How to Think Bigger: Aim Higher, Get More Motivated, and Accomplish Big Things

by Martin Meadows

If you think you are beaten, you are If you think you dare not, you don’t, If you like to win, but you think you can’t It is almost certain you won’t. If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost For out of the world we find, Success begins with a fellow’s will It’s all in the state of mind. If you think you are outclassed, you are You’ve got to think high to rise, You’ve got to be sure of yourself before You can ever win a prize. Life’s battles don’t always go To the stronger or faster man, But soon or late the man who wins Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN! “Thinking” by Walter D. Wintle

Rolf Dobelli, bestselling author of The Art of Thinking Clearly, wrote an essay about the influence of news on your life3. He writes that news triggers your limbic system, almost as if you were constantly on the lookout for threats. This heightened state of awareness leads to chronic stress, a deregulated immune system, fear, and aggression.

One simple change – replacing news and mass media with books – can produce dramatic changes in your life. No matter what your ambition in life is, you can find books that will inspire you to work on your goals.

Surrounding yourself with empowering books and people on a daily basis will put you into a positive state that will inspire you to raise your standards. Please keep in mind it’s a process of conditioning, and it’s never-ending.

Physical wellness is one of the keys of people who think big. If you don’t have enough energy, you won’t have enough motivation to put your plans into action. Demand from yourself the best – both physically and mentally.

You can’t focus on achieving your full potential if you lack the more basic needs in your life such as a sense of belongingness and esteem. If you suffer from shyness, social anxiety, or depression, your plan of action should start with fixing these issues.

Intrinsic motivation is about enjoyment, fulfillment, or challenge – anything that comes from within you rather than the influences outside of you.

Richard Branson has powerful intrinsic motivation: “My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

If you’ve been trying to motivate yourself to work on a certain goal, write down your vision. If you’ve written it properly (meaning: it fires you up so much you’re restless), you should no longer struggle with procrastination.

By creating your vision, and most importantly, re-reading it every single day and visualizing the outcome, your mindset will shift and your physiology will reflect it. You’ll get more energized to work, you’ll increase your discipline, and you’ll get more focused and fired up to keep going.

every single day, develop more certainty in your abilities to succeed. Put yourself in a prime state by visualizing and anchoring.

Your rituals make you the person you are. No lasting change can happen in your life unless you change them first.

Big achievements are impossible without strong, internal motivation.

If your goal can’t be achieved without making a lot of money, tie it to the emotions you’ll get from your purchase, and not the purchase itself.

Prosocial motivation (the desire to help others) is a more powerful motivator than intrinsic motivation. Consider adding a “who” to your “why.”

When writing down your vision, make it as detailed as possible by using different senses and perspectives. It has to be so good that...

The purpose of having a written vision is to make it easier to think about it every single morning. The way you wake up will affect your entire day, so make it count an...

Your mindset is paramount to success. If you don’t have the proper mindset, you won’t achieve your goals. Empower yourself by visualizing you...

Your life is the sum of your rituals. Successful people have completely different rituals than complacent individuals. Chang...

Life would be easy if all we had to do to achieve our goals was to come up with a vision, think about it every single morning and act on it. However, it’s not that simple. We often get in the way of our goals. Neuroscience shows that there are several parts of our brain that affect our decision making process.

sports psychiatrist Steve Peters simplifies a human brain to three main parts – the chimp (the most primal, emotional part of the brain), the human (the rational side of the brain) and the computer (the part governed by the chimp and the human, responsible for automatic behavior). These three parts have a huge influence on your decision making process.

The chimp is constantly on the lookout for new dangers. The more vulnerable it feels, the more paranoid it becomes. Since the chimp doesn’t operate rationally, it quickly jumps to conclusions and thinks in black and white.

Starting a business can be scary. Your chimp will consider it a danger and try to keep you away from acting on this goal. Whenever you catch yourself thinking, “I feel it’s too dangerous,” it’s probably your chimp at work.

This primal part of your brain doesn’t like any changes that require effort. It loves comfort. Even waking up earlier or losing weight, both of which can tremendously benefit you in the long term, will be considered by your chimp as threats. Discomfort is not your chimp’s friend, even if the human part of your brain knows how transformational short-term discomfort can be. If you want to reduce the negative influence of the chimp on your decision making process, you need to understand how to calm it down.

