Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be
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11. My elimination of old problems will not bring on new problems.
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as we usher an old problem out the door a new problem usually enters.
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This belief triggers a fundamental misunderstanding of our future challenges.
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12. My efforts will be fairly rewarded.
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If they’re only pursuing change for an external reward (a promotion, more money), I won’t work with them because 1) there are no certainties that we’ll get what we want, 2) if the reward is the only motivator people revert to their old ways, and 3) all I’ve done is help a phony succeed.
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Getting better is its own reward. If we do that, we can never feel cheated.
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13. No one is paying attention to me.
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14. If I change I am “inauthentic.”
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Many of us have a misguided belief that how we behave today not only defines us but represents our fixed and constant selves, the authentic us forever. If we change, we are somehow not being true to who we really are. This belief triggers stubbornness. We refuse to adapt our behavior to new situations because “it isn’t me.”
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We can change not only our behavior but how we define ourselves.
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When we put ourselves in a box marked “That’s not me,” we ensure that we’ll never get out of it.
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15. I have the wisdom to assess my own behavior.
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Among the more than 80,000 professionals I’ve asked to rate their performance, 70 percent believe they are in the top 10 percent of their peer group,
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impaired sense of objectivity.
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Overconfidence. Stubbornness. Magical thinking. Confusion. Resentment. Procrastination. That’s a lot of heavy baggage to carry on our journey of change.
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Most of us go through life unaware of how our environment shapes our behavior. When we experience “road rage” on a crowded freeway, it’s not because we’re sociopathic monsters. It’s because the temporary condition of being behind the wheel in a car, surrounded by rude impatient drivers, triggers a change in our otherwise placid demeanor. We’ve unwittingly placed ourselves in an environment of impatience, competitiveness, and hostility—and it alters us.
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umbrage
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enervated.
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If there is one “disease” that I’m trying to cure in this book, it revolves around our total misapprehension of our 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.
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Our environment is a nonstop triggering mechanism whose impact on our behavior is too significant to be ignored.
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Regarding it as a flesh-and-blood character is not just fanciful metaphor. It’s a strategy that lets us finally see what we’re up against. (In some cases, I advise giving our environment a name.)
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One environment elevates us, the other erases the good vibes as if they never happened.)
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entering a new environment changes our behavior in sly ways,
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foibles
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snarky,
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I’m now a bit of a diva about insisting on a cool environment for my presentations.
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The most pernicious environments are the ones that compel us to compromise our sense of right and wrong.
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Karl’s defense was, “I never asked my people to do anything immoral or illegal.” He didn’t need to ask. The environment he created did the work for him.
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As a lawyer, Jackie was trained to be adversarial. She was accustomed to arguing and negotiating over minor deal points. In a sales environment where everyone’s measuring who’s up, who’s down, who’s squeezing the last dime out of a deal, Jackie wanted to show she was doing her part. It demonstrated her value to the company. Unfortunately, that same ruthless bottom-line environment fostered the aggressive behavior that blurred right and wrong for Jackie.
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Some environments are designed precisely to lure us into acting against our interest. That’s what happens when we overspend at the high-end mall.
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a vague feeling that we can’t leave the mall empty-handed.)
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The environments of a casino or an online shopping site are even less safe.
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Very smart people have spent their waking hours with one goal in mind: designing each detail so it trigger...
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Other environments are not as manipulative and predatory as a luxury store.
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“bedtime procrastination.” We put off going to bed at the intended time because we prefer to remain in our current environment—watching
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Every time we enter a new situation, with its mutating who-what-when-where-and-why specifics, we are surrendering ourselves to a new environment—and putting our goals, our plans, our behavioral integrity at risk.
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The mother who, in the environment of her home, leisurely makes breakfast for herself and her kids before sending them off to school and transporting herself to work is not the same person who, immediately upon arriving at the office, walks into a major budget meeting headed by her company’s founder.
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As the environment changes, so does she.
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scrupulous
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As an exercise, I asked her to track her environment and how many behavioral personas she adopted as she went through a typical day. Nine, she reported back. She behaved like a CEO among her office staff, a public speaker at a PR event, an engineer among her design wizards, a salesman with a potential customer, a diplomat with a visiting trade group, and so on.
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fawning
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“toff,”
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pomposity
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wallow
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David Letterman lowered his Late Show studio temperature to a chilly 55 degrees before going onstage. He experimented with room temperatures in the 1980s and discovered that his jokes worked best at 55 degrees, which makes the sound crisper and the audience more alert.
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prodding
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catty.
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Feedback—both the act of giving it and taking it—is our first step in becoming smarter, more mindful about the connection between our environment and our behavior. Feedback teaches us to see our environment as a triggering
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A feedback loop comprises four stages: evidence, relevance, consequence, and action.
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sparring