PNTV - The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do a really fun book, the Magic of Thinking Big. As always, great book this one. I've got all my little dangly markers on Philosopher's Note where I pulled out some of my favorite big ideas into this six page PDF. About 10 of them, 12 of them. We're going to cover a few of my favorites right now. The Magic of Thinking Big. It's a classic. It was written in 1959 by a guy named David Schwartz. It's kind of got some old school language to it, which I dig. Pretty funny. But the guy is awesome and he's all about thinking big, believing big and acting big and playing big. And this book is basically all about how to get our bigness on.

So we're going to talk about a.

Few of my favorite big ideas on how to rock that. We will start with the idea the very first step is to believe it's possible. He says this here is the first step towards success. It's a basic step, it can't be avoided. Step one, believe in yourself. Believe you can succeed. The whole book is predicated on that. If we don't have belief in ourselves, none of these ideas matter. So we've got to believe that we can succeed. I quote a couple other people here, Henry Ford says, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So choose wisely there. And then a guy named Seneca, who's a Stoic philosopher. We're going to do him and a couple other Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, soon. He says, it is not because things are difficult that you do not dare. It is because you do not dare that things are difficult. Right? So it all starts with believing in ourselves, daring to think big and then going for it, right? Awesome. One of the big reasons why we don't do that is something that he calls excuse itis. He's got a couple of really funny words in here. Excuse itis. He says that all failures and most average people, all average people and failures really have excuse itis. Failures to an acute degree, where they make an excuse for everything. Everything is because of something else. They're too young, they're too old, not enough money, not enough or a great enough upbringing if they just had this education. The market's really bad right now, so can't do it. There's always an excuse. But if we want to Experience the magic of thinking big. We've got to quit making excuses, get clear on what we want, believe in ourselves and go for it. So see if you can notice how often you make excuses and if you are suffering from a minor or acute case of excusitis, very dangerous. The next fun word he has here is stickability. So he likes to say that stickability is 95% of ability, right? So just the ability to have persistence and to continue going for it is 95% of ability. One of my favorite phrases and aphorisms is from SN Gwenka. I attended a 10 day silent Vipassana meditation with him and his instructors. And he said this dozens and dozens and dozens of times. In a Burmese accent he says, work diligently, diligently, Work patiently and persistently. Patiently and persistently and you're bound to be successful. Bound to be successful. So diligence, patience, persistence, and we're bound to be successful. I like to add playfulness. Diligence, patience, persistence and playfulness for me is what it's all about. But we've got to see the long term. We've got to have stickability if we want to see our ability come to fruition. It's a really big idea that I dig. So there you go. How about the next big idea? He says action cures fear. If you want to fertilize your fear, if you want to grow your fear, procrastinate, don't take action, avoid it. Kind of run away from your fear. That's a great way to make sure your fear increases and it grows. If you want to cure fear, we've got to take action. There's a great story. I haven't even read the book, but I love the story, Pilgrim's Progress. I think Paul. Paul Bunyan wrote it. And I read about this story in another book and I just loved it. The main character is a guy named Christian, right? And he's cruising around and he's facing all these challenges, but he has a magical shield and the shield is extraordinary. It actually makes him invincible. With one caveat. He's got to head straight toward his problems and keep his shield in front of him. If he goes straight at all the gremlins and demons and all these other challenges that he's facing in this story, and he defeats them, he's invincible. His shield protects him. But if he turns around and runs away from his fears, he's vulnerable. So the whole idea is we're invincible if we just continue to diligently and patiently and persistently move toward our fears. A magical thing happens when we do that. Things tend to dissolve. The things we're so afraid of dissolve as we consistently move toward them. Of course there's going to be challenges, but there's so much power in moving forward and taking action, even if it's just baby steps. So the question I have here in the note is, is there something you're afraid of right now that you might be avoiding? Right. What is that thing that you might be avoiding right now that you can take some simple action on? Doesn't need to be complete resolution, but what simple baby steps could you take? Maybe a phone call or an email, Whatever it is, what's one, two or three simple steps you could take toward that challenge and move toward your fear? It's a really big idea. Action cures fear. As he says, indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fertilize fear. Jot that down in your success rule book. Right now, action cures fear. Huge idea. I mentioned some other great teachers here we don't have time to go into, but you can check out the note for more on that. So the next big idea is memory bank deposits. So he's got this great idea that successful people who tap into the magic of thinking big have a habit of only depositing really happy positive memories into their memory bank account. Right? And they withdraw only positive memories back out. They don't ruminate on negative stuff, ruminating on all the things that went wrong. The person who slighted you or the thing that didn't go quite the way you wanted to is like making negative deposits. Right. He likes to say it's like buying a brand new car and then every night going and sprinkling in some sand into the engine.

Right?

Well, pretty soon you're going to destroy the engine. It's the same thing with our consciousness. We've got to be really clear and really conscious of what we put into our minds. And he says only make positive deposits before you go to sleep. When you wake up in the morning, make positive deposits. Remember the things that you're really proud of. Keep a journal of the things you're grateful for. We haven't talked about appreciation in a while. Check out gratitudelog.com if you haven't yet. I log the five things I'm most grateful for every day. That's a way for me to sprinkle in positive things into my consciousness. Make some great deposits. You can find me at Brian Johnson. What is it? Gratitudelog.com BrianJohnson we can connect there. Big practice scientifically proven to raise your levels of happiness. If you're not doing it yet, what are you waiting for? How about we've got a couple more minutes. How about. He says this to think confidently, act confidently, right?

So if we want to feel confident.

We'Ve got to act confidently. And he has the idea in here that many teachers talk about. The idea of acting as if we're going to do Wayne Dyer's Power of Intention soon. Wayne has a great way of describing acting as if Imagine your ideal, whether it's your ideal physical body and your health and your vibrance, or your ideal relationship, who you are and how you show up in a relationship, or your ideal financial situation or your ideal creative or professional expression, whatever your ideal is, imagine that. And then in this moment, act as if you already were that successful version of yourself in whatever domain. If you're super healthy, well, act as if you are that super healthy person right now. They probably don't eat the late night indulgent snack at 11pm and they probably get up and they work out. So act as if you already were that person you want to become. As we act confidently, our confidence grows, our magic of thinking big grows. So act as if that's a really cool idea that I love. He says the word impossible needs to be removed from our vocabulary entirely. It's a bad word. Remove impossible. See yourself how often you make the you say the word impossible. It's closely tied to the excuse itis disease and it doesn't show up very often. That word impossible with people who have stickability. So that's a quick look at the magic of thinking big. Action cures fear. Stickability is awesome. Believe big, get rid of excusitis. Make positive memory bank deposits to think confidently, act confidently. We've got some other ideas in the note, but that should be enough to get us going. The final one is take action. If you have good ideas, get to work on them. If you got something that's inspiring you, now is the time to rock it. So there you go. That's the magic of thinking big in 10 minutes. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See you. See you.

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