The Magic Of Thinking Big

“The basic principles and concepts supporting The Magic of Thinking Big come from the highest-pedigree sources, the very finest and biggest-thinking minds yet to live on planet Earth. Minds like the prophet David, who wrote, ‘As one thinketh in his heart, so is he’; minds such as Emerson, who said, ‘Great men are those who see that thoughts rule the world’; minds like Milton, who in Paradise Lost wrote, ‘The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.’ Amazingly perceptive minds like Shakespeare, who observed, ‘There is nothing either good or bad except that thinking makes it so.’”

Schwartz writes how his ideas have been around for thousands of years, and how many great historical figures have espoused them. Schwartz isn’t making up his theories out of nothing, but instead picks up on a history of beliefs and carries them forward for the modern age. Schwartz gives recent examples that he feels show how and why they work.

“You can’t wish yourself into an executive suite. Nor can you wish yourself into a five-bedroom, three-bath house or the high-income brackets. You can’t wish yourself into a position of leadership. But you can move a mountain with belief. You can win success by believing you can succeed. There is nothing magical or mystical about the power of belief. Belief works this way. Belief, the ‘I’m-positive-I-can’ attitude, generates the power, skill, and energy needed to do. When you believe I-can-do-it, the how-to-do-it develops.”

Schwartz makes a distinction between hoping for an achievement and knowing that it can be achieved. Merely yearning for a result that seems impossible won’t accomplish anything. He argues instead that the belief in success kickstarts the process of moving toward it. Energy will be expended, and the desired outcome won’t appear without effort, but that process can be an inspiring and satisfying journey in its own right, topped off by a big win at the end. Schwartz uses repetition for emphasis—“you can.”

“Belief in great results is the driving force, the power behind all great books, plays, scientific discoveries. Belief in success is behind every successful business, church, and political organization. Belief in success is the one basic, absolutely essential ingredient of successful people. Believe, really believe, you can succeed, and you will.”

Confidence in the goal is an essential element that determines success; luck is a factor, but belief in one’s ability is ever-present among winners. Schwartz again uses repetition for emphasis—“Belief in.”

“Disbelief is negative power. When the mind disbelieves or doubts, the mind attracts ‘reasons’ to support the disbelief. Doubt, disbelief, the subconscious will to fail, the not really wanting to succeed, is responsible for most failures. Think doubt and fail. Think victory and succeed.”

While belief leads to achievement, disbelief leads to failure. This points to the need to have confidence in one’s abilities and in the goals that one sets. Disbelief is a warning sign that a person is on a path to disappointment. It’s a signal that their thoughts aren’t aimed in the right direction.

“I’m going to live until I die and I’m not going to get life and death confused. While I’m on this earth I’m going to live. Why be only half alive? Every minute a person spends worrying about dying is just one minute that fellow might as well have been dead.”

A friend of the author, who had tuberculosis when it wasn’t curable, enjoyed raising a family, practiced law despite his difficulties, and lived to old age. He met problems head-on, made no excuses, and lived life to the fullest. Schwartz suggests that this resolution alone is enough to grant anyone a much better, and often longer, life than they’d get from making excuses.

In the above lines, Schwartz uses declarative sentences and italics—“While I’m on this earth I’m going to live”—and rhetorical questions—“Why be only half alive?”—to create emphasis and a sense of urgency.

“What I want around me […] are people who can solve problems, who can think up ideas. People who can dream and then develop the dream into a practical application; an idea man can make money with me; a fact man can’t.”

This manufacturing executive, who speaks with Schwartz, understands that it’s more important to know how to find answers than to be a repository of facts, and that it’s more vital to solve problems than spout information. That’s what encyclopedias are for. Knowledge is only useful when applied to a solution, and companies will pay a lot for people who know, not mere facts, but how to come up with new and creative solutions to the problems they face.

