1. Expose yourself to good input: Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out. Read books, review trade magazines, listen to tapes, and spend time with good thinkers.
2. Expose yourself to good thinkers: Spend time with the right people. As I worked on this section and bounced my ideas off of some key people (so that my thoughts would be stretched), I realized something about myself. All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are thinkers. The writer of Proverbs observed that sharp people sharpen one another, just as iron sharpens iron. If you want to be a sharp thinker, be around sharp people.
3. Choose to think good thoughts: To become a good thinker, you must become intentional about the thinking process. Regularly put yourself in the right place to think, shape, stretch, and land your thoughts. Make it a priority. Remember, thinking is a discipline.
4. Act on your good thoughts: World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker said it all when he remarked, “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through—then follow through.”
5. Allow your emotions to create another good thought: To start the thinking process, you cannot rely on your feelings. If you wait until you feel like doing something, you will likely never accomplish it. The same is true for thinking. You cannot wait until you feel like thinking to do it.
6. Repeat the process: One good thought does not make a good life. The people who have one good thought and try to ride it for an entire career often end up unhappy or destitute. They are the one-hit wonders, the one-book authors, the one-message speakers, the one-time inventors, who spend their life struggling to protect or promote their single idea. Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of golf that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.
From John Maxwell's "How Successful People Think"