You can calm your chimp down by speaking to it logically and explaining what will happen if you try to avoid the short-term discomfort.

1. I never give up on anything that’s important to me. 2. I don’t care what anyone thinks about me. The only approval I need is my own. 3. Time is my most important asset. I always focus on achieving more with less. 4. I’m always honest. Lying is for cowards. 5. I always think carefully before making any promises because I always keep my word. 6. Growth happens outside comfort zone. Security leads to mediocrity. 7. I refuse an ordinary approach because I want to live an extraordinary life. 8. Nothing is impossible for a man who refuses to listen to reason. 9. Abundance is all around me. Scarcity is the mindset of the poor. 10. If it’s not fun, I don’t do it. If I have to, I find a way to delegate it.

There are three parts of the brain: the chimp (the most primal, emotional part of the brain), the human (the rational side of the brain) and the computer (the part governed by the chimp and the human, responsible for automatic behavior).

The chimp loves security. It will prevent you from setting and working on big goals because it will feel threatened by them. The primal part of your brain puts self-survival as the most important thing

Playing not to lose is usually characterized by following the trends and playing it safe, while playing to win is about innovation and taking risks.

The famous quote by Jim Rohn, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”

Watching less news (or ideally, not watching it at all) will reduce your anxiety levels and change your world view. In the world of mass media, only bad things happen in the world. Why strive for more if the world is such a bad place? It’s just one of many limiting beliefs mass media puts in your brain.

Playing to win improves your performance, while playing not to lose affects it negatively. Competition can help you grow as a person only if you concentrate on being the best, and not just catching up to others.

Collaboration leads to improved motivation and performance. Whenever possible, find other people who share your big ambitions and work with them.

Surround yourself with the right ambitious and driven people. We learn by observation, and the behaviors and beliefs you’ll observe in th...

Humans focus more on the bad than the good. Pay special attention to avoiding the negative input coming from others and from mass media. We generally underestimate how detrimental these things can be to our mental health.

“Make a great mental leap: dissociate effort from reward. Focus on the outcomes that you want and find the easiest way to them with least effort, least sacrifice, and most pleasure. Concentrate on what produces extraordinary results without extraordinary effort. Be efficient but relaxed. First, think results. Then get them with least energy.

Strategic laziness is simple: you focus exclusively on the actions that provide the best results and disregard everything else. The main challenge is to resist the temptation to do more. If you’re hyperactive and can’t just reduce the amount of hours worked, spend the additional hours working on an entirely different goal.

The activity you perform must have a clear goal. Without knowing the direction you’re going, you won’t achieve flow.

You must receive clear and immediate feedback. If you can’t judge your performance, you won’t be able to maintain the state of flow.

You must be confident in your abilities to complete the task...

Strategic laziness is vital to help you achieve your goals more quickly and with less effort. By disassociating effort from reward, you’ll produce more results with less sacrifice (that would eventually negatively affect other areas of your life).

Never mistake motion for action. People who are busy don’t get better results than people who work less, and they’re usually depleted of energy.

Make it a regular habit to take a break and look at your problems from distance. Spending time in nature, away from everyone else, is conducive to introspection.

Freedom from distractions will help you achieve a deeper state of flow. Make your surroundings as distraction-free as possible.

become a professional bodybuilder after a week of exercising. It takes blood, sweat and tears to get to this point

Nothing is impossible for a man who refuses to listen to reason. If you set big goals, people will tell you you’re unreasonable. But they’ve told many successful inventors and other people who have changed the world.

You need to believe in your abilities to achieve success. There are three important things you need to know about self-efficacy: you build it by achieving small wins and persisting in the face of setbacks; modeling after others can help you increase your confidence; your past successes will improve your general confidence and help you achieve other goals.

Nobody has achieved big goals right away. You start with small achievements and gradually increase the level of your success. Waiting will...

Ask yourself how you can achieve your 10-year plan in 6 months or less. Oftentimes we postpone our goals simply because we mak...

Set short deadlines to achieve much more in much less time. One of the reasons why people never complete their goals is a lack of urgency. By setting short deadlines (and sticking to them), you’ll get ahea...