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.
Themes
The Importance of Believing in Success
The central and overriding theme of the book is that people’s beliefs about themselves determine their outcomes. If someone believes they’re a successful person, they’ll tend to be successful; if they believe they’re mediocre or a failure, that, too, will manifest in their lives. Thus, the secret to success is to change one’s view of oneself.
Success doesn’t come from a wish; it comes from a decisive belief. To bring this about, a person must often repeat statements that evoke a positive mental image of themselves: “Keep repeating those sentences forcefully, with complete conviction” (141). Exactly how someone will achieve success depends on the situation, but once the mind is fully resolved on the goal, it will find the methods needed to reach it.
Two major threats to success are excuses and fear. Successful people never make excuses. Instead, they learn from their mistakes, improve their skills, and continue forward toward their goals. When they feel fear, they convert the energy of anxiety into direct action that confronts the problem and solves it.
The heat of competition at work and the stresses of everyday life can seem daunting. It’s tempting to pull back and decide that life is too difficult, and that the best one can do is struggle merely to be adequate. This is a philosophy of mediocrity. In contrast, successful people imagine the biggest, best results that they want to achieve; they then move forward, experimenting with various ways to reach their goals until they find paths that work. They don’t bemoan difficulties and never settle for a merely adequate result. Instead, they persist until they reach the ultimate goal.
In searching for solutions to problems, big thinkers understand that believing in, and wanting, a goal activates their subconscious minds to search for ways to achieve it. Their own decisive actions help stimulate the mind’s creative powers, and they expect, and usually get, surprisingly inventive solutions from their efforts.
Successful people don’t lord it over others. Instead, they’re “big enough to be humble” (288), and they always treat people respectfully. In a company, family, or organization, they know that everyone involved has the same potential for success, and they work to inspire others to align with the group’s big dreams. This helps to fulfill everyone’s highest potential.
The fundamental rule of success, then, is to believe in it. Those who believe they can succeed will find ways of achieving success, sidestepping obstacles or turning them to advantage as they move forward, and participating with the people around them in ways that lead to success for the entire group.
Other People and Success
Without the help of others, it’s difficult or impossible to be successful. The biggest achievers make a point of getting along wonderfully with people at work, at home, and in the community. They set goals to help improve the happiness and satisfaction of the people with whom they share their lives, and they take up positions of leadership when a goal needs to be reached and others aren’t sure what to do next.
People want to help those they like and trust: “We are lifted to higher levels by those who know us as likable, personable individuals. […] And being likable makes you lighter to lift” (194). To make themselves lighter, successful people focus on other people: They like them, remember and use their names, let them do most of the talking, generate an air of relaxed comfort around themselves, and never bluster or behave resentfully.
Successful people also sincerely want others to be happier and more successful. To that end, they make deliberate plans to help people out where possible, do nice things for them, and work with them to remedy problems and improve situations in the workplace, at home, and in the community. This includes improving their own behaviors: They work hard to remove the rough edges from their personalities, and they see to it that their own actions contribute to, and don’t detract from, the lives of others.
Sometimes a group encounters a problem they don’t know how to solve. Successful people think big: They sees the result that’s needed, vow to make it happen, inspire others to take up the cause, work with them on coming up with smart ideas, experiment with those ideas until the group finds the right path forward, and take the initiative on making sure that the desired result is achieved. In short, good leaders guide their groups wisely and compassionately toward the goals they all want.
At work, successful people don’t focus on making money; instead, they put their attention on serving others. They want their company’s products and services to be the best and provide great satisfaction to customers. They also assist their associates in doing better work. This focus on service greatly improves workplace satisfaction and tends to generate higher revenues. In short, a service orientation also improves the money situation.
Thus, a chief characteristic of a successful person is a strong focus on others and their welfare. When interacting, successful people make others feel important and appreciated, help them where possible, and inspire them to greater achievement. This alignment of values creates success—not only for habitually successful people, but for everyone involved.
Continuous Improvement and Success
One feature of thinking big is continual improvement. There are always problems that need solving, and everywhere things can be done better. Knowing this, people who think big aim for constant betterment, which maintains and improves successful outcomes.
People who mean to achieve great things begin by “following conscientiously and continuously a plan for self-development and growth” (22). They’re always looking for ways to get better results from themselves.
When problems crop up, many people assume that the problem is just part of what must be accepted. Big thinkers, in contrast, see problems as opportunities for improvement. Instead of idly staring at a problem like a deer in headlights, a doer begins immediately to search for creative ideas that can solve the problem. The doer then experiments with ideas, selecting and reshaping them until they find a pathway toward the solution.
At work, where outside competition and technical advances constantly change the shape of the business playing field, a belief in continuous improvement gives people, and their companies, an advantage. Executives search for new ideas, and someone who provides them can advance rapidly. Sometimes workers become comfortable with the way things are and resist efforts to improve things, but the person who finds better ways to do the work will soon feel the even-greater comfort of being promoted.
Continual improvement also can advance a person’s home life. There’s always a way to be a better family member, improve the way the household works, or contribute to others’ wellbeing at home. By always focusing on the desired outcome—in this case, a happy family—the things that can be improved will become obvious, and ways to improve them will appear.
As the conditions of life change, problems develop within communities. To a big thinker, these are seen as opportunities to launch programs that improve situations and make local life even better. Seeing the options for betterment, a big thinker will develop a program for improvement and, as needed, lead the community toward achieving these ends.
Constant improvement is a hallmark of thinking big and a foundation for a successful life. Searching constantly for better ways to do things is the pathway toward achieving one’s goals. By using a philosophy of continuous improvement, it’s hard not to attain what one wants. In the process, the other people involved also come closer to achieving their own goals. It’s an approach that generates benefits—not just for the goal-setters, but for everyone in their lives.
