Book Review: The Think Big Manifesto: Think You Can’t Change Your Life (and the World)? Think Again by Michael Port

There is no right first step to the revolution. It evolves as you begin to believe big. So says Michael Port, former actor and now author of several books in the training/coaching arena.

Port's motivating messages sound like they could have come from President Obama, when Port says: "We cannot (must not) wait for other people to tell us that we're worthwhile."

Premise: We are more than we know. We have the potential to think big. Why don't we transcend our small thoughts? Park urges us to do so. "Revolution is more than just a political necessity. It is a personal necessity. Revolution is about one person at a time experiencing their own personal empowerment against an existing, deficient (small thinking) system."

Port explains that thinking big is not about accumulating possessions, fame or friends. Nor is it about getting rich. Instead, "Thinking big is creating a world of collaboration and cooperation instead of competition. To think big is to build a life in which more is accomplished with others than could have been dreamed of separately."

The key to thinking big, says Port, is to follow a code. A set of unwavering principles, the values that every big thinker adheres to. Reject the norms of small thinking.

If you take just one good idea away from The Think Big Manifesto, perhaps it should be this: "Instead of waiting for someone else to create change, think big and make it happen."

The manifesto urges you to consider what you currently resist in yourself. We all know the self-sabotaging internal dialog that is often our biggest critic. As Port explains, "…When we focus on what we are not, what we do not have, and what we do not (and often cannot) know, we focus on a self-induced scarcity."

Port provides an example, showing us how we must not allow ourselves to be trapped by our history: Frederick Banting, who won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his invention of insulin, said in his later years that if he had been more familiar with the literature and the long history of unsuccessful attempts to isolate the extract that he did ultimately isolate (along with colleagues,) he might never have undertaken the research he did.

Okay, now on to the core of The Think Big Manifesto:

There are ten statements, or principles in the manifesto. The first, the Statement of Core, will ground you, preparing you to be a more authentic person, able to achieve the rest of the principles.

Statement of Core

• I will identify what I stand for through a concerted process of self-questioning and exploration to discover my core, the what that is so me.
• I will make public what I stand for.
• I will hold myself visibly accountable each day to its letter and spirit.

"What do you wake up for in the morning?" asks Port. "Does it fulfill you? Is it what you truly want to be doing?"

If not, use the Think Big Manifesto. It will help you grow in the knowledge that all things are possible, and guide you to your own internal discoveries to think big.