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Grow big by thinking big!
Step one: Believe it can be done.
Here is a basic truth: To do anything, we must first believe it can be done. Believing something can be done sets the mind in motion to find a way to do it.
WHEN YOU BELIEVE, YOUR MIND FINDS WAYS TO DO.
This experiment has just one point: When you believe something is impossible, your mind goes to work for you to prove why. But when you believe, really believe, something can be done, your mind goes to work for you and helps you find the ways to do it.
Where there’s a will, there is a way.
Believe it can be done. That’s basic to creative thinking. Here are suggestions to help you develop creative power through belief:
Eliminate the word impossible from your thinking and speaking vocabularies. Impossible is a failure word. The thought “It’s impossible” sets off a chain react...
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Think of something special you’ve been wanting to do but felt you couldn’t. Now make a list of reasons why you can do it. Many of us whip and defeat our desires simply because we concentrate on why we can’t when the o...
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“Man belongs,” says Dr. von Braun, “where man wants to go.”
Become receptive to ideas. Welcome new ideas. Destroy these thought repellents: “Won’t work,” “Can’t be done,” “It’s useless,” and “It’s stupid.”
I make it a point to soak up all the good ideas I can.”
Be an experimental person. Break up fixed routines. Expose yourself to new restaurants, new books, new theaters, new friends; take a different route to work someday, take a different vacation this year, do something new and different this weekend.
Be progressive, not regressive. Not “That’s the way we did it where I used to work, so we ought to do it that way here” but “How can we do it better than we did it where I used to work?”
“To keep my forward thinking on the track, I’ve divided my job into four elements: customers, employees, merchandise, and promotion. All during the week I make notes and jot down ideas as to how I can improve my business.
“In this four-hour period I force myself to take a hard look at my operation. I don’t simply wish more customers would shop in my store. Instead I ask myself, ‘What can I do to attract more customers?’ ‘How can I develop regular, loyal customers?’”
“Just this: It isn’t so much what you know when you start that matters. It’s what you learn and put to use after you open your doors that counts most.”
General Electric uses the slogan “Progress is our most important product.”
proved to myself that how much I can do depends on how much I think I can do.”
As a personal policy I have accepted fully the concept: If you want it done, give it to a busy man.
Look at it this way: A leader is a decision-making human machine.
Try this three-stage program to strengthen your creativity through asking and listening:
Concentrate on what the other person says. Evaluate it. That’s how you collect mind food.
Eliminate “impossible,” “won’t work,” “can’t do,” “no use trying” from your thinking and speaking vocabularies.
Don’t let tradition paralyze your mind. Be receptive to new ideas. Be experimental. Try new approaches. Be progressive in everything you do.
Ask yourself daily, “How can I do better?” There is no limit to self-improvement. When you ask yourself, “How can I do better?” sound answers will appear. Try it and see.
The success combination in business is: Do what you do better (improve the quality of your output), and: Do more of what you do (increase the quantity of your output).
Remember: Big people monopolize the listening; small people monopolize the talking.
Stretch your mind. Get stimulated. Associate with people who can help you think of new ideas, new ways of doing things. Mix with people of different occupational and social interests.
How you think determines how you act. How you act in turn determines: How others react to you.
“Dress Right. You Can’t Afford Not To!”
Always show positive attitudes toward your job so that your subordinates will “pick up” right thinking.
2. As you approach your job each day, ask yourself, “Am I worthy in every respect of being imitated? Are all my habits such that I would be glad to see them in my subordinates?”
Build your own “sell-yourself-to-yourself” commercial.
When I lose my temper Would an important person get mad at what I’m mad at?
Cement in your mind the question “Is this the way an important person does it?” Use this question to make you a bigger, more successful person.
“Here is an important person: intelligent, prosperous, and dependable.”
In all of life’s situations, ask yourself, “Is this the way an important person thinks?” Then obey the answer.
you are a product of your environment.
People who tell you it cannot be done almost always are unsuccessful people, are strictly average or mediocre at best in terms of accomplishment.
don’t let negative-thinking people—“negators”—destroy your plan to think yourself to success.
How we think is directly affected by the group we’re in. Be sure you’re in the flock that thinks right.
Some folks, being jealous, want to make you feel embarrassed because you want to move upward.
MAKE IT A RULE TO SEEK ADVICE FROM PEOPLE WHO KNOW
“Well, we often do entertain retailing people. But Helen and I find it’s very refreshing to mix with people who do something else for a living. I’m afraid if we confined our entertaining to people who have only interests similar to our own, we’d find ourselves in the old, well-known rut.
Here are a few simple “do’s” to help make your social environment first class:
Get to know people of different religious faiths. Associate with opposites. But just be sure they are persons with real potential.
Go first class: that is an excellent rule to follow in everything you do, including the goods and services you buy.
Of course, I’ve heard the argument many times “but I can’t afford to go first class.” The simplest answer is: you cannot afford to go any other way.
It’s better, for example, to have one really good pair of shoes than to have three pairs of second-class shoes.
