The Magic of Thinking Big, by David J. Schwartz, is a book that’s near and dear to my heart, because it was the very first book I read after starting my business, many years ago.

When I started on my journey of building a large business network, I can clearly remember my mentor saying to me, “reading is not an option. If you go to work with me, if you’re going to make it, you gotta read.” And so I asked him “what is the very first book I need to read?”, and he said “The Magic of Thinking Big.”

If you look at the inside cover you’ll discover that the book was first written in 1959 and has been reprinted many times. Of course, having been born in 1964, this book has a lot of years of wisdom that I needed to understand. My coach at that time, told me that the secret to reading this book was reading a chapter at a time. Not to flow through the chapters, but to stop at the end of every chapter and reflect on the chapter. Stopping, and taking a mental inventory of each chapter is a powerful way to distill the understanding of the author’s words. In fact many times, and having reread The Magic of Thinking Big, I purposely reread a chapter several times before I went on to the next one.

What I like about this book is the fact that the chapters are short, but the nuggets are powerful. As well, at the end of each chapter, there’s an action plan. It has suggestions on how to apply what was written in that chapter, and this was critical for me changing my mind-set for success.

So this is my recommendation for you: don’t read through this book, try to BE this book. Read each chapter and highlight it rigorously. Note keywords and phrases that mean something to you, something that you want to apply in your daily life, then live it. There are 13 chapters in this book.

I would like you to read one chapter every day. On the 14th day, I would like you to go back and read just the things that you highlighted in a chapter to complete the two-week program.

I can’t tell you how important this will be in changing the way you look at your life. I’d love to receive a book report/life report from you if you actually do this exercise, and then perhaps we can share the victories of what’s changed in your life.