15 Tips How Successful People Think

1-Better Thinking

Good ideas rarely go out and find someone. If you want to find a good idea, you must search for it. If you want to become a better thinker, you need to work at it — and once you begin to become a better thinker, the good ideas keep coming. In fact, the amount of good thinking you can do at any time depends primarily on the amount of good thinking you are already doing.

2-Spend time with the right people.

Spend time with the right people. As I worked on this section and bounced my

ideas off of some key people (so that my thoughts would be stretched), I realized something about myself. All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are thinkers. Now, I love all people. I try to be kind to everyone I meet, and I desire to add value to as many people as I can through conferences, books, audio lessons, etc. But the people I seek out and choose to spend time with all challenge me with their thinking and their actions. They are constantly trying to grow and learn.

3-Find a Place to Shape Your Thoughts

Author C. D. Jackson observes that “great ideas need landing gear as well as

wings.” Any idea that remains only an idea doesn’t make a great impact. The

real power of an idea comes when it goes from abstraction to application. Think about Einstein’s theory of relativity. When he published his theories in 1905 and 1916, they were merely profound ideas. Their real power came with the development of the nuclear reactor in 1942 and the nuclear bomb in 1945. When scientists developed and implemented Einstein’s ideas, the whole world changed.

4-Big-picture

Big-picture thinking can benefit any person in any profession. When somebody like Jack Welch tells a GE employee that the ongoing relationship with the customer is more important than the sale of an individual product, he’s reminding them of the big picture. When two parents are fed up with potty training, poor grades, or fender-benders, and one reminds the other that the current difficult time is only a temporary season, then they benefit from thinking big picture. Real estate developer Donald Trump quipped, “You have to think anyway, so why not think big?” Big-picture thinking brings wholeness and maturity to a person’s thinking. It brings perspective. It’s like making the frame of a picture bigger, in the process expanding not only what you can see, but what you are able to do.

5-Live Completely

French essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne wrote, “The value of life lies

not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long

yet live very little.” The truth is that you can spend your life any way you want, but you can spend it only once. Becoming a big-picture thinker can help you to live with wholeness, to live a very fulfilling life. People who see the big picture expand their experience because they expand their world. As a result, they accomplish more than narrow-minded people. And they experience fewer unwanted surprises, too, because they are more likely to see the many

components involved in any given situation: issues, people, relationships,

timing, and values. They are also, therefore, usually more tolerant of other

people and their thinking.

6-Learn from Experience

Big-picture thinkers broaden their outlook by striving to learn from every

experience. They don’t rest on their successes, they learn from them. More

importantly, they learn from their failures. They can do that because they remain teachable.

Varied experiences — both positive and negative — help you see the big picture. The greater the variety of experience and success, the more potential to learn you have. If you desire to be a big-picture thinker, then get out there and try a lot of things, take a lot of chances, and take time to learn after every victory or defeat.

7-Focus

Focus can bring energy and power to almost anything, whether physical or

mental. If you’re learning how to pitch a baseball and you want to develop a

good curveball, then focused thinking while practicing will improve your

technique. If you need to refine the manufacturing process of your product,

focused thinking will help you develop the best method. If you want to solve a

difficult mathematics problem, focused thinking helps you break through to the solution. The greater the difficulty of a problem or issue, the more focused

thinking time is necessary to solve it.

8-Priorities

First, take into account your priorities — for yourself, your family, and your

team. Author, consultant, and award-winning thinker Edward DeBono quipped, “A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.” Unfortunately, many people land on priorities based on where they run out of steam. You certainly don’t want to do that. Nor do you want to let others set your agenda.

9-Develop Your Dream

If you want to achieve great things, you need to have a great dream. If you’re

not sure of your dream, use your focused thinking time to help you discover it. If your thinking has returned to a particular area time after time, you may be able to discover your dream there. Give it more focused time and see what happens.

Once you find your dream, move forward without second-guessing. Take the

advice of Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back — something might be gaining on

you.”

10-Set Goals

Those guidelines will get you going. And be sure to write down your goals. If

they’re not written, I can almost guarantee that they’re not focused enough. And if you really want to make sure they’re focused, take the advice of David

Belasco, who says, “If you can’t write your idea on the back of my business

card, you don’t have a clear idea.”

Even if you look back years from now and think your goals were too small,

they will have served their purpose — if they provide you with direction.

11-Don’t Fear Failure

Creativity demands the ability to be unafraid of failure because creativity

equals failure. You may be surprised to hear such a statement, but it’s true.

Charles Frankel asserts that “anxiety is the essential condition of intellectual and artistic creation.” Creativity requires a willingness to look stupid. It means

getting out on a limb — knowing that the limb often breaks! Creative people

know these things and still keep searching for new ideas. They just don’t let the ideas that don’t work prevent them from coming up with more ideas that do work.

12-Reality

Reality is the difference between what we wish for and what is. It took some

time for me to evolve into a realistic thinker. The process went in phases. First, I did not engage in realistic thinking at all. After a while, I realized that it was

necessary, so I began to engage in it occasionally. (But I didn’t like it because I

thought it was too negative. And any time I could delegate it, I did.) Eventually, I found that I had to engage in realistic thinking if I was going to solve problems and learn from my mistakes. And in time, I became willing to think realistically before I got in trouble and make it a continual part of my life. Today, I encourage my key leaders to think realistically. We make realistic thinking the foundation of our business because we derive certainty and security from it.

13-Homework

The process of realistic thinking begins with doing your homework. You must

first get the facts. Former governor, congressman, and ambassador Chester

Bowles said, “When you approach a problem, strip yourself of preconceived

opinions and prejudice, assemble and learn the facts of the situation, make the decision which seems to you to be the most honest, and then stick to it.” It

doesn’t matter how sound your thinking is if it’s based on faulty data or

assumptions. You can’t think well in the absence of facts (or in the presence of

poor information).

14-Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is really nothing more than planning on steroids. Spanish

novelist Miguel de Cervantes said, “The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.” Strategic thinking takes complex issues and long-term objectives, which can be very difficult to address, and breaks them down into manageable sizes. Anything becomes simpler when it has a plan!

15-Ask Why Before How

When most people begin using strategic thinking to solve a problem or plan a

way to meet an objective, they often make the mistake of jumping the gun and

trying immediately to figure out how to accomplish it. Instead of asking how,

they should first ask why. If you jump right into problem solving mode, how are you going to know all the issues?

Eugene G. Grace says, “Thousands of engineers can design bridges, calculate

strains and stresses, and draw up specifications for machines, but the great

engineer is the man who can tell whether the bridge or the machine should be

built at all, where it should be built, and when.” Asking why helps you to think

about all the reasons for decisions. It helps you to open your mind to possibilities and opportunities. The size of an opportunity often determines the level of resources and effort that you must invest. Big opportunities allow for big decisions. If you jump to how too quickly, you might miss that.