55 pages • 1 hour read
Dr. David SchwartzThe Magic Of Thinking Big
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1959A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “How to Turn Defeat into Victory”
The people who live on “Skid Row” come from all walks of life and circumstances, Schwartz says, but they’re defeated by life’s challenges and will gladly explain what bad incident did them in. Average, mediocre people similarly are beaten down and also will explain why. Those at the top come from many of the same situations and have faced many of the same difficulties and hardships; the difference is that they weren’t defeated. Instead, they, “bounced up, learned a lesson, forgot the beating, and moved upward” (236).
Setbacks happen to everyone, but they can, Schwartz argues, generate success. The government oversees airline travel and safety in America: Whenever there’s an accident, the federal authority investigates the crash, determines the cause, issues alerts for repairs of any suspect parts, and helps devise better and safer flight equipment. Doctors, too, perform postmortems to help them better tend to their patients. Executives sometimes use a similar approach to diagnose failed sales efforts; football coaches review games with team members to analyze and correct on-field mistakes. In short, these professionals “salvage something from every setback” (239).
One of Schwartz’s students, a senior, turned in a bad paper and failed the course. The senior was angry and argued that the course wasn’t vital to his future and that he passed his other courses and should receive leniency. Schwartz pointed out that, in the real world, he won’t get paid or promoted for bad work. The student re-enrolled and passed the course with excellent marks. He later told Professor Schwartz that he was glad he flunked the course for the lesson it taught him.
When opera singer Risë Stevens lost an important audition in her youth, she was resentful and wanted to blame the judging system, but her singing coach said she still had work to do and suggested she “have the courage to face [her] faults” (244). Stevens took this to heart, admitted she needed to improve her vocal range, learn more roles, increase her language abilities, and polish her personality. She became a star of the opera stage.
Blaming misfortune on others, or on bad luck or happenstance, wastes the lesson of defeat. It’s better to study carefully what happened, learn what you did wrong, correct it, and emerge better prepared for the next time. The virtue of persistence also is wasted when a person fails to learn from experience and continues to make the same mistakes. Instead, combine persistence with experimentation and learn what works and what doesn’t.
Tough problems can be exhausting; now and then, it’s good to back off, take a break, and return feeling refreshed. Good ideas often show up quickly when the mind is rested.
One worker, laid off during an economic downturn, was at first disappointed. Then he realized that he didn’t much like his job and that it was a dead end. Inspired, he found a better job at higher pay. If he hadn’t been let go, he’d likely have remained stuck at an unsatisfactory job.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Use Goals to Help You Grow”
Every accomplishment starts as an idea that becomes a goal. Growth only happens through goals. A life well-lived includes plans for the future; not knowing where you want to go leads nowhere. Like businesses that invest in themselves for results years ahead, people should make 10-year plans and envision themselves in that future. Schwartz suggests dividing this plan into “work, home, and social” (255). For work, decide on your intended income and level of responsibility, authority, and prestige. For home life, plan on your expected standard of living, type of home, vacations, and savings for children. For social, envision the types of friends, groups, leadership responsibilities, and causes you’ll have.
People accomplish what they set out to do and no more. It’s better to envision a big future than a merely adequate one. One of Schwartz’s young trainees foresaw owning a large country estate, a house elegant yet homey, participation in church activities, and a round-the-world cruise with the entire family, possibly split into several separate vacations. Five years later, he’d expanded his retail business and purchased the land for his estate.
The greatest power to fuel success is desire. Without a great yearning to accomplish one’s goals—unless one’s heart is in it—the results tend to be mediocre. Desires can get killed off by self-deprecation, choosing safety over passion, tough competition, parents’ preferences about one’s career, and the burden of family responsibilities.
A highly desired goal generates intense focus. The unconscious mind, no longer at loose ends, works diligently on the goal and produces behaviors specific to the goal—what steps to take, things to buy, words to say, advice to read.
Retirees with nothing to do tend to die off quickly. Banker Lew Gordon instead retired to begin a consultancy, give speeches, and promote a national sales fraternity. He had goals and stayed engaged with life. One young mother, recently widowed, contracted incurable cancer but refused the terminal diagnosis, instead enduring multiple surgeries and managing her family’s business until she could see her toddler son graduate from college. He did, and, shortly after, she passed.
