Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become. The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying. Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. “The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement.” Measure from the back and you will be happier (this is how far I have come vs. this is how far I have to go...even better if you measure based on being true to values and pursuing a good goal then you are winning) “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” “The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.” “It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.” “Ask yourself, “Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?” “Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” “Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.” “The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.” “Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.” “The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. You need to be aware of your habits before you can change them.” “Pointing-and-Calling raises your level of awareness from a nonconscious habit to a more conscious level by verbalizing your actions.” “Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.” “One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.” “The two most common cues are time and location.” “The implementation intention formula is: I will [BEHAVIOR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION].” “The habit stacking formula is: After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].” “Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment.” “One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.” “The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.” “It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike.” “Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.” “We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the tribe.” “We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close (family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those with status and prestige).” “One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the group.” “Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.” “Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings. Create a motivation ritual by doing something you enjoy immediately before a difficult habit.” “The 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it easy.” “The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning.” “The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.” “Human behavior follows the Law of Least Effort.” “We will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of work.” “Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.” “Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy.” “Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.” “Prime your environment to make future actions easier.” “A habit must be established before it can be improved.” “The Two-Minute Rule states, ‘When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.’” “The more you ritualize the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.” “Standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist.” “The inversion of the 3rd Law of Behavior Change is make it difficult.” “A commitment device is a choice you make in the present that locks in better behavior in the future.” “The ultimate way to lock in future behavior is to automate your habits.” “Using technology to automate your habits is the most reliable and effective way to guarantee the right behavior.” “The 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it satisfying.” “We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying.” “The human brain evolved to prioritize immediate rewards over delayed rewards.” “The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What is immediately rewarded is repeated. What is immediately punished is avoided.” “To get a habit to stick you need to feel immediately successful—even if it’s in a small way.” “The first three laws of behavior change—make it obvious, make it attractive, and make it easy—increase the odds that a behavior will be performed this time. The fourth law of behavior change—make it satisfying—increases the odds that a behavior will be repeated next time.” “One of the most satisfying feelings is the feeling of making progress.” “A habit tracker is a simple way to measure whether you did a habit—like marking an X on a calendar.” “Habit trackers and other visual forms of measurement can make your habits satisfying by providing clear evidence of your progress.” “Never miss twice. If you miss one day, try to get back on track as quickly as possible.” “The inversion of the 4th Law of Behavior Change is make it unsatisfying.” “We are less likely to repeat a bad habit if it is painful or unsatisfying.” “An accountability partner can create an immediate cost to inaction. We care deeply about what others think of us, and we do not want others to have a lesser opinion of us.” “A habit contract can be used to add a social cost to any behavior. It makes the costs of violating your promises public and painful.” “Knowing that someone else is watching you can be a powerful motivator.” “The secret to maximizing your odds of success is to choose the right field of competition.” “Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.” “Habits are easier when they align with your natural abilities. Choose the habits that best suit you.” “Play a game that favors your strengths. If you can’t find a game that favors you, create one.” “The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities.” “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.” “Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when work isn’t exciting that makes the difference.” “Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.” “Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery” “Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time.” Be proactive Begin with the end in mind Put first things first Think win/win Seek first to understand then be understood Synergize Sharpen the saw “Leadership is communicating others’ worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.” “If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.” “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.” “Private victories precede public victories.” “Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.” “The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.” “It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.” An example of an affirmation: “It is deeply satisfying (emotional) that I (personal) respond (present tense) with wisdom, love, firmness, and self-control (positive) when my children misbehave.” Any time you want to make a change in your life, the first thing you need to do is to raise your standards and believe you can meet them. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently. The three decisions that control your destiny are: 1. Your decisions about what to focus on. 2. Your decisions about what things mean to you. 3. Your decisions about what to do to create the results you desire. Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear. In life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. “The Ultimate Success Formula,” which is an elementary process for getting you where you want to go: Decide what you want; Take action; Notice what’s working or not; and Change your approach until you achieve what you want. Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility. A critical rule I’ve made for myself is never to leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific action toward its realization. When experiencing a problem, ask yourself, “What’s good about this? What can I learn from this?” Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach. We’re not driven by the reality, but by our perception of reality. Remember, anything you want that’s valuable requires that you break through some short-term pain in order to gain long-term pleasure. If you can think of an idea as being like a tabletop with no legs, you’ll have a fair representation of why an idea doesn’t feel as certain as a belief. Without any legs, that tabletop won’t even stand up by itself. Belief, on the other hand, has legs. If you really believe, “I’m sexy,” how do you know you’re sexy? Isn’t it true that you have some references to support the idea—some experiences in life to back it up? Those are the legs that make your tabletop solid, that make your belief certain. The strongest and most solid legs are formed by personal experiences that we have a lot of emotion attached to because they were painful or pleasurable experiences. Finally, take action. Each action you take strengthens your commitment and raises the level of your emotional intensity and conviction. The way to expand our lives is to model the lives of those people who are already succeeding. It’s just a matter of asking questions: “What do you believe makes you different? What are the beliefs you have that separate you from others?” What have I learned today? What did I contribute or improve? What did I enjoy? It is not what happens to us that separates failures from successes. It is how we perceive it and what we do about what “happens” that makes the difference. Interpretation – Since we don’t know how things really are, but only how we represent them to ourselves, why not represent them in a way that empowers ourselves and others, rather than creating limitations? In any experience, you have many things you can focus on. State – The key thing to remember from this chapter is that your state has awesome power, and you can control it. You don’t have to be at the mercy of whatever comes your way. Belief – Remember, whether you say you can do something or you say you can’t, you’re right. 1) Everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves us. 2) There is no such thing as failure. There are only results. 3) Whatever happens, take responsibility. 4) It’s not necessary to understand everything to be able to use everything. 5) People are your greatest resources. 6) Work is play. There’s no abiding success without commitment. 3. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve. “What a different story people would have to tell if only they would adopt a definite purpose and stand by that purpose until it had time to become an all-consuming obsession.” More than 500 of the most successful individuals this country has ever known told Hill that their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. “A burning desire to be and to do is the starting point from which the dreamer must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition.” The method by which desire for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent consists of six definite, practical actions. 1. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say, “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount.” 2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.”) 3. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. 4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action. 5. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it. 6. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night and once after arising in the morning. As you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money. All who succeed in life get off to a bad start and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they “arrive.” “There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it. You are never ready for a thing until you believe you can acquire it.” “No more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.” “All achievement, no matter what may be its nature or its purpose, must begin with an intense, burning desire for something definite.” “Faith is a state of mind which may be induced by autosuggestion.” “Faith is a state of mind which may be induced, or created, by affirmations or repeated instructions to the subconscious mind, through the principle of autosuggestion.” “Each of us is what we are because of the dominating thoughts which we permit to occupy our mind.” “Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.” “When visualizing (with closed eyes) the money you intend to accumulate, see yourself rendering the service or delivering the merchandise you intend to give in return for this money. “Go into some quiet spot (preferably in bed at night) where you will not be disturbed or interrupted, close your eyes, and repeat aloud (so you may hear your own words) the written statement of the amount of money you intend to accumulate, the time limit for its accumulation, and a description of the service or merchandise you intend to give in return for the money.” By the first day of January, [here state the year], I will have in my possession $500,000, which will come to me in various amounts from time to time during the interim. In return for this money, I will give the most efficient service of which I am capable, rendering the fullest possible quantity, and the best possible quality of service in the capacity of selling…. (describe the service or merchandise you intend to sell). I believe that I will have this money in my possession. My faith is so strong that I can now see this money before my eyes. I can touch it with my hands. It is now awaiting transfer to me at the time and in the proportion that I deliver the service, I intend to render in return for it. I am awaiting a plan by which to accumulate this money, and I will follow that plan when it is received. “Place a written copy of your statement where you can see it night and morning, and read it just before retiring and upon arising until it has been memorized.” The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important. Accepting your experience of life as being great and wonderful is the single greatest thing you can do for your happiness. Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. If you are able to not give a fuck about the pain your goals require, then you become unstoppable. Learning how to focus and prioritize your thoughts effectively based on finely honed personal values is perhaps the greatest and most important struggle in life. Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck is not about being indifferent. It just means you’re comfortable with being different. Don’t say fuck it to everything in life, just to the unimportant things. Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first care about something more important than adversity. Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about. The key is to gradually prune the things you care about, so that you only give a fuck on the most important of occasions. It’s okay for things to suck some of the time. Practical enlightenment is the act of becoming comfortable with the idea that some suffering is always inevitable. Don’t hope for a life without problems. Hope for a life with good problems. Problems never stop. They merely get exchanged or upgraded. Happiness is found in solving problems, not avoiding them. True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. Happiness is wanting the problems you have and wanting to solve them. Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change. Negative emotions are a sign that something is going unaddressed. They are a call to action. Positive emotions are the reward for taking the correct action. We should question our emotions because they are not always right. Don’t ask yourself what you want out of life. It’s easy to want success and fame and happiness and great sex. Everybody wants those things. A much more interesting question to ask yourself is, “What kind of pain do I want?” What you are willing to struggle for is a greater determinant of how our lives turn out. You can’t merely be in love with the result. Everybody loves the result. You have to love the process. You are only likely great at one or two things...That makes comparison a very dangerous game to play. Problems are inevitable, but what they mean is flexible. We get to control what our problems mean to us based on how we choose to think about them and how we choose to measure them. The way we measure success influences how we view the problems we face. “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” -Sigmund Freud We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond. Accepting responsibility for our problems is the first step to solving them. A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is also to be at fault for your problems. This is not true. We are responsible for experiences that aren’t our fault all the time. This is part of life. Growth is an endlessly iterative process. When we learn something new, we don’t go from “wrong” to “right.” Rather, we go from wrong to slightly less wrong. We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate “right” answer for ourselves, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we’re wrong today so that we can be a little less wrong tomorrow. Certainty is the enemy of growth. The man who believes he knows everything learns nothing. Manson’s idea of “kill yourself” is similar to Paul Graham’s idea of “keep your identity small.” The central point is that if you don’t have an identity to protect, then change becomes much easier. For any change to happen in your life, you must accept that you were wrong about something you were doing before. Goals are limited in the amount of happiness they can provide in our lives because they are finite. Once you achieve the goal, it can no longer provide happiness because the finish line has been crossed. Paradoxically, then, by choosing processes as your focus, you can increase your overall, lifelong happiness by focusing on the process and not the goal. Processes never end, which means happiness can continue indefinitely. Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it. Do something and inspiration will follow. How do you write a tons of books? Write “200 crappy words per day” and you’ll find motivation often flows out of you. Manson’s “do something” principle sounds a lot like the philosophy behind the 2-minute rule. Do something now, even if it’s really small, and let good actions cascade as a result. To truly appreciate something, you must confine yourself to it. There’s a certain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you’ve spent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career. And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without rejecting the alternatives. The only way to be comfortable with death is to understand and see yourself as something bigger than yourself, to contribute to some much larger entity. “It’s only when we can’t change our experience that we look for ways to change our view of the experience.” Simply writing about traumatic events — especially if you explain the event itself — people show increased psychological and physiological well being including increased viral antibodies. “The least likely experience is often the most likely memory.” “We tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times not the most likely of times.” “We don’t always see ourselves as superior, but we almost always see ourselves as unique.” what will the world look like when intelligence costs a penny and energy is free? the human machine is the slow link in the chain...everything we can do to help humans accelerate is by definition reducing the bottleneck Less Is Not Laziness. Despite working fewer hours, the NR produce more meaningful results than other people. Focus on being productive instead of busy. Emphasize Strengths, Don’t Fix Weaknesses. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair. 99% of the people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things so they aim for the mediocre. So competition is fiercest for “realistic” goals. The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?” Boredom is the enemy, not failure. Don’t try to do more each day. Being busy is used as a guide for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe. Pareto’s Law (80/20 Rule): 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs Parkinson’s Law: tasks will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income (80/20) Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law) Am I being productive or just active? Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important? Who are the people who produce the most of your enjoyment and propel you forward, and which cause most of your depression, anger, and second-guessing? If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day? There should never be more than two mission-critical items to complete each day. Do them separately from start to finish without distraction. Problems solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others. To be selectively ignorant, learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Lifestyle design is based on massive action—output. Increased output necessitates decreased input. Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence. Never check email first thing in the morning Check email twice per day. Create an email autoresponse so people respect your new rule Use two numbers: one office line (non-urgent) and one cellular (urgent). Answer the cell and let the office go to voicemail Don’t let people chitchat. Get them to the point immediately Avoid all meetings that do not have clear objectives If someone proposes a meeting, request an email instead and then use the phone as your fallback offer Respond to voicemail via email whenever possible. This trains people to be concise Meetings should only be held to make decisions about a predefined situation, not to define the problem. Ask people to send you an email with an agenda to define the purpose Have an end time for your meeting (aim for 30 minutes) Work smarter by batching tasks like email Empower others to act without interrupting you Eliminate before you delegate. Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Refine rules and processes before adding people. Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production; using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems. Service. Doing something that improves life besides your own. What is the one goal, if completed, that could change everything? What is the most urgent thing right now that you feel you “must” or “should” do? Can you let the urgent “fail”—even for a day—to get to the next milestone for your potential life-changing tasks? Set rules for yourself so you can automate as much decision making as possible Don’t provoke deliberation before you can take action Don’t postpone decisions just to avoid uncomfortable conversations Learn to make nonfatal or reversible decisions as quickly as possible Don’t strive for variation—and thus increase option consideration—when it’s not needed Regret is past-tense decision making. Eliminate complaining to minimize regret Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers Do not email first thing in the morning or last thing at night Do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time Do not let people ramble Do not check email constantly—“batch” and check at set times only Do not over-communicate with low-profit, high-maintenance customers Do not work more to fix overwhelmingness—prioritize Do not carry a cell phone 24/7 Do not expect work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to open yourself up to the world. It’s the opposite of a defensive posture. This competent stance – head up, shoulders back – isn’t meant to be combative, but is designed to help us feel and therefore be courageous. “We deserve some respect. You deserve some respect. You are important to other people as much to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself.” Jordan Peterson “You must help a child become a virtuous, responsible, awake being, capable of full reciprocity – able to take care of himself and others, and to thrive while doing so. Why would you think it acceptable to do anything less for yourself?” – Jordan Peterson “Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong.” – Jordan Peterson. Rule #12: Pet a friendly dog when you encounter one. Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people Principle 2: Smile Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language Principle 4: Be a good listener Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests Principle 6: Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely Principle 1: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it Principle 2: Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.” Principle 3: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically Principle 4: Begin in a friendly way Principle 5: Get the other person saying, “yes, yes” immediately Principle 6: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking Principle 7: Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers Principle 8: Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view Principle 9: Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires Principle 10: Appeal to the nobler motives Principle 11: Dramatize your ideas Principle 12: Throw down a challenge Principle 1: Begin with praise and honest appreciation Principle 2: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly Principle 3: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person Principle 4: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders Principle 5: Let the other person save face Principle 6: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.” Principle 7: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to Principle 8: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct Principle 9: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest Don’t criticize others; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances. We’re not logical; we’re emotional, motivated by pride and vanity. I will speak ill of no man and speak all the good I know of everybody.—Benjamin Franklin Before trying to persuade someone to do something, ask yourself, “How can I make this person want to do it?” “If there is any one secret of success it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”—Henry Ford “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” Encourage others to talk about themselves. Always make the others feel important. Most people you meet will feel superior to you in some way. A sure way to their hearts is to let them realize in some subtle way that you recognize their importance, and recognize it sincerely. “Talk to people about themselves and they will listen for hours.”