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🛡️ '''3 – Build Confidence and Destroy Fear.''' Navy training during World War II required nonswimmers to jump—not dive—from a board about six feet above a pool into eight or more feet of water while several expert swimmers stood by; many froze until they were nudged off, and the fear evaporated once they surfaced. The lesson is direct: decisive movement dissolves anxiety, while postponement and indecision fertilize it. A retail buyer in his early forties offers numbers to match the feeling—his department was down 7% while the store was up 6%—and replacing vague hope with concrete steps reversed the slide. Confidence is treated as learned, not innate, and the mind is likened to a memory bank: the deposits you make determine what you can withdraw when pressure arrives, so store experiences that reinforce capability rather than replaying a private museum of horrors. Social fear shrinks when you put people in proper perspective—others are more like you than different—and when you practice actions that project energy: sit up front, make real eye contact, walk 25% faster with head up, speak up, and smile. A table of “fear–action” pairs translates this into wardrobe‑and‑workbench moves, from upgrading appearance to making first contacts. The mechanism is exposure and behavioral activation: movement creates information and small wins that dilute amorphous dread, while deliberate positive retrieval prevents rumination from eroding nerve. In the economy of thinking big, confident signals and quick, constructive actions widen your opportunity surface, attract allies, and make ambitious targets feel workable. |
🛡️ '''3 – Build Confidence and Destroy Fear.''' Navy training during World War II required nonswimmers to jump—not dive—from a board about six feet above a pool into eight or more feet of water while several expert swimmers stood by; many froze until they were nudged off, and the fear evaporated once they surfaced. The lesson is direct: decisive movement dissolves anxiety, while postponement and indecision fertilize it. A retail buyer in his early forties offers numbers to match the feeling—his department was down 7% while the store was up 6%—and replacing vague hope with concrete steps reversed the slide. Confidence is treated as learned, not innate, and the mind is likened to a memory bank: the deposits you make determine what you can withdraw when pressure arrives, so store experiences that reinforce capability rather than replaying a private museum of horrors. Social fear shrinks when you put people in proper perspective—others are more like you than different—and when you practice actions that project energy: sit up front, make real eye contact, walk 25% faster with head up, speak up, and smile. A table of “fear–action” pairs translates this into wardrobe‑and‑workbench moves, from upgrading appearance to making first contacts. The mechanism is exposure and behavioral activation: movement creates information and small wins that dilute amorphous dread, while deliberate positive retrieval prevents rumination from eroding nerve. In the economy of thinking big, confident signals and quick, constructive actions widen your opportunity surface, attract allies, and make ambitious targets feel workable. |
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🧠 '''4 – How to Think Big.''' Recently I chatted with a recruitment specialist for one of the nation’s largest industrial organizations. Four months each year she visits college campuses to screen graduating seniors for a junior‑executive training program, interviewing eight to twelve candidates a day, most in the upper third of their class. She looks for motivation to run major projects or manage a branch, yet many fixate on the retirement plan and whether they’ll have to move, treating success as mere security. That small frame means there’s less competition than people think for truly rewarding responsibility, so I press them to raise their sights. I show how self‑deprecation leaks through posture and language, and I teach the big‑thinker’s vocabulary—words that picture growth, possibility, and leadership. I also ask them to see their present job as important, to visualize what can be rather than what is, and to ignore trivia by asking, “Is it really important?” When you upgrade the size of your target, your questions, tone, and effort expand with it, and other people respond in kind. Expectancy fuels initiative, and initiative compounds into larger opportunities—thinking bigger quietly lifts the expected value of every choice you make. *How big we think determines the size of our accomplishments.* |
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🧠 '''4 – How to Think Big.''' |
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🎨 '''5 – How to Think and Dream Creatively.''' In training sessions I often test belief by asking whether it’s possible to eliminate jails within the next thirty years; when the group says “yes,” we rapidly generate dozens of concrete proposals—seventy‑eight on one count—but when they say “no,” the mind shuts and hunts excuses. I give the same assignment to individuals who feel stuck, like the young man who wanted to return to university; once he decided it was possible and let that thought dominate, a workable plan emerged, and he soon finished his degree and stepped into a management‑trainee role. To contrast rigid with creative thinking, I describe an executive who insisted there was one “best way” to sell and nearly wrecked his firm, then cite Crawford H. Greenewalt of E. I. du Pont de Nemours telling Columbia University there are many ways to do a good job. Creative power grows when you ban failure words—“impossible,” “won’t work,” “no use trying”—seek diverse inputs, and put ideas in salable form with notes, sketches, or models. Belief primes the brain to search for methods rather than alibis; framing a goal as doable switches cognition from defense to exploration. Variety and visualization supply raw material, while writing and testing give ideas traction in the real world. *WHEN YOU BELIEVE, YOUR MIND FINDS WAYS TO DO.* |