The way to achieve long-term goals is a step at a time. The entire project may seem overwhelming, but the next single thing to do is easy. This can work with a career of thousands of projects, or quitting smoking one hour at a time. Many overnight successes put in long efforts before they become known.
One way to achieve a goal is to establish monthly quotas of achievements and mark them off on a checklist. For example, a “Thirty-Day Improvement Guide” might contain lists of habits to break, habits to acquire, ways to improve performance at work, ways to improve participation at home, and ways to sharpen one’s mind (268-69).
The best-laid plans often go awry when unexpected problems crop up. These are like dead-end roads that goal-oriented people find ways around so they can continue their journey. It’s wise to map out a plan B in case plan A gets blocked.
The wise goal-oriented person invests in themself. This includes education, not merely to acquire degrees or a lot of information, but to develop a competent mind. Additionally, “idea starters”—books, newspapers, and informative magazines—can be so informative that their cost is small compared to their payoff.
Chapter 13 Summary: “How to Think Like a Leader”
Achieving a goal often requires the cooperation of others. It’s good to have strong leadership abilities that inspire people to action.
Good leadership has four rules. The first is to “[t]rade minds with the people you want to influence” (276). That is, imagine things through the eyes of the people you’re trying to reach. An ad campaign, for example, will fail if the copywriter designs commercials that appeal only to him. Politicians who use flowery language tend to lose elections because their constituents usually prefer plain talk. In general, when interacting with others, imagine how they’re likely to react to your words, manners, and presentations. For example, thinking about how employees will react to a directive helps the executive communicate orders better.
The second leadership rule is to “[t]hink: What is the human way to handle this?” (282) If one acts like a dictator or a by-the-book rule enforcer and treats people like peons or machines, this will generate strong resistance. Instead, treating people like human beings—being considerate toward them, remembering their birthdays, showing leeway when they need a day off, helping them find a new job instead of merely firing them—creates strong loyalty among the staff. When critiquing someone’s work, praise their good points and help them find ways to improve on their weaknesses. Prioritizing them and being on their side work wonders.
The third rule is to “[t]hink progress, believe in progress, push for progress” (288). Leaders come, not from the ranks of status-quo people, but from those who think forward, stand up for improvement, and have high standards. Schwartz interviewed three men who were being considered by a business owner for the role of the new sales manager. Two of them defended things as they were and had no interest in changing procedures. The third loved the company but also was eager to implement new ideas for improving the firm and its bottom line. Both Schwartz and the owner agreed wholeheartedly that the third candidate was the best choice.
Students, employees, and others under a leader will adapt to that leader’s approach. A lackadaisical teacher or boss will get poor results, while an orderly, self-disciplined leader with goals will encourage close cooperation. One tool for improving leadership abilities is to make checklists on whether you’re generating improvements at work, at home, in yourself, and in the community.
The fourth leadership rule is to “[t]ake time out to confer with yourself and tap your supreme thinking power” (295). History’s great leaders took time out to be alone and ponder. Successful business leaders, too, spend solitary time when they can think through problems. People who are always around others have no time to exercise their “superthinking,” and they become shallow.
Schwartz directed a set of trainees to cut themselves off from others for an hour a day, during which they were to think about whatever came to mind. After two weeks, they reported excellent progress in solving problems and understanding themselves better. They also found that their solitary ideas were surprisingly accurate.
Solitary thinking can be done in two ways: pondering a specific problem or letting the mind wander. Either one generates benefits because “the main job of the leader is thinking” (298).
Schwartz presents a quick review of the book’s main principles on how to think big no matter what:
Avoid people who snipe or try to pull you down; they’re being petty, and arguing with them makes your own thinking small. When feeling inadequate, remember to look important, remind yourself of your assets, and put others in perspective. When a quarrel starts, ask whether it’s worth arguing about, and remember that you never gain anything but always lose something when quarreling.
During a big setback, absorb its lesson and any benefits you can find, and persist with experiments until you discover a better way forward. If a romantic relationship lags, remind yourself of your partner’s big qualities and disregard the small irritants, then frequently do special things for your mate. If your career track stalls, remind yourself, “I can do better” (302), put service first, and ways to improve will appear.