—Disraeli “Say about yourself all the derogatory things you know the other person is thinking or wants to say or intends to say—and say them before that person has a chance to say them.” “Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But they don’t think so. Don’t condemn them. Any fool can do that. Try to understand them. Only wise, tolerant, exceptional people even try to do that” How to stop arguments, eliminate ill feeling, create good will, and make the other person listen attentively: “I don’t blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you do.” “Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.” “Admitting one’s own mistakes—even when one hasn’t corrected them—can help convince somebody to change his behavior.” “Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for it and is doing it all wrong, and you have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve. But use the opposite technique—be liberal with your encouragement, make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it—and he will practice until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.” Deep Happy comes from making a beneficial contribution to the world while living out your values. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t you Happy? Key Idea #2: Don’t measure yourself against others; instead, find your own flow. No matter who you are, finding your flow is deeply satisfying and enjoyable. So when you’re thinking about what to do with your life, don’t chase a sense of superiority. Rather, find an activity that you love to immerse yourself in and can bring you into the flow. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t you Happy? Key Idea #3: Forge strong connections with others by being generous and avoiding desperation. But making human connections definitely makes us happier. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t you Happy? Key Idea #4: In order to be happy, we must learn to let go of our desire for control. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t you Happy? Key Idea #5: Learning to trust and forgive is key to experiencing happiness. Understanding is the key to forgiveness, and forgiveness is one of the most powerful ingredients for happiness. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t you Happy? Key Idea #6: Happiness requires flexibility and patience in the pursuit of goals. The sixth deadly sin is being either too passionate or too indifferent about the events in your life. have a preference of how you’d like things to happen, but be flexible if it doesn’t turn out exactly like you plan...sometimes accepting and understanding changed plans or negative experiences can actually become a positive. We should look for the silver linning. All this requires is some patience and the realization that events we originally thought were nothing but horrible can transform into the most meaningful moments in our lives. Even if you get fired, it could very well end up putting you on a new career path that’s twice as rewarding as before. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t you Happy? Key Idea #7: Overthinking distracts us from our intuition, but mindfulness can help. It might sound too simple, but focusing on your breathing is a remarkably effective way to be calmer and more mindful. Where is the bright spot...aka a place where things are going right...how do we get more of that? Solutions based counseling: ask what if there was a miracle and tomorrow the problem was gone, what would it look like? when was the last time you saw something like this? the imagery of the elephant (emotions), rider (logic) and path (enviroment and plan) is very powerful if you want change appeal to all 3. information is not power, actions taken is power you need to outline the crytical steps for people so they don't have to think...remove abiguity If you want to make change you have to get the emotions (the elephant) pulling in the right direction. Make people feel they are already 25% done. Hope is elephant fuel. Celebrate the tiny wins from score of 20% to a store score of 25 Do I aspire to be the type of person Who would do X? Two hours of growth, mindset training can change your life Explain the U-shaped curve of development starts out with a lot of hope and optimism gets into the deep part of you working and failing a little bit, and then mastery at the end comes up Falling down, it's part of the learning process Shrink the change or grow the people Tweak the environment. Make the path easier give them a push put up road signs. Don't reach for the carrot, and the stick change the path or motivate the elephant. Identify the emotion. What looks a people problem is often a situation problem. Use a small plate. Think about pre-during and postprevention and tools. Car example pre- driver training, during seatbelt, faster ambulance response post. Now apply that to habits. Make a mindset course or find one on the Internet for kids at Cambridge Action triggers are powerful cues are good.....even better to write out at X time at X place I'm going to do X. Elephants like to follow the herd reinforce every approximation that you want to grow and repeat. If you want to change things, you’ve got to appeal to both The Rider and The Elephant. The former provides the planning and direction, and the latter provides the energy. When people try to change things, they’re usually tinkering with behaviors that have become automatic, and changing those behaviors requires careful supervision by the Rider. The bigger the change you’re suggesting, the more it will sap people’s self-control. And when people exhaust their self-control, what they’re exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. In other words, they’re exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change. Direct the Rider. What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction. Motivate the Elephant. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. The Rider can’t get his way by force for very long. So it’s critical that you engage people’s emotional side—get their Elephants on the path and cooperative. Shape the Path. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. The authors call the situation (including the surrounding environment) the “Path.” When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what’s happening with the Rider and Elephant. If you can do all three at once, dramatic change can happen even if you don’t have lots of power or resources behind you. The Miracle Question: “Suppose that you go to bed tonight and sleep well. Sometime, in the middle of the night, while you are sleeping, a miracle happens and all the troubles that brought you here are resolved. When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first small sign you’d see that would make you think, ‘Well, something must have happened—the problem is gone.’?” The Exception Question: “When was the last time you saw a little bit of the miracle, even just for a short time?” To find bright spots, ask yourself, “What’s working and how can we do more of it?” Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades. Our Rider has a problem focus when he needs a solution focus. The more choices the Rider is offered, the more exhausted the Rider gets. In one study, shoppers who saw only 6 jams on display are 10 times more likely to buy a jar of jam. Any successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors. In short, to make a switch, you need to script the critical moves. To spark movement in a new direction, you need to provide crystal-clear guidance. When you want someone to behave in a new way, explain the “new way” clearly. Don’t assume the new moves are obvious. When you describe a compelling destination, you’re helping to correct one of the Rider’s great weaknesses—the tendency to get lost in analysis. Destination postcards—pictures of a future that hard work can make possible—show the Rider where you’re headed, and they show the Elephant why the journey is worthwhile. Marry your long-term goal with short-term critical moves. Back up your destination postcard with a good behavioral script. In one study, John Kotter and Dan Cohen observed that, in almost all successful change efforts, the sequence of change is not ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE, but rather SEE-FEEL-CHANGE. The positive illusion is our tendency to believe we’re better than average. One way to motivate action is to make people feel as though they’re already closer to the finish line than they might have thought. If you want a reluctant Elephant to get moving, you need to shrink the change. Another way to shrink change is to think of small wins—milestones that are within reach. When you engineer early successes, what you’re really doing is engineering hope. Hope is precious to a change effort. It’s Elephant fuel. Once people are on the path and making progress, it’s important to make their advances visible. Solution-focused therapists devised a way of quantifying progress toward the miracle mentioned in Chapter 2. They create a miracle scale ranging from 0 to 10, where 10 is the miracle. The advantage of scaling the miracle is that it demystifies the journey. The value of the miracle scale is that it focuses attention on small milestones that are attainable and visible rather than on the eventual destination, which may seem very remote. When you set small, visible goals, and people achieve them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed. Psychologist Karl Weick, in a paper called “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems,” said, “A small win reduces importance (‘this is no big deal’), reduces demands (‘that’s all that needs to be done’), and raises perceived skill levels (‘I can do at least that’).” You want to select small wins that have two traits: (1) They’re meaningful. (2) They’re “within immediate reach.” James March, a professor of political science at Stanford University, says that when people make choices, they tend to rely on one of two basic models of decision making: the consequences model or the identity model. In the identity model of decision making, we essentially ask ourselves three questions when we have a decision to make: Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me do in this situation? How do you keep the Elephant motivated when it faces a long, treacherous road? You need to create the expectation of failure—not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route. If you want to reach your full potential, you need a growth mindset. “Everything can look like a failure in the middle.”—Rosabeth Moss Kanter If you want people to change, you can provide clear direction (Rider) or boost their motivation and determination (Elephant). Alternatively, you can simply make the journey easier. Create a steep downhill slope and give them a push. Remove some friction from the trail. Scatter around lots of signs to tell them they’re getting close. In short, you can shape the Path. Tweaking the environment is about making the right behaviors a little bit easier and the wrong behaviors a little bit harder. It’s that simple. If you change the path, you’ll change the behavior. In one hospital, nurses made 250 errors a year when administering medication. To reduce the number of errors, nurses were giving “medication vests” to inform doctors not to disturb them. During the six-month trial period, errors dropped 47 percent from the six months prior to the study. Anytime a plane is below 10,000 feet—whether on the way up or the way down—no conversation is permitted in the cockpit, except what’s directly relevant for flying. This is known as a “Sterile Cockpit.” In trying to minimize the risk of bad outcomes, injury-prevention experts often turn to the Haddon Matrix, a simple framework that provides a way to think systematically about accidents by highlighting three key periods of time: pre-event, event, and post-event. According to one study of people making changes in their lives, 36 percent of the successful changes were associated with a move to a new location, and only 13 percent of unsuccessful changes involved a move. Because all of the habit triggers are removed!!! A recent meta-study that analyzed 8,155 participants across 85 studies found that the typical person who set an implementation intention did better than 74 percent of people on the same task who didn’t set one. A good change leader never thinks, “Why are these people acting so badly? They must be bad people.” A change leader thinks, “How can I set up a situation that brings out the good in these people?” There’s a tool that perfectly combines tweaking the environment and building habits. It’s something that can be added to the environment in order to make the behavior more consistent and habitual. That tool is the humble checklist. The four villains of decision making are (1) narrow framing, (2) confirmation bias, (3) short-term emotion, and (4) over-confidence. Ask yourself, “Who else is struggling with a similar problem, and what can I learn from them?” When gathering good information and reality-testing your ideas, go talk to an expert. Rather than choose “all” or “nothing,” chose “a little something.” According to psychologist Daniel Kahneman, we are quick to jump to conclusions because we give too much weight to the information that’s right in front of us while failing to consider the information that’s just offstage. He called this tendency “what you see is all there is.” This is also known