“Youth is a liability only when the youth thinks it is. You often hear that certain jobs require ‘considerable’ physical maturity, jobs like selling securities and insurance. That you’ve got to have either gray hair or no hair at all in order to gain an investor’s confidence is plain nonsense. What really matters is how well you know your job. If you know your job and understand people, you’re sufficiently mature to handle it. Age has no real relation to ability, unless you convince yourself that years alone will give you the stuff you need to make your mark.”

People often limit themselves with preconceptions about how things are supposed to be. This keeps them away from opportunities that are closed to them only, for example, because they believe that mere youth makes it impossible for them to succeed. In the decades since the book was published, the tremendous success of youthful leadership in high-tech, entertainment, and politics supports Schwartz’s beliefs.

“Don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waste your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success. We don’t become successful simply through luck. Success comes from doing those things and mastering those principles that produce success.”

Schwartz suggests that belief in one’s success only works when the believer applies hard work to achieve it. Problems, setbacks, and the need to labor don’t refute the positive-belief theory: Rather, they’re simply the means and conditions within which success unfolds. Achievement lies at the end of that road, not around it, and positive thinkers foresee themselves traveling the path efficiently, briskly, and with great joy and unbeatable energy.

“No one is born with confidence. Those people you know who radiate confidence, who have conquered worry, who are at ease everywhere and all the time, acquired their confidence, every bit of it.”

Fear can prevent people from achieving their goals. It’s a learned attitude, but so is confidence, which is trainable. Schwartz lists several techniques that, when practiced, increase feelings of self-confidence. Thus, overcoming fear is more about inner attitudes than outer circumstances.

“Philosophers for thousands of years have issued good advice: Know thyself. But most people, it seems, interpret this suggestion to mean Know only thy negative self. Most self-evaluation consists of making long mental lists of one’s faults, shortcomings, inadequacies. It’s well to know our inabilities, for this shows us areas in which we can improve. But if we know only our negative characteristics, we’re in a mess. Our value is small.”

Reflection doesn’t work if a person sees only their bad qualities. After all, it’s someone’s assets that will help them succeed; their weaknesses either can be sidestepped or improved upon. Assuming the worst may make people feel safe, but it’s really a way of not getting involved—which, in the long run, is not safety at all but a recipe for becoming weaker and weaker.

“Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present.”

Imagination can focus people on who they want to be; it also can inspire them to see raw materials as finished products. Success is about seeing the possible in ourselves and in our projects. Thinking big works on anything to which it is applied.

“Creative thinking is simply finding new, improved ways to do anything. The rewards of all types of success—success in the home, at work, in the community—hinge on finding ways to do things better.”

Creativity isn’t just for artists or scientists. Ordinary people in their everyday lives use creativity to solve the problems that arise around them. This means anyone can do it, but it won’t happen if they don’t believe in themselves. As long as we know what we want and expect that we’ll get there, the creative ability kicks into gear.

“The successful person doesn’t ask, ‘Can I do it better?’ He knows he can. So he phrases the question: ‘How can I do it better?’”

Success shows up more often and sooner if one doesn’t waste time wondering if what she wants is possible. Much quicker is to assume that it is and then find creative ways to make it happen. The mind is resourceful and can come up with solutions to a much wider range of problems than most people assume, but it can do so only if it has permission from its owner to create the answer.

“We learn nothing from telling. But there is no limit to what we can learn by asking and listening.”

Information is key to generating creative solutions. When we let others do most of the talking, we gain more knowledge and win more friends. People love having the floor, so letting them talk is easy to accomplish. Many people enjoy showing off what they know; the smart achiever listens, learns, and figures out how to solve problems. That will become their own claim to fame.

“Others see in us what we see in ourselves. We receive the kind of treatment we think we deserve.”

The book’s basic principle, that people become what they believe they can be, also applies to others’ views of them. If we see ourselves as unworthy, so will other people. If we see ourselves as worthwhile and important, others will adopt that view of us as well. Thus, our self-opinion and the opinion of others reinforce each other.

