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created the Star Wars series of films, he didn’t set out to impact the greater culture. He didn’t know he would be producing some of the highest-grossing films of all time and creating the movie merchandising phenomenon we take for granted today.

But he did know he wanted to maximize his gifts and talents through the filmmaking process. When you study the story of how Lucas created the movies, struggled for the financing, and dealt with the major film studios, you find that he was very strategic in his thinking. He wasn’t about to give in on any point he didn’t have to, and he focused his thinking on a strategy that would not only get the first film made but would also open a doorway for an entire series of movies. The fact is, his remarkable thinking changed much of the way movies are marketed and merchandised. His films have become cinematic history, largely because George Lucas was able to maximize his personal gifts, talents, and skills through strategic thinking.

Strategic thinking is all about purpose. “We’ll see what happens . . .” is a certain indication of the absence of strategic thinking. Strategists never leave anything to chance. They observe and calculate each step in their progression to success.

MULTIPLY YOUR OPTIONS THROUGH CREATIVE THINKING

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

—J. K. ROWLING, HARY POTTER AN D THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

Creative thinking is all about options—about new and innovative ways of doing what most people think is routine.

The great painter Pablo Picasso said, “There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

Creative thinking opens doors that are closed to the vast majority of people because it allows you to see options they can’t see.

Before anyone else, Fred Smith envisioned a company that would deliver packages anywhere in the United States overnight. Before anyone else, Thomas Edison saw cities lighted by electricity. They both were great businessmen, but they were also creative thinkers.

I learned an unusual example of creative thinking years ago at a birthday party for a friend in Los Angeles. While at the party, I met a businessman who told me a remarkable story. He was sitting in a shopping mall four years earlier and noticed all the teenagers talking on their cell phones. He starting thinking about the connections—teenagers, cell phones, popular music—and thought that they might really enjoy being able to download ringtones of popular songs to their cell phones. So he assembled a small team who designed a website that would allow people to select a song and, for a small charge, upload it from the website to their phone.

That was four years earlier—before anyone had ever heard of “ringtones.”

He told me that he had recently sold the company to a major corporation for about $40 million.

How many of us have watched teenagers talking on cell phones and not thought a thing about it? But by using creative thinking and making some innovative connections, with very little money he created a company that sold for $40 million in just four years.

OVERCOME DEFEAT AND OBSTACLES THROUGH REAL POSITIVE THINKING

The word impossible is not in my dictionary.

—GENERAL NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

As I said before, what I call real positive thinking is not shallow and trivial. It’s not wishful or unrealistic. Authentic positive thinking is an accurate picture of the possibilities and what can be accomplished in a given situation.

Real positive thinking looks at obstacles most people call impossible and laughs. Not because we’re being stupid but because we’ve done our homework, have confidence in our abilities and skill, appreciate the mysterious, and are unhindered by fear. Real positive thinking is how underdogs make a living. It’s how battles are turned and championship teams are upset.

Positive thinking isn’t denial; it’s the accurate realization that we don’t, in fact, know everything, and therefore, anything could be possible.

Normal Vincent Peale wrote, “Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously.

Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture.”

Religious tradition has taught the mind-body connection for thousands of years. Recent studies show that a mental attitude has a significant impact on the body’s ability to heal, and doctors are now taking the mental attitude of their patients very seriously.

Talk to athletes or business leaders and you’ll find a remarkable similarity in the way they think about “thinking.” Mental attitude is a key for championship athletes, and it can be a key for you as well.

EXPERIENCE SUCCESS THROUGH LONG-RANGE THINKING

A blockbuster movie takes 5–10 years to produce. So it’s not about knowing what’s popular now. To be really successful, you have to be thinking about what will be popular 5–10 years in the future.

—RALPH WINTER, PRODUCER (X-MEN, WOLVERINE )

To make change happen in your personal life or in the life of your company, you have to see things from a higher vantage point. It’s not that different from looking at your house from street level and then seeing it from the window of a plane. It’s a different world up there, and it puts the size of the house into a different category.

Most executives and leaders get stuck in crisis mode. Problems and challenges are hitting them on a daily, perhaps hourly, basis, and planning is difficult when you can’t see beyond the immediate disaster. In that environment, it doesn’t take long to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss and finally throw your hands up in failure.

But long-range planning can be done. Here are some suggestions for pulling your thinking out of an immediate crisis and considering your challenges from a greater distance:

Learn as much as you can about the competition.

Not necessarily to beat them, as much as to learn from them. Most people spend their careers either hating or ignoring the competition. Either