as the “spotlight effect.” The pros-and-cons approach to decision making is profoundly flawed. Narrow framing, the first villain of decision making, refers to our tendency to define our choices too narrowly, to see them in binary terms. “When people have the opportunity to collect information from the world, they are more likely to select information that supports their preexisting attitudes, beliefs, and actions.” The third villain of decision making is short-term emotion. You encounter a choice. But narrow framing makes you miss options. You analyze your options. But the confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving information. You make a choice. But short-term emotion will often tempt you to make the wrong one. Then you live with it. But you’ll often be overconfident about how the future will unfold. Widen your options. Reality-test your assumptions. Attain distance before deciding. Prepare to be wrong. “Sometimes the hardest part of making a good decision is knowing there’s one to be made.” Adding alternatives improves decision making. But you won’t brainstorm additional alternatives if you aren’t aware you’re neglecting them. A good quality question to ask is, “What am I giving up by making this choice?” Another technique you can use to break out of a narrow frame is to run the Vanishing Options Test. This involves asking yourself, “You cannot choose any of the current options you’re considering. What else could you do?” “Multitracking” involves considering several options simultaneously. One rule of thumb when interviewing job candidates is to keep searching for options until you fall in love at least twice. “The wisest decisions may combine the caution of the prevention mindset with the enthusiasm of the promotion mindset.” What is the enemy of this product? Can you personify the product? When considering options, ask yourself, “What would have to be true for this option to be the right answer? What if our least favorite option were actually the best one? What data might convince us of that?” When you’re trying to gather good information and reality-test your ideas, go talk to an expert. Base rates are good at establishing norms: Here are the outcomes we can expect if we make this decision. Close-ups, though, create intuition, which can be just as important. To gather the best information, we should zoom out and zoom in. (Outside view + close-up.) To ooch is to construct small experiments to test one’s hypothesis. For decades, psychologists have been studying a phenomenon, called the “mere exposure” principle, which says that people develop a preference for things that are more familiar (i.e., merely being exposed to something makes us view it more positively). When you put these two forces together—the mere-exposure principle and loss aversion—what you get is a powerful bias for the way things work today. A relatively new area of research in psychology, called construal-level theory, shows that with more distance we can see more clearly the most important dimensions of the issue we’re facing. The 10/10/10 analysis provides distance by forcing us to consider future emotions as much as present ones. “Loss aversion + mere exposure = status-quo bias.” Perhaps the most powerful question for resolving personal decisions is “What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?” “By identifying and enshrining your core priorities, you make it easier to resolve present and future dilemmas.” “A preparade asks us to consider success: Let’s say it’s a year from now and our decision has been a wild success. It’s so great that there’s going to be a parade in our honor. Given that future, how do we ensure that we’re ready for it?” To prepare for the lower bookend, we need a premortem. ‘It’s a year from now. Our decision has failed utterly. Why?’ To be ready for the upper bookend, we need a preparade. ‘It’s a year from now. We’re heroes. Will we be ready for success?’ To prepare for what can’t be foreseen, we can use a ‘safety factor.’” “At some point, the virtue of being persistent turns into the vice of denying reality.” “Pilots are taught to pay careful attention to what are called ‘leemers’: the vague feeling that something isn’t right, even if it’s not clear why.” “A tripwire can snap us awake and make us realize we have a choice.” here’s the trick with reinforcement: It works best when it comes seconds—not minutes or hours—after the behavior. when it comes to goal pursuit, it really is the journey that counts, not the destination. “the progress principle”: Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them. Shakespeare captured it perfectly: “Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.”4 Voluntary activities, therefore, offer much greater promise for increasing happiness while avoiding adaptation effects. In the flow experience, elephant and rider are in perfect harmony. people experienced longer-lasting improvements in mood from the kindness and gratitude activities than from those in which they indulged themselves. Activities connect us to others; objects often separate us. “consume” more family time, vacations, and other enjoyable activities. Paradox of Choice”: We value choice and put ourselves in situations of choice, even though choice often undercuts our happiness. paradox mostly applies to people they call “maximizers · If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them. · Give them a secure base and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own. · Having strong social relationships strengthens the immune system, extends life (more than does quitting smoking), speeds recovery from surgery, and reduces the risks of depression and anxiety disorders. · As a character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit said, “Hell is other people.” But so is heaven. · psychologist Dan McAdams has suggested that personality really has three levels, and too much attention has been paid to the lowest level, the basic traits. · second level of personality, “characteristic adaptations,” includes personal goals, defense and coping mechanisms, values, beliefs, and life-stage concerns (such as those of parenthood or retirement) that people develop to succeed in their particular roles and niches. · The third level of personality is that of the “life story.” The life story is written primarily by the rider. · People who strive primarily for achievement and wealth are, Emmons finds, less happy, on average, than those whose strivings focus on the other three categories · At the third level of personality, the need for adversity is even more obvious: You need interesting material to write a good story. · people who are mentally healthy and happy have