Lexington, KY By Paul Sanders
COLUMNIST: BUSINESS BOOK REVIEWS
If you're looking for a graduation gift this season, here's a suggestion: Think big. Specifically, think of Michael Port's new book, The Think Big Manifesto.
Once you've bought copies for all the graduates on your list, think big enough to buy a copy for yourself. This is a book that will not only inspire a graduate to achieve dreams, keep focus and head in the right direction, but also have a similar effect in creating quantum change for anyone who reads and applies its message.
Michael Port believes that it is time for change - for a revolution in business and personal thought and action. To that end, this best-selling author formed a social networking site, The Think Big Revolution Network (www.thinkbigrevolution.com), then wrote this book as the guide to the revolution.
This is less a book about business practice and more about business and individual philosophy. His opening premise is that few of us live up to our potential. Only by thinking big can we break down the barriers of conventional thinking. He argues that the environment we live in with layoffs and business failures is an opportunity to take the risk of thinking big.
Small thinking is responsible for exploiting the world, creating "mind-numbing, irrelevant, low-vibrational pop culture... and to the creation of a disposable society of throwaway goods, throwaway people and throwaway dreams."
As our interconnectedness, i.e. via Internet, continues to increase, small thinking ideas are propagated farther and wider and deeper, Port suggests. With an increase in small thinking, we develop a type of anesthesia, struggling to hold onto goals, ideas and ideals.
Thinking big is not a new idea, per se, the author suggests. He gives numerous examples of big thinkers in a variety of fields, ranging from politics to business. However, Port's contention is that each of us should now become a big thinker. In a world of harsh realities, thinking small is no longer an alternative.
To get us started, Port gives 10 steps for thinking big: