The Magic of Thinking
The Mindset of Thinking Big
Success Requires Believing in Yourself
Success means something different for all of us because we all have different goals. But regardless of the goal, successful people have one thing in common: they believe in themselves. Disbelief in your own abilities makes failure a self-fulfilling prophecy. In contrast, believing in yourself generates the energy to achieve your goal and overcome obstacles.
What Does Thinking Big Mean?
“Thinking big” means not limiting your possibilities — knowing you are capable of reaching lofty goals and achieving success. There are four key strategies to thinking big:
Don’t sell yourself short. Realize how capable you really are.
Develop a “big thinker’s vocabulary” of positive words. Talk about yourself and others using positive, favorable words. Don’t bring yourself down with negative words.
See the possibilities in a situation, not just what’s in front of you. Imagine what can be, not just what is.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t let petty arguments and perceived insults derail you from your course.
Stop Making Excuses
Unsuccessful people make excuses about why things haven’t worked out. They blame their health, or say their age is holding them back. They blame their lack of intelligence or luck.
Big thinkers don’t fall back on these common excuses. Instead, they focus on what they can do, not what they can’t. They don’t let circumstances hold them back, and use setbacks to propel themselves forward.
Build the Confidence Habit and Kill Fear
Everyone faces fear at some point. Fear in all its forms — worry, tension, embarrassment, anxiety and panic — can be crippling, blocking you from reaching your goals.
Successful people know that confidence is the antidote to fear, and confidence is a habit anyone can develop. Big thinkers first isolate their specific fear and pinpoint what exactly is making them afraid. Then they take some form of action to conquer that fear.
Other techniques for conquering fear include thinking positively, gaining an understanding of people, making moral choices, and showing confidence even if you don’t feel it.
Think Creatively
Big thinkers don’t just amass knowledge. They think creatively. Creative thinking is about finding innovative solutions to problems. There are six steps to develop creative thinking:
Believe it can be done. You have to believe something is possible for it to be achieved.
Know that there’s more than one way to do something.
Always think, “I can do better.” Find something you can improve every day.
Understand you can do more; you have a greater capacity than you think.
Talk less, listen more. Be curious and absorb...
Success Requires Believing in Yourself
What is success? It means something different for all of us because we all have different goals. But if you look at people you view as successful, regardless of their goals, you’ll see they all have one thing in common: They believe in themselves. They believe in their abilities. They believe they can accomplish their goals, no matter what obstacles arise.
Believing in yourself isn’t about wishful thinking, though many people confuse the two. You can’t simply wish yourself into a promotion or a bigger home. You can, however, fuel yourself with an “I know I can do it” attitude, which creates the energy needed to propel you forward. With the right attitude, you’ll observe how other people succeed, and you’ll see all the opportunities for yourself to succeed. The “how” comes naturally if you believe you can do it.
Why Thinking You’ll Fail Is Harmful
When you’re talking with someone who has failed, you may often hear, “I had a feeling it wouldn’t work out,” or, “I wasn’t really surprised it failed.” From the very beginning, these ventures were seeded with failure.
When you start out with a mindset of, “I’ll give it a try but it probably won’t work,” you’ve already...
Stop Making Excuses
Unsuccessful people have a tendency to make excuses about why things haven’t worked out. But if you look at successful people, you find they may have experienced those same roadblocks, but they don’t dwell on them. They don’t make excuses. The roadblocks weren’t even a factor.
The author calls the tendency to make excuses the “disease of excusitis.” Like a physical disease, excusitis can get progressively worse. At first, the person might know the excuse is just a convenient lie - but the more she repeats it, the more she believes it. Soon, she uses that excuse to justify every problem in her life, instead of taking responsibility and solving the problem.
People tend to make excuses centered around four areas: health, intelligence, age, and luck.
We’ll look at each area in detail, but the pattern is this: people use personal traits they can’t change as excuses for not trying. To overcome this, invert your attitude: don’t waste time regretting what you don’t have; instead, make the most of what you do have.
A disadvantage with the right attitude will beat an advantage with the wrong attitude.
3: Build the Confidence Habit and Kill Fear
Fear in all its forms — worry, tension, embarrassment, anxiety and panic — is crippling, paralyzing you from taking action and blocking your success. Fear is real, and no amount of advice such as, “Don’t worry,” or “There’s nothing to be afraid of” will cure us of fear.
Why is fear so self-defeating? Think of an infection in your body. If left untreated, it spreads unabated, causing more physical harm and pain and damaging more and more areas of your body. Fear is an infection of the mind, and when it spreads it stops you from taking chances and jumping on opportunities. It blocks your chances at success. Fear stops you from speaking up when you have something to say, and its incarnations such as anxiety and stress can actually make you physically sick.
So how do we treat this mental infection of fear and stop its spread? Confidence is the antidote to fear, and the good news is that confidence is a skill you can develop. No one is born totally confident. Confident people acquire that confidence over time — and you can too.
There are five steps to take to build the confidence habit