The magic of thinking by DR DAVID J SCHWARTZ

 The magic of thinking by DR DAVID J SCHWARTZ

A person is a product of his own thoughts. Believe Big. Launch your success offensive with an honest, sincere belief that you can succeed. Believe big and grow big.

Here are the three guides to acquiring and strengthening the power of belief:

1. Think success, don’t think failure

2. Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Successful people are not supermen.

3. Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief.

Most of us make two basic errors with respect to intelligence:

1. We underestimate our own brainpower.

2. We overestimate the other fellow’s brainpower.

This is vitally important: the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more

important than how much intelligence you may have.

Three easy ways to cure intelligence excusitis are:

1. Never underestimate your own intelligence, and never overestimate the intelligence of others.

2. Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.”

3. Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts.

So, to think confidently, act confidently. Act the way you want to feel. Below are five confidence-building exercises.

1. Be a front seater

2. Practice making eye contact.

3. Walk 25 percent faster

4. Practice speaking up.

5. Smile big.

Here are four ways to help you develop a big thinker’s vocabulary.

1. Use big, positive, cheerful words and phrases to describe how you feel.

2. Use bright, cheerful, favorable words and phrases to describe other people.

3. Use positive language to encourage others. Compliment people personally at every opportunity, Everyone you know craves praise.

4. Use positive words to outline plans to others.

Here is how you can develop your power to see what can be, not just what is. I call these the “practice adding value” exercises.

1. Practice adding value to things.

2. Practice adding value to people.

3. Practice adding value to yourself.

Try this three-stage program to strengthen your creativity through asking and listening:

1. Encourage others to talk.

2. Test your own views in the form of questions.

3. Concentrate on what the other person says.

Use these three ways to harness and develop your ideas:

1. Don’t let ideas escape. Write them down.

2. Next, review your ideas.

3. Cultivate and fertilize your idea.

Here are a few simple “do’s” to help make your social environment first class:

1. Do circulate in new groups.

2. Make new friends, join new organizations, enlarge your social orbit.

3. Do select friends who have views different from your own.

People rate you for quality, often subconsciously perhaps. Develop an instinct for quality. It pays. And it costs no more, often costs less, than second class.

Grow these three attitudes. Make them your allies in everything you do.

1. Grow the attitude of I’m activated.

2. Grow the attitude of You are important.

3. Grow the attitude of Service first.

Here is a three-step procedure that will help you to develop the power of enthusiasm.

1. Dig into it deeper. To get enthusiastic, learn more about the thing you are not enthusiastic about.

2, In everything you do, life it up. Enthusiasm, or lack of it, shows through in everything you do and say.

3. Broadcast good news. You and I have been in many situations when someone burst in and said: “I’ve got good news.”

You must feel important to succeed. Helping others to feel important rewards you because it makes you feel more important. Try it and see. Here’s how to do it:

1. Practice appreciation. Make it a rule to let others know you appreciate what they do for you.

2. Practice calling people by their names.

3. Don’t hog glory, invest it instead.

In a quick recap, grow attitudes that will carry you forward to success.

1. Grow the “I’m activated” attitude. Results come in proportion to the enthusiasm invested.

2. Grow the “You are important” attitude. People do more for you when you

make them feel important.

3. Grow the “Service first” attitude, and watch money take care of itself.

Now, here is an exceptionally important observation: In at least nine cases out of ten, the “likability” factor is the first thing mentioned. And in an overwhelmingly large number of cases, the “likability” factor is given far more weight than the technical factor.

Successful people follow a plan for liking people.

1. Learn to remember names. Inefficiency at this point may indicate that your interest is not sufficiently outgoing.

2. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you. Be an old-shoe kind of individual.

3. Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you.

4. Don’t be egotistical. Guard against the impression that you know it all.

5. Cultivate the quality of being interesting so people will get something of value from their association with you.

6. Study to get the “scratchy” elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious.

7. Sincerely attempt to heal, on an honest basis, every misunderstanding you have had or now have. Drain off your grievances.

8. Practice liking people until you learn to do so genuinely.

9. Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone’s achievement, or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment.

10. Give spiritual strength to people, and they will give genuine affection to you.

Here are six ways to win friends by exercising just a little initiative:

1. Introduce yourself to others at every possible opportunity—at parties, meetings, on airplanes, at work, everywhere.

2. Be sure the other person gets your name straight.

3. Be sure you can pronounce the other person’s name the way he pronounces it.

4. Write down the other person’s name, and be mighty sure you have it spelled correctly; understandably people have a thing about the correct spelling of their own names! If possible, get their address and phone number, also.

