"How Successful People Think" by John C. Maxwell

• Good thinkers are always in demand.
• If you change your thinking, you can change your life!
• 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.
• Expose Yourself to Good Input
• Expose Yourself to Good Thinkers
• To become a good thinker, you must become intentional about the thinking process.
• Act on Your Good Thoughts
• Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.
• “Learning to write is learning to think. You don’t know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing.”
• 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.
• People will buy into an idea only after they buy into the leader who communicates it.
• An excellent way to broaden your experience is to listen to someone who has expertise in an area where you don’t.
• Big-picture thinkers recognize that they don’t know lots of things. They frequently ask penetrating questions to enlarge their understanding and thinking.
• One of the most important skills you can develop in human relations is the ability to see things from the other person’s point of view.
• Never forget there is more out there in the world than what you’ve experienced.
• No one achieves greatness by becoming a generalist.
• Be selective, not exhaustive, in your focused thinking.
• Give 80 percent of your effort to the top 20 percent (most important) activities.
• If you want to achieve great things, you need to have a great dream.
• Remove Distractions
• Do first things first—the activities that give you the highest return.
• Insulate yourself from distractions.
• Make Time for Focused Thinking
• Don’t allow yourself to look at e-mail until after 10 A.M. Instead, focus your energies on your number one priority. Put non-productive time wasters on hold so that you can create thinking time for yourself.
• Creativity is pure gold, no matter what you do for a living.
• Creativity requires a willingness to look stupid.
• If you think you have a great idea, don’t let anyone talk you out of it even if it sounds foolish.
• Don’t just work harder at the same old thing. Make a change.
• Creativity is largely a matter of asking the right questions.
• Most people automatically stay within lines, even if those lines have been arbitrarily drawn or are terribly out of date. Remember, most limitations we face are not imposed on us by others; we place them on ourselves.
• The most effective way to help yourself get out of the box is to expose yourself to new paradigms. One way you can do that is by traveling to new places.
• Realistic thinking leads to excellence in leadership and management because it requires people to face reality.
• Disappointment is the difference between expectations and reality.
• Thomas Edison observed, “The value of a good idea is in using it.”
• People tend to exaggerate their success and minimize their failures or deficiencies.
• It doesn’t matter how sound your thinking is if it’s based on faulty data or assumptions.
• Strategic thinking is really nothing more than planning on steroids.
• The first step in strategic thinking is to break down an issue into smaller, more manageable parts so that you can focus on them more effectively.
• Asking why helps you to think about all the reasons for decisions.
• Challenge all of your assumptions. Collect information even after you think you’ve identified the issue.
• Once the real issues are identified, the solutions are often simple.
• The best way to create a road to the complex is to build on the fundamentals.
• When you believe you can do something difficult—and you succeed—many doors open for you.
• So-called experts do more to shoot down people’s dreams than just about anybody else.
• Look for the good in what other people are doing and apply it.
• Growth means change. Change requires challenging the status quo.
• The value you receive from reflecting will depend on the kinds of questions you ask yourself. The better the questions, the more gold you will mine from your thinking.
• Good thinking is hard work.
• Many people look for safety and security in popular thinking.
• The bottom line? Popular thinking brings mediocre results. Here is popular thinking in a nutshell: Popular = Normal = Average It’s the least of the best and the best of the least. We limit our success when we adopt popular thinking.
• You must reject common thinking if you want to accomplish uncommon results.
• Think Before You Follow
• But if you want to succeed, you need to think about what’s best, not what’s popular.
• Challenging popular thinking requires a willingness to be unpopular and go outside of the norm.
• Unpopular thinking is required for all progress.
• One of the best ways to get out of the rut of your own thinking is to innovate.
• It is true: most people are more satisfied with old problems than committed to finding new solutions.
• Get Used to Being Uncomfortable
• Working with others is like giving yourself a shortcut.
• I believe that every great idea begins with three or four good ideas. And most good ideas come from shared thinking.
• Shared thinking is only as good as the people doing the sharing.
• When you get outside of yourself and make a contribution to others, you really begin to live.
• If you want to improve your world, then focus your attention on helping others.
• Instead of trying to be great, be part of something greater than yourself.
• Decisions become much easier when you know your bottom line.