How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

Listen Intentionally
An excellent way to broaden your experience is to listen to someone who has
expertise in an area where you don’t. I search for such opportunities. One year I
spoke to about 900 coaches and scouts at the Senior Bowl, where graduating
football players participate in their last college game. I had the opportunity,
along with my son-in-law, Steve Miller, to have dinner with NFL head coaches
Dave Wannstedt and Butch Davis. It’s not often that you get such an opportunity,
so I asked them questions about teamwork and spent a lot of time listening to
them. At the end of the evening, as Steve and I were walking to our car, he said
to me, “John, I bet you asked those coaches a hundred questions tonight.”
“If I’m going to learn and grow,” I replied, “I must know what questions to
ask and know how to apply the answers to my life. Listening has taught me a lot
more than talking.”
When you meet with people, it’s good to have an agenda so that you can learn.
It’s a great way to partner with people who can do things you can’t. Big-picture
thinkers recognize that they don’t know lots of things. They frequently ask
penetrating questions to enlarge their understanding and thinking. If you want to
become a better big-picture thinker, then become a good listener.

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Look Expansively
Writer Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Many an object is not seen, though it
falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range
of our intellectual ray.” Human beings habitually see their own world first. For
example, when people arrive at a leadership conference put on by my company,
they want to know where they’re going to park, whether they will be able to get
a good (and comfortable) seat, whether the speaker will be “on,” and if the
breaks will be spaced right. When I arrive to speak at the same conference, I
want to know that the lighting is good, the sound equipment is operating
effectively, whether the speaker’s platform will be close enough to the people,
etc.
Who you are determines what you see—and how you think.
Big-picture thinkers realize there is a world out there besides their own, and
they make an effort to get outside of themselves and see other people’s worlds
through their eyes. It’s hard to see the picture while inside the frame. To see how
others see, you must first find out how they think. Becoming a good listener
certainly helps with that. So does getting over your personal agenda and trying to
take the other person’s perspective.

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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.

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