? Do they work five times harder? If the answer is no, then the question is “What do they have that I don’t?” 

In his book, The Power of Thinking Big, David Schwartz suggests that the main thing separating them from us is that they think five times bigger. We are all, more than we realize, the product of the thinking which surrounds us, and most of this thinking is little, not big. If we enlarge our thinking, we’ll enlarge our life. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 1

Believe you can succeed, and you will 

Do you believe you’ll have positive relationships, partners, and friendships? 

If you don’t believe you will, then you are wrong. You are letting this belief system limit your potential success. In order to challenge these limiting beliefs and acquire the power of positive beliefs, you should follow these three tips: 

1. Think of success, don’t think of failure. When you face a challenge, replace your automatic negative thinking with positive thoughts. Let thoughts of success dominate your mind. Adopting positive mindsets will allow you to create plans that produce success. It’s just as true that by maintaining negative belief systems you’ll encourage plans that produce failure. 
2. Regularly remind yourself that you are better than you think you are. Successful people aren’t superhuman or just lucky. Successful people are just ordinary people who’ve developed a strong belief in themselves and what they do. So don’t sell yourself short.
3. Believe Big . Thing big and your life will become bigger. The size of your success is determined by the size of your beliefs. If you don’t believe that you can be successful, it is unlikely you will think of all the ways you can achieve success. If you want to think of new ways of doing things and have great ideas, you first must believe it’s possible.  Think of little goals and you’ll get little achievements. Think about big goals, you’ll have big success. Big ideas and plans are often easier than little ideas. 

 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big 

Key Principle 2 

Rid Yourself of Excusitis, the Failure Disease 

Successful people make fewer excuses because they’re continually searching for ways to achieve their goals. Excusitis the failure disease. It has various forms. Let’s go through them: 

• Health Excusitis. The more you talk about your illnesses, even a cold, the worse it gets. Focusing on bad health is like putting fertilizer on weeds. In addition, we lose respect and loyalty by constantly complaining.Instead, express gratitude that your health is as good as it is. Life is yours to enjoy so don’t waste it. Don’t pass on life by thinking yourself into a hospital bed.
• Intelligence Excusitis. We tend to underestimate our own intelligence and overestimate the intelligence of others. Don’t sell yourself short. Concentrate on the assets you have and cultivate your talents. Remember, it’s not how big your brain is that matters, it’s how you use the brain you have that counts. Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.” At work and home, practice positive attitudes. Put your intelligence to positive use by finding ways to win. Remember that your ability to think is more important than your ability to memorize facts. Use your mind to create and develop new ideas. Ask yourself, “Am I using my brain to make my own history, or am I just to watching the history made by others?”
• Age Excusitis. Don’t look at your age negatively. Think, “I’m still young,” not “I’m too old.” Start looking forward to new beginnings and increase your enthusiasm with a sense of youth. Calculate how much productive time you have left. Remember, a thirty-year-old still has 80 percent of their productive life ahead of them. Even a fifty-year-old still has 40 percent of their very best years left. This doesn’t mean you should waste time, but you should invest future time into doing what you really want to do. 
• Luck Excusitis. Accept the law of cause and effect. Take a closer look at what appears to be someone’s “dumb luck.” You’ll notice that their success is not from luck but from preparation, planning, and successful thinking and successful people create good luck and learn from setbacks. Those with bad luck don’t learn from their setbacks. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 3  

Build Confidence and Destroy Fear 

Make peace with your fears. Destroy fearful thoughts that prevent you from taking action towards your goals. If you want your fear to go away, just take action and start to move towards your goal. Putting yourself into action cures fear. Isolate your fears and start to take constructive actions. 

Make the effort to only put positive thoughts in mind. Don’t dwell on unpleasant events or situations. If you use these two approaches, you’ll start to build confidence. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 4  

How to Think Big 

To think big, you must develop the vocabulary of a big thinker. Try to use bright and cheerful words. Use words that promise victory, happiness, hope, and pleasure. You should avoid words that create unpleasant images of failure, grief and defeat. Avoid saying phrases like, “We’ve failed. There’s no point in trying.” Instead, replace those phrases with positive ones like, “Let’s keep going and find a new way to succeed.” 

Stop wasting your time worrying about trivial matters. Focus all your attention on bigger plans, goals and objectives. 

Practice adding value to yourself and to other people. You’ll always get back what you put out. If you don’t get back what you expect, it’s probably because you’re not adding enough value to others.  

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 5 

How to Think and Dream Creatively 

When you believe that something is possible, your mind will find a way to get it. Believing a solution will come paves the way for the solution. Ask yourself “how” you can do better. When you ask “how” it puts your mind to work to discover creative answers. 

Improve the quality of your questions and your listening skills. Effectively asking and listening will help you gain information needed to reach good decisions. Big people concentrate on the listening while small people concentrate on the talking. You should associate with people who can help you discover new ideas and ways of doing things. Mix with a wide range of people from different occupational and social interests. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 6 

You Are What You Think You Are 

Improving the quality of your thinking improves the quality of your actions, and this produces success. Your appearance talks to you, so if you want to think and feel important, you should always look important.  

Dressing in a certain way will build your confidence and lift your spirits. 

Your appearance also talks to others so you should dress in a way that tells others you are someone who is intelligent, prosperous, and dependable. 