Schwartz concludes with a quote from Latin writer Publilius Syrus: “A wise man will be master of his mind, / A fool will be its slave” (302).
Chapters 11-13 Analysis
The final chapters offer specific ways to put plans into action, overcome setbacks, and lead others toward fulfillment of group goals. Schwartz explores a third theme, Continuous Improvement and Success, in Chapter 11’s discussion on dealing with setbacks and in Chapter 13’s techniques for making progress. The idea is that successful people have a relentless habit of looking for better ways of doing things.
In Chapter 11, Schwartz mentions the “Civil Aviation Administration,” or CAA, as the agency in charge of civilian airlines (238). His point is to exemplify how disasters can be analyzed to help prevent future disasters. It’s part of his lesson on the importance of extracting useful information from setbacks and continuing forward toward one’s goals.
The correct name for the CAA was the Civil Aviation Authority. During 1959, the first year of the book’s release, airline oversight was transferred to a new agency, the Federal Aviation Administration. Schwartz’s comments on the US government’s ability to learn from disasters, and thus help make air travel safer, apply as well to the newer agency: The FAA has, in recent decades, continued to advance flight safety in ways Schwartz describes.
Schwartz also mentions opera star Risë Stevens’s early experience with failure and the lessons it taught her. The mezzo-soprano used these lessons to improve her skills and become a star at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where she was known for her performance as the title character in Carmen, one of the three most popular operas worldwide. She also directed a Met touring company and taught many aspiring singers; she died in 2013 at age 99. Her success is a demonstration of the power of correcting faults.
Turning a bad situation to good use echoes advice given by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. In his work Meditations, he wrote: “The obstacle becomes the way forward” (Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. Penguin, 2006). Even disasters contain positive potential, and problems become opportunities when we see how they can be turned to our advantage. This doesn’t mean we run around creating catastrophes—it’s much better to be successful—but setbacks aren’t completely empty of possibilities, and the successful person sifts through them to extract whatever good they might provide.
Schwartz’s teachings about the power of perseverance and positivity can be seen in more contemporary examples. Sometimes setbacks become the vehicle for massive future success. American business magnate Steve Jobs got ejected from Apple, the company he helped launch. For 10 years, he toiled in exile, where he founded a new company, NeXT. When finally he returned to an ailing Apple, he brought with him core technologies and a vision for the company that helped take it from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the biggest corporations on the planet.
Schwartz’s teachings about turning a bad situation to good imply that it’s possible to reduce the losses from most setbacks or perhaps even convert them to deliver positive outcomes. A layoff may lead to a better job; a small goof-up, its lesson absorbed, may help prevent an even bigger snafu later. Even in the worst situations, survivors become stronger.
One may critique the book by arguing that it implies that people are responsible for poverty and illness. Schwartz writes that successful people struggle with the same challenges as those in poverty. However, critics may argue, wealthy people often come from wealthy families, where they have the support to succeed, while poor people lack the same advantages. Schwartz also cites the example of a woman with cancer who refused to accept that she was terminally ill. This suggests, critics may argue, that someone who succumbs to their illness is responsible for it—that all one has to do is push through and think positively, and that if they don’t, it’s a failure of will.
Another of the book’s themes, Other People and Success, gets a workout in Chapter 13, where Schwartz discusses the need for leadership on the path to success. He repeats his point from Chapter 9, that nobody succeeds without the support of others. This time, he suggests that, to achieve one’s goals, a person sometimes must become the leader who inspires in others a longing to reach those goals. The decision to attain a goal that requires a team effort becomes one of those “if somebody’s gotta lead, it might as well be me” moments.
This doesn’t mean we must browbeat others into supporting us, Schwartz implies. His examples assume that teams are already onboard about the goal but aren’t yet sure how to go about reaching it. For this, Schwartz suggests that leaders adopt a warm and human style that prioritizes team members’ wants and needs. Leaders also need to inspire in others the desire for constant improvement so that problems get solved, products keep getting better, and the project is imbued with a sense of high quality.
Schwartz’s advice anticipates a belief that has become popular in recent decades among high-tech industries and older, more traditional corporations: High-quality and continuous innovation are critical to business success. Thus, his ideas on innovation have impacted modern thinking.
