Three Key Lessons I Learned from the Book Magic of Thinking Big

When I started my non-fiction books reading journey nine years back, I started reading a lot of self-help books as those were coming up in top recommendations.

I read one after another; I liked them, there was so much to learn. But, after a while, I lost interest as most of the advice seemed to be similar.

I had read books ‘Think and grow rich’, ‘As a man thinketh’ and by the title of this book ‘Magic of thinking big’, I was thinking this must also be a similar book about ‘thinking’. But I was wrong and I was glad I picked up this book.

Self-help books are wonderful if they meet the aim of making you “do” something about the improvement you are seeking. You read the book, you say, well it’s so wonderful book, but you do nothing after reading it, what’s the point?

This book was one such book that made me take action. It filled in so much positivity in me. I tried to be much better than I was before. In my personal life and professional life, I advanced.

I joined a Toastmasters club to improve my public speaking and leadership skills and it was a tremendous transformation as an individual and professional since then. I was afraid of deep waters and I took a step and learned to swim starting at 36 despite many people thinking it was difficult to learn to swim at this age. I avoided negative people as much as I could and developed a positive attitude and outlook towards life.

I can go on and I believe I benefitted so much. Here are the key takeaways for me that can help you too.

1. Thinking drives your success. Think big.

• Success is determined not so much by the size of one’s brain or IQ as it is by the size of ‘One’s thinking’.
• Case history after case history proved that the size of one’s bank account, size of happiness account, and size of one’s general satisfaction accounts depend on the “size of one’s thinking”.
• Think Big. The greatest human weakness is — selling oneself short. Thinking I am not good enough for something. Aiming low. The jobs which have high pay top posts are very less crowded with applications. People think they are not suited /qualified for it. They underestimate. Remember, high roads are usually uncrowded. Think big.
• Thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you have. Not even a Ph.D. degree can override this success principle.
• Our mind is a thought factory. You will grow what you sow. Implant positive thoughts, you succeed. If you put in failure, you fail. It is that simple. Think success. It’s like a memory bank. Put in positive thoughts in there.
• Remind yourself that you are better than you think you are.
• To think big, we must use words and phrases which produce big, positive mental images. The basic point is we think only in pictures/images. Words are raw materials of thought. The mind converts words to images. Use positive phrases. Good positive images. When you speak, it is like a projecting a movie in the mind of others. Pictures you show or create determine how you and others react. Use cheerful, big, positive words to describe how you feel.
• Think creatively, with a progressive and positive attitude. Top success is reserved for I-can-do-it-better kind of person. Ask 10 mins a day — how can I do a better job today? What can I do to encourage people? What special favor I can do? How can I be more productive and increase my efficiency?

2. Develop a positive Attitude

• With a positive, optimistic, and cooperative attitude, a person with an IQ of 100 will earn more money, win more respect and achieve more success than a negative, pessimistic, uncooperative individual with an IQ of 120.
• People who don’t have a deep-down feeling of self-importance are slated for mediocrity. You must feel important to succeed. Helping others to feel important rewards you because it makes you feel important. Try it and see for yourself.
• Believe you can succeed and you will. Really believe. Positively. Having complete faith will yield results. It opens up opportunities on how to do. Negative thought just shuts the door. Positive thoughts and a belief that you can achieve opens up a way to do. Where there is a will, there is a way. Think victory and you succeed. Think doubt and you fail. It is important to think of success. Talk positive words and remove negative words like impossible etc from your vocabulary. Think positive.
• Eagerly accept more opportunities and responsibilities. Capacity is just a state of mind. If we believe it can be done, it can be done. Remember, top people, they do a lot more. Surely you can do it. If you just keep doing what you are supposed to do, you will not go forward. Do more.
• Ideas — Don’t let them escape. Write them down. Review your ideas. Regularly and file them together. Cultivate and fertilize your ideas.
• Stimulate your mind. Provide psychological sunshine. Regular mind food. Join and meet regularly with 1 professional group in your own occupational area. Join and meet regularly with 1 group outside your occupational area. Do it. It expands the mind.
• Try out new things. If something doesn’t work, change, try out. New books, new restaurants, new friends, new theaters, new environment, a different route to work, a different vacation. Do something different this weekend. Be experimental. Bring on positive energy. Talk progressive all the time. Think positive, talk about happiness. Smile and laugh.
• Excuses — You find that more successful the individual, the less inclined he is to make excuses. Avoid health excuses. Don’t talk about poor health. No one likes that. Not worth the small sympathy you may get if it all. Don’t worry about health. Be genuinely grateful for your good health.
• Avoid intelligence excuse. There is no such thing as if someone from a prestigious university, higher IQ, etc. We always underestimate our brainpower and overestimate others’. Never underestimate. Attitude is more important than intelligence.
• Never have ‘I am too old to start this now’ or ‘I am too young’ attitude as an excuse to start something. That is failure thinking. It is the right time to start now. Cure this age excusitis. Best years are ahead. There are countless stories on starting something at whatever age and following up with success. Act on it right away.
• Manage your environment. You will change over a period of months and years, prolonged association with negative people makes us think negatively. Stay away from petty, negative thinkers, friends, and colleagues. They are often a hindrance to your success, planting negative thoughts subconsciously. People who say it can’t be done almost always are unsuccessful, mediocre, or average people. These opinions can be poisonous. Be extra cautious about these negators. They come in different forms. Be careful to recognize.
• Never do something that hurts your conscience. Never. You will feel guilt. Sale using tactics will hurt conscience than good. Avoid anything that will cause you to ask ‘will I get caught’? Something that you can’t speak publicly about. If you take care of this, confidence gets a boost.

