Sumant Sagar's Key Ideas from The Magic of Thinking Big
by David J. Schwartz

The first step in your plan of thinking yourself to success, must be to vaccinate yourself against excusitis, the disease of the failures.

The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.”

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

Action cures fear.

Indecision, postponement, and doubt increase fear.

• Be a front seater.
• Make eye contact.
• Walk with confidence.
• Speak up.
• Smile big.
• 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.
• Practice uplifting self-praise.
• Don’t practice belittling self-punishment.
• You are what you think you are.
• Think more of yourself and there is more of you.

• How to harness and develop your ideas:
• Write down your ideas as soon as you can.
• Review these ideas you’re writing down
• Cultivate and fertilize your ideas, combine them, nurture them, grow them, expand them.

• Prolonged association with negative people makes us think negatively; close contact with petty individuals develops petty habits in us.
• Companionship with people with big ideas raises the level of our thinking; close contact with ambitious people gives us ambition.
• Everyone wants to feel important, help them with that.
• Always give people more than they expect to get.

• Remember names.
• Stay comfortable and easy to be around.
• Stay calm, don’t be easily ruffled.
• Don’t be egotistical.
• Be interesting so that people may benefit from talking to you.
• Study to get the “scratchy” elements out of your personality, and find out what they are.
• Heal every misunderstanding that you have.
• Practice liking people.
• Never miss an opportunity to offer congratulations or other praise.
• Give spiritual strength to people.

• You must form an image now of who you want to be in ten years.
• Visualize your future in terms of work, home, and social. Where do you want it to be?
• The quickest way to the end is to retire and do nothing. Every human being must keep an interest in life just to keep living.