Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be

By: Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter
Date Read: 2018-05-07
Rating: ★★★★★

Introduction

A trigger is any stimulus that reshapes our thoughts and actions. In every waking hour we are being triggered by people, events, and circumstances that have the potential to change us.

Part One: Why Don’t We Become the Person We Want to Be?

Chapter 1: The Immutable Truths of Behavioral Change

One of the central tenets of this book is that our behavior is shaped, both positively and negatively, by our environment—and that a keen appreciation of our environment can dramatically lift not only our motivation, ability, and understanding of the change process, but also our confidence that we can actually do it.

It’s just you and your habit, a lone individual dealing with one demon. You either lick it or you don’t. It’s up to you—and only you—to declare victory. No one else gets a say in the matter.

Relying on other people increases the degree of difficulty exponentially.

Chapter 2: Belief Triggers That Stop Behavioral Change in Its Tracks

An excuse explains why we fell short of expectations after the fact. Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens. They sabotage lasting change by canceling its possibility. We employ these beliefs as articles of faith to justify our inaction and then wish away the result. I call them belief triggers.

We deify willpower and self-control, and mock its absence. People who achieve through remarkable willpower are “strong” and “heroic.” People who need help or structure are “weak.” This is crazy—because few of us can accurately gauge or predict our willpower. We not only overestimate it, we chronically underestimate the power of triggers in our environment to lead us astray. Our environment is a magnificent willpower-reduction machine.

If we really want to change we have to make peace with the fact that we cannot self-exempt every time the calendar offers us a more attractive alternative to our usual day. Excusing our momentary lapses as an outlier event triggers a self-indulgent inconsistency—which is fatal for change. Successful change doesn’t happen overnight. We’re playing a long game, not the short game of instant gratification that our special day provides.

When we presume that we are better than people who need structure and guidance, we lack one of the most crucial ingredients for change: humility.

Fairy tales end with “and they lived happily ever after.” That is why they are called fairy tales, not documentaries.

Getting better is its own reward.

While our slow and steady improvement may not be as obvious to others as it is to us, when we revert to our previous behavior, people always notice.

Chapter 3: It’s the Environment

We think we are in sync with our environment, but actually it’s at war with us. We think we control our environment but in fact it controls us. We think our external environment is conspiring in our favor—that is, helping us—when actually it is taxing and draining us. It is not interested in what it can give us. It’s only interested in what it can take from us.

Our environment is a nonstop triggering mechanism whose impact on our behavior is too significant to be ignored.

We put off going to bed at the intended time because we prefer to remain in our current environment.

Chapter 4: Identifying Our Triggers

Slowly it dawns on them how profoundly the environment affects behavior. 

A feedback loop comprises four stages: evidence, relevance, consequence, and action.

What if we could control our environment so it triggered our most desired behavior—like an elegantly designed feedback loop? Instead of blocking us from our goals, this environment propels us. Instead of dulling us to our surroundings, it sharpens us. Instead of shutting down who we are, it opens us.

A behavioral trigger is any stimulus that impacts our behavior.

External triggers come from the environment, bombarding our five senses as well as our minds. Internal triggers come from thoughts or feelings that are not connected with any outside stimulus.

Triggers are not inherently “good” or “bad.” What matters is our response to them.

Chapter 7: Forecasting the Environment > %% Page 73 · %% Location1246

Forecasting is what we must do after acknowledging the environment’s power over us. It comprises three interconnected stages: anticipation, avoidance, and adjustment.

Peter Drucker famously said, “Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”

This impulse to always engage rather than selectively avoid is one reason I’m called in to coach executives on their behavior. It’s one of the most common behavioral issues among leaders: succumbing to the temptation to exercise power when they would be better off showing restraint.

To avoid undesirable behavior, avoid the environments where it is most likely to occur.

Chapter 8: The Wheel of Change > %% Page 87 · %% Location1415

Creating is the glamorous poster child of behavioral change. When we imagine ourselves behaving better, we think of it as an exciting process of self-invention. We’re creating a “new me.” It’s appealing and seductive. We can be anyone we choose to be. The challenge is to do it by choice, not as a bystander. Are we creating ourselves, or wasting the opportunity and being created by external forces instead?

Part Two: Try

Chapter 11: Daily Questions in Action

Self-discipline refers to achieving desirable behavior. Self-control refers to avoiding undesirable behavior.

Chapter 12: Planner, Doer, and Coach

But beyond the structured hierarchies of the workplace, where we’re always answerable to someone for our paycheck and where we have clear incentives for getting better, we don’t appreciate the dynamic as well. In our private lives, where our chaotic environment triggers undesirable behavior, we don’t always welcome coaching.

Chapter 13: AIWATT

Am I willing, at this time, to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic?

Don Corleone, the Godfather, must have been a closet Buddhist when he said, “It’s not personal. It’s business.” He knew that people disappoint us or disagree with us when it’s in their best interest to do so, not because they want to cause us pain.

Part Three: More Structure, Please

Chapter 16: Behaving Under the Influence of Depletion

By the end of the day, we’re worn down and vulnerable to foolish choices.

Researchers call this decision fatigue, a state that leaves us with two courses of action: 1) we make careless choices or 2) we surrender to the status quo and do nothing.

Structure is how we overcome depletion. In an almost magical way, structure slows down how fast our discipline and self-control disappear. When we have structure, we don’t have to make as many choices; we just follow the plan. And the net result is we’re not being depleted as quickly.

Chapter 18: Hourly Questions

Pre-awareness. Successful people are generally good at anticipating environments where their best behavior is at risk.

Commitment. Successful people aren’t wishy-washy about a course of action.

Awareness. We’re most vulnerable to our environment’s whims when we ignore its impact on us.

Chapter 19: The Trouble with “Good Enough”

Marginal motivation produces a marginal outcome.

The takeaway: We are professionals at what we do, amateurs at what we want to become. We need to erase this devious distinction—or at least close the gap between professional and amateur—to become the person we want to be. Being good over here does not excuse being not so good over there.

Chapter 20: Becoming the Trigger

When we dive all the way into adult behavioral change—with 100 percent focus and energy—we become an irresistible force rather than the proverbial immovable object. We begin to change our environment rather than be changed by it. The people around us sense this. We have become the trigger.

“What’s the biggest behavioral change you’ve ever made?”

The pain that comes with regret should be mandatory, not something to be shooed away like an annoying pet. When we make bad choices and fail ourselves or hurt the people we love, we should feel pain. That pain can be motivating and in the best sense, triggering—a reminder that maybe we messed up but we can do better. It’s one of the most powerful feelings guiding us to change.

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