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🎨 '''5 – How to Think and Dream Creatively.''' |
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🪞 '''6 – You Are What You Think You Are.''' A policeman quoted in the American Institute of Men’s and Boys’ Wear “Dress Right. You Can’t Afford Not To!” campaign admits people judge by appearance; I apply the same rule to adults because your look “talks” to others and to yourself. On the selling floor one customer hears, “Yes sir, may I serve you?” while another is ignored—the signals each person broadcasts explain the difference. I recommend simple, visible upgrades—pressed suit, shined shoes, neat grooming—because an old psychology professor was right: dressing sharp helps you think sharp. Beyond appearance, I urge you to treat your work as important; the classic three‑bricklayer story shows how a cathedral grows in the mind before it rises on the site. To keep self‑respect humming, build a short “sell‑yourself‑to‑yourself” commercial and read it aloud daily; Tom Staley did and watched his confidence and results climb. As you improve your self‑definition, behavior follows—voice steadies, decisions quicken, and others mirror that higher estimate back to you. Self‑labeling sets a feedback loop: think first‑class and you act first‑class, which earns first‑class treatment and chances. *You are what you think you are.* |
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🪞 '''6 – You Are What You Think You Are.''' |
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✈️ '''7 – Manage Your Environment: Go First Class.''' |
✈️ '''7 – Manage Your Environment: Go First Class.''' |
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Revision as of 13:14, 4 November 2025
"Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution."
— David J. Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big (1959)
Introduction
| The Magic of Thinking Big | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Full title | The Magic of Thinking Big |
| Author | David J. Schwartz |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Success; Personal development; Motivation |
| Genre | Nonfiction; Self-help |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | 2 April 1987 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover, paperback); e-book; audiobook |
| Pages | 192 |
| ISBN | 978-0-671-64678-3 |
| Website | simonandschuster.com |
📘 The Magic of Thinking Big is a self-help book by American marketing professor David J. Schwartz, first published by Prentice-Hall in 1959 and later reissued as a Simon & Schuster Fireside paperback in 1987.[1] It teaches readers to set ambitious goals and to replace “excusitis,” fear and hesitation with deliberate action; its 13 chapters include “Believe You Can Succeed and You Will,” “Cure Yourself of Excusitis,” and “Get the Action Habit.”[2] Schwartz writes in a practical, how-to register, promising “tools to change your life” around confidence, creative thinking, and leadership habits. The work has remained in print internationally—including a 2019 Vermilion Life Essentials edition—and Simon & Schuster reports more than six million copies sold worldwide. It is frequently cited among influential self-help titles; for example, Forbes highlighted it in 2014 as one of the “greatest self-help books” of recent decades.[3]
Chapter summary
This outline follows the Simon & Schuster Fireside paperback edition (2 April 1987; ISBN 978-0-671-64678-3).
🌟 1 – Believe You Can Succeed and You Will. In Detroit for a Monday job interview, a tool‑and‑die worker from Cleveland spent the previous evening in his hotel room listing five better‑paid acquaintances and realized the gap was initiative and self‑belief rather than brains or schooling. He entered the interview and, instead of timidly asking for a small bump, requested $3,500 more than his current pay—and received it; within two years he was known as a top business‑getter and was awarded stock when the company reorganized. Belief is presented as a “thought factory” run by two internal foremen: Mr. Triumph, who manufactures reasons you can, and Mr. Defeat, who manufactures reasons you can’t; the practical counsel is to sack the latter and put the former on full‑time duty. Framing the day as promising and the task as doable shifts posture, tone, and energy in ways that alter how others respond and how persistently you work. Three concrete guides deepen belief: think success rather than failure when difficulties arise, remind yourself you are better than you think, and set big goals because big plans are often no harder than small ones. Expanding opportunities and demand for leaders reward those who cultivate belief and act, not those who wait for perfect conditions. Expectancy drives behavior: confidence raises initiative, broadens the search for solutions, and attracts cooperation, creating a self‑reinforcing loop. Thinking big also changes the size of your attempts—asking for larger roles and proposing bolder ideas—so the expected value of your choices rises even if the risk does not.
