The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz
The Book in 1 Sentences
“Think Big and you’ll live big. You’ll live big in happiness. You’ll live big in accomplishment. Big in income. Big in friends. Big in respect… Start now, right now, to discover how to make your thinking make magic for you. Start out with this thought of the great philosopher Disraeli: ‘Life is too short to be little.’” ~ David J. Schwartz
9 BIG Ideas
2. Excusitis.. Stop making excuses
3. Stickability is 95 percent of ability
5. Positive thoughts memory bank
The Magic of Thinking Big Book Summary
1. Believe you can succeed
“Here is the first step toward success. It’s a basic step. It can’t be avoided. Step One: Believe in yourself, believe you can succeed.”
Henry Ford also says: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
The Stoic Philosopher Seneca says: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.”
And remember that "The more successful the individual, the less inclined he is to make excuses.”
2. Excusitis.. Stop making excuses
“Go deep into your study of people, and you’ll discover unsuccessful people suffer a mind-deadening thought disease. We call this disease excusitis. Every failure has this disease in its
advanced form. And most ‘average’ persons have at least a mild case of it.”
3. Stickability is 95 percent of ability
“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.”
As Schwartz says: “stickability is 95 percent of ability.”
4. Action cures fear
“Fear of all kinds and sizes is a form of psychological infection. We can cure a mental infection the same way we cure a body infection—with specific, proved treatments…
condition yourself with this fact: all confidence is acquired, developed. No one is born with confidence. Those people around you who radiate confidence, who have conquered worry, who are at ease everywhere and all the time, acquired their confidence, every bit of it.”
Frank Herbert - in his book Dune- also says: “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Schwartz says: “action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear… Jot that down in your success rule book right now. Action cures fear.”
“Hesitation only enlarges, magnifies the fear. Take action promptly. Be decisive.”
Russell Simmons - in his book Do You!- says: “The pain that’s created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself. Because if you don’t begin to work on those ideas that God has blessed you with, they will become stagnant inside of you and eventually begin to eat away at you.
You might seem OK on the outside, but inside you will be ill from not getting those ideas out of your heart and into the world. Stalling leads to sickness. But taking steps, even baby steps, always leads to success.”
5. Positive thoughts memory bank
“Deposit only positive thoughts in your memory bank. Let’s face it squarely: everyone encounters plenty of unpleasant, embarrassing, and discouraging situations. But unsuccessful and successful people deal with these situations in directly opposite ways.
Unsuccessful people take them to heart, so to speak. They dwell on the unpleasant situations, thereby giving them a good start in their memory. At night the unpleasant situation is the last thing they think about…
Confident, successful people, on the other hand, ‘don’t give it another thought.’ Successful people specialize in putting positive thoughts into their memory bank.”
“In brief, it really is easy to forget the unpleasant if we simply refuse to recall it. Withdraw only positive thoughts from your memory bank. Let the others fade away. And your confidence, that feeling of being on top of the world, will zoom upward.
You take a big step forward toward conquering your fear when you refuse to remember negative, self-deprecating thoughts.”
6. ACT AS IF, & Remove "Impossible"
“To think confidently, act confidently… Act the way you want to feel.”
“Motions are the precursors of emotions.”
“Eliminate the word impossible from your thinking and speaking vocabularies. Impossible is a failure word. The thought ‘It’s impossible’ sets off a chain reaction of other thoughts to prove you’re right.”
“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.”
7. Be an experimental person
“Be an experimental person. Break up fixed routines. Expose yourself to new restaurants, new books, new theatres, new friends; take a different route to work someday, take a different vacation this year, do something new and different this weekend.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson also says: “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
8. Don’t let ideas escape
“Don’t let ideas escape. Write them down. Every day lots of good ideas are born only to die quickly because they aren’t nailed to paper… Carry a notebook or some small cards with you. When you get an idea, write it down… People with fertile, creative minds know a good idea may sprout any time, any place. Don’t let ideas escape; else you destroy the fruits of your thinking.”
Linus Pauling also says: “The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas.”
9. Conquer perfectionism & Take action
“We must be willing to make an intelligent compromise with perfection lest we wait forever before taking action.”
As Maslow says: “It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.”
“A good idea if not acted upon produces terrible psychological pain. But a good idea acted upon brings enormous mental satisfaction. Got a good idea? Then do something about it. Use action to cure fear and gain confidence. Here’s something to remember: Actions feed and strengthen confidence; inaction in all forms feeds fear. To fight fear, act. To increase fear—wait, put off, postpone.”
That was my QUICK summary of the great book The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. If you’re interested, get your copy. There is a HUGE amount of life-changing ideas in this book, and we’ve only touched on a tiny bit of it.
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