Think Big
Thinking big means training yourself to see not just what is, but what can be. Your brain is programmed to think in a certain way that limits your current success. Your goal is to reconstruct your mind to have an expanded capacity to think bigger. Remember that the bigger you think, the bigger your successes will be. Focus your attention on big objectives, while avoiding the trivial things.
Ask: “Do I use my mind to make history, or am I using it merely to record history made by others?”
How to Think Big
Start with building a big thinker’s vocabulary. This consists of bright and cheerful words that promise victory, hope, happiness, pleasure. You should also get away of words that create unpleasant images of failure, defeat, and grief. Replace negative phrases like “We have failed. There’s no point trying.” by positive phrases like “Let’s keep trying and find a new ways to succeed.” Think “Success”!
Ask Better Questions
Learn to ask better questions to yourself and others. Ask short open ended questions that allow you to receive a lot of information. The best way to start a question is with the words “What” or “How”.
Ask yourself every day “how” you can do better. By asking this question your mind will work on finding intelligent and creative answers. This can only work if you believe a solution will emerge, because only then your mind will pave the way for the solution to come to live.
Set higher standards to your questions. For example: “Instead of asking if it is a good idea?”, ask “What should things look like to reach a certain goal or to be successful?”
Expose Yourself to New Ideas
Thinking creatively doesn’t always mean reinventing the wheel. Most of the time you find a new creative solution by combining existing things in a new way. To think big you need to feed your mind with a lot of things so it can put those things to work to create something new. Creativity starts with researching and learning, and not with mindlessly thinking about a solution. It’s hard work!
Alternatively, you should associate with people who can help you think of new ideas and new ways of doing things. Unite with people of different occupational and social interests.
Practice Visualization
One of the most important tools to master as a big thinker is visualization. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. Take a moment of your time and close your eyes. When visualizing it’s important to have a certain big goal that you use as direction for your visualization.
- Have a clear idea of where you want to go, create an image of yourself 10 years from now.
- Create your 10-year plan where you state what to accomplish in work, home, relationships,…
- You need goals that when you think of them you get excited and enthusiastic.
- Achieve your goal one step at a time. Therefor create small intermediate goals.
- Never surrender your goal but change your approach to reach it
- Invest in yourself: Purchase objects that build mental power, efficiency. Invest in education.
Big Thinking Techniques
- First principle thinking: the idea of first principle thinking is to break down complicated problems into basic elements and then reassemble them from the ground up. It basically means you remove all assumptions and start with the fundamentals. A real example: Elon Musk decided he wanted to build a rocket. What are the basic components of a rocket and what is the value of that? What are the physics of a rocket?
- Second order thinking: First order thinking is about what comes to mind fast and easily. Second order thinking happens when you start tracing down and unraveling the implications of those first order impacts. Therefor ask yourself the question “And then what?”. First order thinking is what everyone thinks, second order thinking is thinking one step ahead.
- Kill multi-tasking: Multitasking drops your intelligence by 17% and makes you less effective in achieving your goals. It's only by concentrating, sticking to one question, being patient, letting parts of your mind come into play that you’ll arrive at an original idea.
- Other techniques: 100 Questions technique, the Socratic questioning technique, 5 Why technique, Cartesian Doubt method,…
How to Improve Your Thinking
Exercise: Doing good exercise for around 30 minutes per day provides great stimulus for the brain to adapt and willingness to learn.
Sleep: Your body needs rest to function well and to keep your mind fit during the day. During REM sleep your mind creates new connections between the information in your brain to form dreams and new creative ideas.
Journaling: Journaling means writing down your thoughts, emotions and feelings to clear your mind, and it's particularly good for liberating yourself from self-limiting beliefs.
Interesting resources
https://fs.blog/first-principles/
https://medium.com/the-ascent/how-to-ask-better-questions-4b2ee48d2d20