Enthusiastic Reader’s Reviews > Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation > Status Update

p 200 - "Freedom exists within the truth of constraints—not constraints arbitrarily imposed by others, but genuine constraints like those that make us unable to fly, those that make us unable to withstand the force of a tidal wave, and, for some of us, those that make us unable to understand nuclear physics."

p 196 - "When people feel pressured, compliance or defiance results. Compliance produces change that is not likely to be maintained, and defiance blocks change in the first place."

p 192 - "The true meaning of being alive is not just to feel happy, but to experience the full range of human emotions."

p 191 - People who can manage emotions rather than react to them directly "will feel a sense of freedom with respect to how they behave. The emotion will not determine the behavior but instead will be a piece of information relevant to the process of choosing how to behave. Behaviors will be chosen based on an awareness of the emotion and on a consideration of the goals they would like to accomplish."

p 190 - "If there are no realistic consequences associated with an insult, such as being rejected, abandoned, or fired, people can learn to understand the insult as the speaker's aggression and not feel so threatened by it."

p 189 - "Ego-involvements make people a pawn to their emotions. If they need to be seen as strong in order to feel worthy, being called a wimp will threaten their self-worth and could send them into a rage. The anger results from the interpretation of a remark as a threat, but the remark is a threat only when people's self-worth is hooked on being seen as strong."

p 186 - "part of what they learned about 'managing their manager' was that it helped to give him positive feedback." This also applies to school; idea: at the start of class, ask students to give positive feedback to their next-block teacher. Review these, and then give them back at the end of class and ask students to hand them to that teacher.

p 182 - "The challenge is to be autonomy supportive even with individuals who pull on us to control them. It is the more passive, compliant, and defiant individuals who are most in need of an optimal interpersonal context—of involvement, autonomy support, and sensitive limit setting—but it is these individuals whom we have the hardest time giving it to."

p 173 - "Although a patient's health behavior is his or her own responsibility, doctors do have the responsibility of encouraging a patient to behave in healthy ways. It is thus a fine line that physicians must walk, promoting healthy behavior without controlling it."

p 172 - "All of the features of being autonomy supportive—taking the other's perspective, offering choice, providing relevant information that the other person may have no access to, giving the rationale for suggestions or requests, acknowledging the other's feelings, and minimizing the use of controlling language and attitudes—describe perfectly what it means to be … patient-centered in the practice of medicine."