“Tom Staley, meet Tom Staley—an important, a really important person. Tom, you’re a big thinker, so think big. Think Big about Everything. You’ve got plenty of ability to do a first-class job, so do a first-class job. Tom, you believe in Happiness, Progress, and Prosperity. So: talk only Happiness, talk only Progress, talk only Prosperity. You have lots of drive, Tom, lots of drive. So put that drive to work. Nothing can stop you, Tom, nothing. Tom, you’re enthusiastic. Let your enthusiasm show through. You look good, Tom, and you feel good. Stay that way. Tom Staley, you were a great fellow yesterday and you’re going to be an even greater fellow today. Now go to it, Tom. Go forward.”

Tom’s method for success involves repeating this manifesto to himself as if it were a commercial he’s hearing. It’s an example of an affirmation or visualization, a technique common to self-help books that teach the power of rehearsing positive attitudes. It’s designed to improve Tom’s behaviors and outcomes by encouraging in him an orientation toward success and a can-do spirit that sweeps away all obstacles. Emotions and states of being—“Happiness,” “Progress,” and “Prosperity”—are capitalized to underscore their importance.

“People who tell you it cannot be done almost always are unsuccessful people, are strictly average or mediocre at best in terms of accomplishment.”

Those who already have accomplished great things won’t dissuade you from your own dreams—they know it’s possible—but to people who are not successful, big plans are risky and seem insurmountable. Those who fail don’t know; those who succeed point the way.

“Taking an ax and chopping your neighbor’s furniture to pieces won’t make your furniture look one bit better; and using verbal axes and grenades on another person doesn’t do one thing to make you a better you or me a better me.”

Gossip can feel good—it pulls others down and thereby makes us feel less bad about our own lives—but it’s destructive, emphasizing people’s failures instead of their contributions. How they furnish their lives is their business, and what makes a difference to us isn’t what they have but what we create.

In the above quote, Schwartz uses a metaphor, where he makes an exact comparison between two unrelated things. In this case, he likens tearing people down to wrecking their furniture. As he points out, in tearing someone down, your own life—or furniture—won’t look better.

“Put service first, and money takes care of itself—always.”

People make money by being helpful. Trying to get rich by cutting corners, manipulating others, or pushing for a maximum sale instead of one that satisfies the customer are failing methods. The more pleasant approach of making the client happy leads to repeat business and greater long-term revenue.

“Ideas in themselves are not enough. That idea for getting more business, for simplifying work procedures, is of value only when it is acted upon. Every day thousands of people bury good ideas because they are afraid to act on them. And afterward, the ghosts of those ideas come back to haunt them.”

Plans for success remain ideas unless a person takes action. To act on an idea is to bring it into reality; to hesitate is to keep the idea as a mere dream. Dreaming may seem safer, but action solves problems that torment the dreamer. An overly cautious life is more dangerous than an active one because one risks failure by inertia.

“During the seven unbelievably hard years it took him to succeed, I never heard my friend complain once. He’d explain, ‘Dave, I’m learning. This is competitive business, and because it’s intangible, it’s hard to sell. But I’m learning how.’”

Schwartz’s friend survived years of hardship because he saw himself ultimately winning the game. He understood that it takes time to learn how to succeed in a profession, and his relentless belief in himself overcame the obstacles. He may have continued beyond the point where most would have given up, but he did so knowing that, whatever happened, he’d land on his feet and continue forward. It’s not so much a story of intensely heroic efforts as it is a tale of believing in oneself.

“Decide right now to salvage something from every setback. Next time things seem to go wrong on the job or at home, calm down and find out what caused the trouble. This is the way to avoid making the same error twice. Being licked is valuable if we learn from it.”

Successful people want to get as much value as possible from everything they do, and failure has lessons to teach. Thus, successful people look carefully at things that went wrong, learn from their mistakes, make corrections, and move forward, armed with greater skill and wisdom. In this way, nothing, not even setbacks, goes to waste.

“The important thing is not where you were or where you are but where you want to get.”

When we dwell on the past or on our current problems, we become stuck in our failures. Establishing new goals and dedicating oneself to achievement—and continuing toward it despite setbacks—changes a person’s life from one of stagnation to one of dynamic progress.