3. Learn public speaking and people skills

• Speak up 25% louder. Speak when you are not asked to as well (sometimes) in forums, meetings when it makes sense. Ask questions. Speak for the team. Speak up.
• Walk straight and tall. Walk 25% faster. Average people walk average. Successful people walk confidently. You can observe them.
• Look important. It helps you to think important. Dress well. Buy half but twice costly, top quality. Dressing important makes you feel important and think important. Builds confidence. and it matters a lot. Be neat. Be first-class. Never leave home until you ensured you look the way you want. Not a single time.
• Do eye Contact in conversations. Smile Big. Actions induce emotions. Smile.
• Do a firm handshake. Shows and builds confidence.
• Talk positively about other people. Always talk well, never talk negatively for whatever reason. Use positive language to encourage others. Complement people at every single opportunity. We have a genuine opportunity!. With these words, the mind sparkles instead of saying we have a problem. Praising, appreciating a brief pat on the back helps, daily.
• Before complaining, or accusing or reprimanding someone or launching a counterattack in self-defense, ask yourself — “Is it important?”. In most cases, it isn’t and you avoid conflict. Don’t worry about petty things. Job, role, office. Think big picture. Think your job is important.
• Ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.
• Just ask this question and take a pause for a couple of mins and think. “What can I do today to make my wife and family happy”. Just do it, and do it often.
• No person is all good. No person is all bad. A perfect person doesn’t exist. Think about it next time when you meet and talk to someone. It is okay to be a bit different, just carry on.
• No one became successful all alone. Everyone needs support from other people. Likability factor is so important. The person is not promoted but lifted up. It is not office politics that holds up promotion. You have to deserve it. Ex-College Dean wants support from professors, politicians from voters, writers from readers, Chain store magnate from its employees, and consumers. The list goes on.
• Grow the ‘Service first’ attitude. Money takes care of itself eventually. Make it a rule in everything you do. Give people more than they expect to get. Giving customers extra service is a money seed. Money seeds of course grow money. Plant service and harvest money. If you think what do they expect for say x$/month, such people stay where they are. Do extra. Provide service more than expected.
• In your speech, avoid the trivial. What makes a good speaker is knowledge of what he’s going to talk about (clear concept) and intense desire to tell it to other people. All successful speakers have it in common. They have something to say and they feel a burning desire for other people to hear it.
• Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn’t stuck with the present. A chain store may think one customer who spent one day 1.5$ as non-important but only if you visualize, you will realize how big/important that one customer can be in the future, for a year and going forward. A real estate broker, who sees a barren land and thinks how can it be converted as a beautiful estate and sells an idea, not just the land.
• Avoid fear of talking to people. Next time you feel fear of someone, just imagine this military episode. All men standing naked, getting their body washed before the drill. Many of them are top bankers, lawyers, CEOs, recognized people in their field. Just imagine this picture. Essentially, all are men. With different height, color, etc, but all have same kind of desires, needs, aspirations, troubles, problems, family, hope. Why be afraid of those. All are just men. Just imagine this when you are next time on stage or when you are afraid of talking to people. Fear will disappear, guaranteed!
• Action Cures fear. Take action. Right now. Don’t delay. Indecision, postponement fertilizes the fear. Act on it right now.

And a couple of key aways on the success that stayed with me. I hope this pushes you to progress towards improving yourself.

• Luck — Take a good look at what appears someone’s ‘good luck’. You will find not luck but preparation, planning, and success producing thinking preceded his good fortune. Have a look at Mr. Success and Mr. Failure. What appears bad luck has specific reasons. Mr success receives a setback, he learns and profits from it. But when Mr. Mediocre loses, he cannot learn.
• 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. It is a hard fact. Success comes from doing those things and mastering those principles that produce success. Don’t count on luck for promotions, victories, the good things in life. Luck isn’t designed to deliver these good things. Instead, just concentrate on developing those qualities that will make you a winner.