Finally, try to remember that your work is crucial. When thinking this way, you’ll receive mental signals of how to do your job better. If you’re a leader, this will also impact your subordinates. If you think your work is important, your subordinates will think their work is important too. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 7 

Manage Your Environment: Go First Class 

If you want to improve how you think, improve your environment. Your mind is heavily influenced by your environment. The people around you, the neighborhood you live in, the clothes you wear, and the food you eat all have an impact on your thinking. Changes to your environment will change how you think. Improve your environment to improve how you think. 

Make your environment work for you, not against you. Don’t let negative people beat you. Don’ be held back by the opinions of small-thinking people. Jealous people would love to see you stumble. Don’t give them the satisfaction. 

Gossip is a thought poison that must be avoided. Talking about others is fine but keep these talks positive and with no gossip. Mr. Schwartz describes this approach as going first class. Go first class in everything you do. You can’t afford to do it any other way. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 8 

Make your Attitudes your Allies 

You get results in direct proportion to the enthusiasm you invest. Here are three actions you can take to improve your attitude: 

1. Dig in deeper. When you find yourself with a lack of enthusiasm about something, dig in and learn more about it. Learning creates enthusiasm.
2. Give others an attitude that says, “You’re important”. People will help you when you make them feel important. Show appreciation for others at every opportunity. Make people feel important and use their name when talking to them.
3. Have a “Service First” attitude. Make it a rule in everything you do: give people more than they expect to get. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 9 

Think Right Toward People 

Your success depends on the support of other people. No one achieves their goals alone. To gain support, you must be likable. Likability is a factor in all aspects of your life, particularly your career. Mr. Schwartz describes becoming likable as making yourself lighter to lift. That means being easy to be around. Be the type of person people like. Being likable will win others’ support and make them eager to help you. 

Build friendships. Introduce yourself to others at every opportunity. Remember other people’s names, and they will remember your name. 

Don’t expect anyone to be perfect. Other people have a right to be different. So don’t come across as a reformer. 

Encourage others to talk. Let other people talk about their views, opinions, and accomplishments. 

Dealing with others is easy when things are going well. The real test comes when things go wrong. When things go wrong, never blame others.  

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 10 

Get the Action Habit 

 Mr. Schwartz calls successful people Activationists. Activationists are people that always take immediate action. Conditions are never going to be perfect so don’t wait, act now. Expect that you’ll encounter obstacles along the way and simply solve them as they arise.  

Ideas alone don’t bring success. Ideas only have value after you act on them. Action can cure fear and produce confidence. So, act now. Tomorrow, next week, and later really mean ‘never.’  

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 11 

How to turn Defeat into Victory 

The only difference between success and failure is your attitudes toward challenges, handicaps, discouragements, and other disappointing setbacks. 

Mr. Shwartz offers five tips to help you turn defeat into victory.

1. Study the small failures you encounter to pave your way to success. When you lose, learn from experience. Then go and win next time. 
2. Professionals have the courage to be their own constructive critics. Figure out your faults and weaknesses and then correct them.
3. Stop blaming luck, either good or bad. Learn from each setback and find out what went wrong. Blaming luck never got anyone what they wanted.
4. Be persistent when going towards your goal but. Try new approaches and experiment with new solutions to grow.
5. Find the positive side to every situation. Find it to avoid discouragement. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 12 

Use Goals to help you Grow 

Goals help you visualize where you’re headed and where you want to be. Mr. Schwartz offers an 8-step process to set effective goals: 

1. Create an image of yourself ten years from now so you have a clear idea of where you are going. 
2. Write out a ten-year plan. To do otherwise is to leave your life to chance. Plan what you want to accomplish in each area of your life, your work, your home, and your social life.
3. Surrender yourself to your desires to receive more energy and enthusiasm to reach your goals.
4. Let your major goal be your autopilot. When you let your goal absorb you, you’ll find yourself making the right decisions to reach your goal without having to think.
5. Achieve your goal one step at a time. Think about each task as a step toward your goal.
6. Have shorter, thirty-day goals. This makes the day-by-day effort pay off.
7. If you must take a detour because of a challenge, take it in stride. A detour simply means another way is needed it doesn’t mean surrendering the goal.
8. Invest in yourself by investing in education. Purchase objects that build mental power and efficiency. 

Book Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big  

Key Principle 13 

How to Think like a Leader 

Your external world reflects your internal state of mind. If you don’t present yourself as confident, then the world won’t consider you as a person of value. So, follow Mr. Schwartz’s four steps to start thinking like a leader. 

1. Trade your ideas with the people you want to influence. It’s easy to get others to do what you want them to do if you see things through their eyes first.
2. Put other people first. Give other people the type of treatment you like to receive.
3. Think about your progress, believe in your progress, push for your progress. Subordinates tend to act like their leaders. So, make yourself a leader worth copying.
4. Take time out for yourself and tap into your supreme thinking power. Some solitude can help release your creativity. Use this creativity to find solutions to both personal and business problems. Spend some time alone daily to think. Use the thinking technique all great leaders use; confer with yourself. 

Final Summary of The Magic of Thinking Big 

The way we think impacts our chances of being successful. If we think big, we will start attracting good luck and good ideas. If we continue to think small, we are more likely to fail. Thinking big means training yourself to see not just what is, but what can be possible. Visualization will improve your chances of success. 

To grow you must start asking yourself how you can do better. This simple question will encourage your mind to come up with creative answers that help you grow.  

Finally, lead by example in everything you do. Think, talk, act, and live the way you want subordinates to act. When you see something that needs to be done, pick up the ball and run with it. Treat every human being as important and always give people more than they expect to get.