🚫 2 – Cure Yourself of Excusitis the Failure Disease. The chapter diagnoses “excusitis” with two health vignettes from the same afternoon: after a talk in Cleveland, a thirty‑year‑old brooded over a “bad heart” no physician could find, while on a flight to Detroit a seatmate with a newly installed plastic heart valve calmly outlined plans to study law in Minnesota. It cites physician guidance to manage emotions rather than ruminate and notes Mayo Clinic advice to avoid obsessive tests that reinforce worry. Excuses tend to cluster in four forms—health, intelligence, age, and luck—and each has a treatment that shifts attention to controllable action. For intelligence, the text distinguishes idea makers from mere fact recorders and prescribes simple practices that build practical judgment instead of cataloging trivia. For age, it recounts a trainee named Cecil at forty who chose to become a manufacturers’ representative, and a relative who, at forty‑five with three small children, entered a five‑year ministerial program in Wisconsin and was later ordained in Illinois. Both stories hinge on time arithmetic: the years will pass regardless, so starting now compounds advantage. Luck is reframed as outcomes shaped by preparation, persistence, and a readiness to move when openings appear, not as fate. Psychologically, trading excuses for responsibility shifts you from an external to an internal locus of control, which raises effort and resilience. Clearing excusitis gives thinking big room to operate by separating real constraints from self‑imposed ones.
🛡️ 3 – Build Confidence and Destroy Fear. Navy training during World War II required nonswimmers to jump—not dive—from a board about six feet above a pool into eight or more feet of water while several expert swimmers stood by; many froze until they were nudged off, and the fear evaporated once they surfaced. The lesson is direct: decisive movement dissolves anxiety, while postponement and indecision fertilize it. A retail buyer in his early forties offers numbers to match the feeling—his department was down 7% while the store was up 6%—and replacing vague hope with concrete steps reversed the slide. Confidence is treated as learned, not innate, and the mind is likened to a memory bank: the deposits you make determine what you can withdraw when pressure arrives, so store experiences that reinforce capability rather than replaying a private museum of horrors. Social fear shrinks when you put people in proper perspective—others are more like you than different—and when you practice actions that project energy: sit up front, make real eye contact, walk 25% faster with head up, speak up, and smile. A table of “fear–action” pairs translates this into wardrobe‑and‑workbench moves, from upgrading appearance to making first contacts. The mechanism is exposure and behavioral activation: movement creates information and small wins that dilute amorphous dread, while deliberate positive retrieval prevents rumination from eroding nerve. In the economy of thinking big, confident signals and quick, constructive actions widen your opportunity surface, attract allies, and make ambitious targets feel workable.
🧠 4 – How to Think Big. Recently I chatted with a recruitment specialist for one of the nation’s largest industrial organizations. Four months each year she visits college campuses to screen graduating seniors for a junior‑executive training program, interviewing eight to twelve candidates a day, most in the upper third of their class. She looks for motivation to run major projects or manage a branch, yet many fixate on the retirement plan and whether they’ll have to move, treating success as mere security. That small frame means there’s less competition than people think for truly rewarding responsibility, so I press them to raise their sights. I show how self‑deprecation leaks through posture and language, and I teach the big‑thinker’s vocabulary—words that picture growth, possibility, and leadership. I also ask them to see their present job as important, to visualize what can be rather than what is, and to ignore trivia by asking, “Is it really important?” When you upgrade the size of your target, your questions, tone, and effort expand with it, and other people respond in kind. Expectancy fuels initiative, and initiative compounds into larger opportunities—thinking bigger quietly lifts the expected value of every choice you make. *How big we think determines the size of our accomplishments.*
🎨 5 – How to Think and Dream Creatively. In training sessions I often test belief by asking whether it’s possible to eliminate jails within the next thirty years; when the group says “yes,” we rapidly generate dozens of concrete proposals—seventy‑eight on one count—but when they say “no,” the mind shuts and hunts excuses. I give the same assignment to individuals who feel stuck, like the young man who wanted to return to university; once he decided it was possible and let that thought dominate, a workable plan emerged, and he soon finished his degree and stepped into a management‑trainee role. To contrast rigid with creative thinking, I describe an executive who insisted there was one “best way” to sell and nearly wrecked his firm, then cite Crawford H. Greenewalt of E. I. du Pont de Nemours telling Columbia University there are many ways to do a good job. Creative power grows when you ban failure words—“impossible,” “won’t work,” “no use trying”—seek diverse inputs, and put ideas in salable form with notes, sketches, or models. Belief primes the brain to search for methods rather than alibis; framing a goal as doable switches cognition from defense to exploration. Variety and visualization supply raw material, while writing and testing give ideas traction in the real world. *WHEN YOU BELIEVE, YOUR MIND FINDS WAYS TO DO.*
🪞 6 – You Are What You Think You Are. A policeman quoted in the American Institute of Men’s and Boys’ Wear “Dress Right. You Can’t Afford Not To!” campaign admits people judge by appearance; I apply the same rule to adults because your look “talks” to others and to yourself. On the selling floor one customer hears, “Yes sir, may I serve you?” while another is ignored—the signals each person broadcasts explain the difference. I recommend simple, visible upgrades—pressed suit, shined shoes, neat grooming—because an old psychology professor was right: dressing sharp helps you think sharp. Beyond appearance, I urge you to treat your work as important; the classic three‑bricklayer story shows how a cathedral grows in the mind before it rises on the site. To keep self‑respect humming, build a short “sell‑yourself‑to‑yourself” commercial and read it aloud daily; Tom Staley did and watched his confidence and results climb. As you improve your self‑definition, behavior follows—voice steadies, decisions quicken, and others mirror that higher estimate back to you. Self‑labeling sets a feedback loop: think first‑class and you act first‑class, which earns first‑class treatment and chances. *You are what you think you are.*
✈️ 7 – Manage Your Environment: Go First Class.
