The Magic Of Thinking Big

Additional books by David J Schwartz: Schwartz wrote two more books on the psychology of success: The Magic of Getting What You Want (1983) and The Magic of Thinking Success (1987). These works give more pointers and stories on how the positive-visualization method leads to greater achievement.

(Note: There is another author named David J Schwartz, who writes science-fiction books.)

Book: Psycho-Cybernetics (1960) by Maxwell Maltz, MD. The author, a plastic surgeon, noticed that his work caused many patients to think better of themselves. He realized that what matters in success is a person’s “self-image,” a term he popularized. The book takes a somewhat scientific approach, asserting that the subconscious mind is a cybernetic, or goal-seeking, system—whatever directive, positive or negative, the conscious mind gives it, the subconscious will work to achieve, automatically correcting its path based on feedback from the real world. Maltz counsels a realistic assessment of one’s possibilities—this anticipates later developments in cognitive therapy—and a deliberate program of visualizing positive ends. Published a year after David Schwartz’s work, its publisher claims 30 million people have read it.

Book: Become An Idea Machine: Because Ideas Are The Currency Of The 21st Century (2015) by Claudia Azula Altucher. The book teaches the Ten Ideas technique, by which users can come up with several useful solutions to any problem they can name. The work can be seen as an adjunct to The Magic of Thinking Big with its focus on creative problem-solving and continuous innovation. Included are dozens of practice problems.

Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) by Dale Carnegie. One of the most famous and popular works in the self-help category, this book, updated in later decades, focuses on how to become more likable and effective with others. It stresses the importance of taking an enthusiastic interest in people, appreciating them, and being helpful to them. Several of the social techniques in The Magic of Thinking Big are fleshed out in Carnegie’s work. The book’s huge success helped spawn the Dale Carnegie Course, a personal effectiveness seminar that’s still training people today.

How to Win Friends and Influence People study guide at SuperSummary.com