5. Drop a personal note or make a phone call to the new friends you feel you want to know better. This is an important point. Most successful people follow through on new friends with a letter or a phone call. 

6. And last but not least, say pleasant things to strangers. It warms you up and gets you ready for the task ahead.

Almost without exception, the more successful the person, the more he practices conversation generosity, that is, he encourages the other person to talk about himself, his views, his accomplishments, his family, his job, his problems. Conversation generosity paves the way to greater success in two important ways:

1. Conversation generosity wins friends.

2. Conversation generosity helps you learn more about people.

Here are two things to do to help you avoid the costly mistake of waiting until conditions are perfect before you act.

1. Expect future obstacles and difficulties. Every venture presents risks, problems, and uncertainties.

2. Meet problems and obstacles as they arise. The test of a successful person is not the ability to eliminate all problems before he takes action, but rather the ability to find solutions to difficulties when he encounters them.

GROW THE ACTION HABIT

Practice these key points:

1. Be an activationist. Be someone who does things. Be a doer, not a don’ter.

2. Don’t wait until conditions are perfect. They never will be. Expect future obstacles and difficulties and solve them as they arise.

3. Remember, ideas alone won’t bring success. Ideas have value only when you act upon them.

4. Use action to cure fear and gain confidence. Do what you fear, and fear disappears. Just try it and see.

5. Start your mental engine mechanically Don’t wait for the spirit to move you. Take action, dig in, and you move the spirit.

6. Think in terms of now. Tomorrow, next week, later, and similar words often are synonymous with the failure word, never. Be an “I’m starting right now” kind of person.

7. Get down to business—pronto. Don’t waste time getting ready to act. Start acting instead.

8. Seize the initiative. Be a crusader. Pick up the ball and run. Be a volunteer. Show that you have the ability and ambition to do.

9. Get in gear and go!

The difference between success and failure is found in one’s attitudes toward setbacks, handicaps, discouragements, and other disappointing situations.

Five guideposts to help you turn defeat into victory are:

1. Study setbacks to pave your way to success. When you lose, learn, and then go on to win next time.

2. Have the courage to be your own constructive critic. Seek out your faults and weaknesses and then correct them. This makes you a professional.

3. Stop blaming luck. Research each setback. Find out what went wrong. Remember, blaming luck never got anyone where they wanted to go.

4. Blend persistence with experimentation. Stay with your goal but don’t beat your head against a stone wall. Try new approaches. Experiment.

5. Remember, there is a good side in every situation. Find it. See the good side and whip discouragement.

Now in a quick recap, put these success-building principles to work:

1. Get a clear fix on where you want to go. Create an image of yourself ten years from now.

2. Write out your ten-year plan. Your life is too important to be left to chance. Put down on paper what you want to accomplish in your work, your home, and your social departments.

3. Surrender yourself to your desires. Set goals to get more energy. Set goals to get things done. Set goals and discover the real enjoyment of living.

4. Let your major goal be your automatic pilot. When you let your goal absorb you, you’ll find yourself making the right decisions to reach your goal.

5. Achieve your goal one step at a time. Regard each task you perform, regardless of how small it may seem, as a step toward your goal.

6. Build thirty-day goals. Day-by-day effort pays off.

7. Take detours in your stride. A detour simply means another route. It should never mean surrendering the goal.

8. Invest in yourself. Purchase those things that build mental power and efficiency. Invest in education. Invest in idea starters.

There are two special things you can do to develop your progressive outlook:

• Think improvement in everything you do.

• Think high standards in everything you do.

To be a more effective leader, put these four leadership principles to work:

1. Trade minds with the people you want to influence. It’s easy to get others to do what you want them to do if you’ll see things through their eyes. Ask yourself this question before you act: “What would I think of this if I exchanged places with the other person?”

2. Apply the “Be-Human” rule in your dealings with others. Ask, “What is the human way to handle this?” In everything you do, show that you put other people first. Just give other people the kind of treatment you like to receive. You’ll be rewarded.

3. Think progress, believe in progress, push for progress. Think improvement in everything you do. Think high standards in everything you do. Over a period of time subordinates tend to become carbon copies of their chief. Be sure the master copy is worth duplicating. Make this a personal resolution: ‘At home, at work, in community life, if it’s progress I’m for it.”

4. Take time out to confer with yourself and tap your supreme thinking power. Managed solitude pays off. Use it to release your creative power. Use it to find solutions to personal and business problems. So spend some time alone every day just for thinking. Use the thinking technique all great leaders use: confer with yourself.

In the words of Publilius Syrus:

A wise man will be master of his mind,

A fool will be its slave.