😊 8 – Make Your Attitudes Your Allies.
🤝 9 – Think Right Toward People.
⚡ 10 – Get the Action Habit.
🔄 11 – How to Turn Defeat into Victory.
🎯 12 – Use Goals to Help You Grow.
🧑✈️ 13 – How to Think like a Leader.
Background & reception
🖋️ Author & writing. David J. Schwartz was a professor of marketing at Georgia State University and president of Creative Educational Services, a leadership-development consultancy.[1] He died in 1987, the same year Simon & Schuster issued the widely distributed Fireside paperback edition.[1] The book’s method is organized as practical how-to chapters on belief, curing “excusitis,” building confidence, creative thinking, goal-setting, and leadership.[2] Publisher catalog copy describes the register as motivating and tool-focused rather than academic. An unabridged audiobook from Simon & Schuster Audio broadened access to the title in 2015.
📈 Commercial reception. Simon & Schuster reports that the book has sold more than six million copies worldwide. The title has stayed in print across markets, including a 2019 UK Vermilion Life Essentials reissue. Major outlets continue to place it on business reading lists—for example, Forbes’s “30 must-read business books for 2021” and Business Insider’s recommendations from rising industry figures in 2020.[4][5]
👍 Praise. Forbes included the book in a 2014 roundup of the “greatest self-help books,” highlighting its emphasis on respectful, people-first success.[3] A 2017 Forbes column recommended it as a concise, practical reminder that “success comes from thinking big.”[6] The Times of India has repeatedly featured the title in lists of inspirational or positive-thinking books for general readers, underscoring its enduring popular appeal.[7]
👎 Criticism. Critics of positive-thinking manuals—often grouping Schwartz’s book with that tradition—argue that unqualified optimism can oversimplify causality and hinder realism; The Guardian’s Tim Lott contends that accepting reality may be more helpful than “positive thinking.”[8] Experimental research by Gabriele Oettingen and colleagues finds that indulging in positive fantasies can reduce effort and achievement, complicating straightforward “think big” prescriptions.[9] Barbara Ehrenreich’s book-length critique of the “cult of positive thinking” likewise warns of harms when optimism substitutes for evidence-based action.[10]
🌍 Impact & adoption. The book continues to surface in executive and entrepreneurship circles: Forbes Councils members list it among recommended titles for building a business, and Forbes has featured it in annual business-book roundups.[4][11] Forbes has also reported that entrepreneur Tim Ferriss keeps a copy on his shelf as a formative text that helps him reset his thinking, illustrating its continued influence among high-profile practitioners.[12] Business Insider has likewise documented contemporary business leaders recommending the book as part of their core reading.[5]
Related content & more
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References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "David Schwartz". Simon & Schuster. Simon & Schuster. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The magic of thinking big". WorldCat. OCLC. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Caprino, Kathy (21 March 2014). "What The Greatest Self-Help Books Of The Last Decades Can Teach You In 7 Minutes". Forbes. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Cook, Jodie (16 December 2020). "30 Must-Read Business Books For Upping Your Game In 2021". Forbes. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "The Best Real-Estate Career Books, According to Rising Stars". Business Insider. 15 December 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ Denning, Stephanie (31 July 2017). "The Best Books I Read Last Month". Forbes. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ "7 inspirational books that will change your life for the better". The Times of India. 31 January 2022. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ Lott, Tim (19 March 2019). "The best form of self-help is … a healthy dose of unhappiness". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ Kappes, Heather Barry; Gabriele Oettingen (2011). "Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 47 (4): 719–729. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.02.003. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ Ellmann, Lucy (8 January 2010). "Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ "Top 48 Business Books Forbes Councils Members Recommend on Building a Business". Forbes Councils. Forbes Councils. 27 August 2020. Retrieved 4 November 2025.
- ↑ Glazer, Robert (16 June 2020). "This New Book Has A Tip That Will Change Your Life". Forbes. Retrieved 4 November 2025.