a higher degree of “vertical coherence” among their goals. Higher-level (long term) goals and lower-level (immediate) goals all fit together well so that pursuing one’s short-term goals advances the pursuit of long-term goals. · If you are a pessimist, you are probably feeling gloomy right now. But despair not!If you can find a way to make sense of adversity and draw constructive lessons from it, you can benefit, too. And you can learn to become a sense maker by reading Jamie Pennebaker’s Opening Up. · Pennebaker asked people to write about “the most upsetting or traumatic experience of your entire life,” preferably one they had not talked about with others in great detail. He gave them plenty of blank paper and asked them to keep writing for fifteen minutes, on four consecutive days. · The people who wrote about traumas went to the doctor or the hospital fewer times in the following year. · it’s not about steam; it’s about sense making. · You have to use words, and the words have to help you create a meaningful story. · If you are a pessimist:· consider meditation, cognitive therapy, or even Prozac.· The second step is to cherish and build your social support network.· Third, religious faith and practice can aid growth, both by directly fostering sense making and by increasing social support· And finally, no matter how well or poorly prepared you are when trouble strikes, at some point in the months afterwards, pull out a piece of paper and start writing. · Pennebaker suggests34 that you write continuously for fifteen minutes a day, for several days. Don’t edit or censor yourself; Before you conclude your last session, be sure you have done your best to answer these two questions: Why did this happen? What good might I derive from it? · The strong version of the adversity hypothesis might be true, but only if we add caveats: For adversity to be maximally beneficial, it should happen at the right time (young adulthood), to the right people (those with the social and psychological resources to rise to challenges and find benefits), and to the right degree (not so severe as to cause PTSD). · Thus in saying that well being or happiness (eudaimonia) is “an activity of soul in conformity with excellence or virtue,” Aristotle was saying that a good life is one where you develop your strengths, realize your potential, and become what it is in your nature to become. · Franklin himself admitted that he failed utterly to develop the virtue of humility, yet he reaped great social gains by learning to fake it. · these ancient texts rely heavily on maxims and role models rather than proofs and logic. When moral instruction triggers emotions, it speaks to the elephant as well as the rider. · many ancient texts emphasize practice and habit rather than factual knowledge. · the ancients reveal a sophisticated understanding of moral psychology. They all knew that virtue resides in a well-trained elephant. They all knew that training takes daily practice and a great deal of repetition. · bad idea...Many moral education efforts since the 1970s take the rider off of the elephant and train him to solve problems on his own. What's the advantage of fear or the benefit of regret or the bonus of granting misery a foothold even if death is embracing you? My old abbot used to say, "Life is only precious if you wish it to be." I look at it like the last bite of a wonderful meal. Do you enjoy it, or does the knowledge that there is no more to follow make it so bitter that you would ruin the experience? - Myron Life is a journey…enjoy the process not just the destinations (KP) Life is made great by....What you focus on, how you interpret life, and the actions you take Actions: (you will never become what you are not now becoming) Happiness is the ability to choose one thought over another. Say “cancel” when you start thinking down a dark path. Is it a correct thought or a fiend thought. First thought might need to be reframed. First thought might be wrong. Turns out, your brain cannot really tell the difference between completely imagining something, and actually experiencing it. What you tell your brain, your brain believes. The quality of your life is directly proportional to the quality of the questions you ask yourself (tony robbins’ quote) Because whatever you pay attention to is going to grow. If I pay attention to my garden, it’s going to grow. If I pay attention to my kids, they’re going to grow. If I pay attention to my marriage, it’s going to grow. kids don't need more things they need you hanging out with them Give attention to the people you love in your life: text, email, call, lunch, date, goof off, exercise with, Sometimes...Being happy is more important than being right. There is no honor is being superior to others; there is only honor in being better than your former self. In isolation you can become convinced of anything Rumplestillskin effect – once you are able to call out what saddens you by name it will begin to disappear. This is why we always need to communicate what we feel or fear. Show me your friends and I will show you your future. We need to stop worrying about trying to eliminate my anxiety thru changing others. Anxiety is ours to own and discuss. We need to be comfortable with being helpless over others. In life you only need to be courageous for 20 seconds for something wonderful to happen. Pain is a fact of life (and is temporary). Suffering is voluntary. Humans have always needed to be on the precipice of pain to be willing to change. Progress requires action not merely understanding. A goal without a plan is just a wish. If you really want something you will find a way, if you don't you will find an excuse Focus is power! Energy is simply energy. It is neutral. The same energy becomes anger; the same energy becomes love, sorrow, sadness and happiness. These are all forms of the same energy only your mind gives the form. Emotions are only energy in motion. You chose to put energy into positive hope or into worrying and suffering. Inner critic should be helpful, objective rather than condemning. It should help us stay focused and disciplined. Most importantly it should be supportive. When being harsh ask the critic what it wants. What it needs right now. Do the same when you feel anxiety Future possibilities are always infinite. #1. Start spending time with the right people. – These are the people you enjoy, who love and appreciate you, and who encourage you to improve in healthy and exciting ways. They are the ones who make you feel more alive, and not only embrace who you are now, but also embrace and embody who you want to be, unconditionally. #2. Start facing your problems head on. – It isn’t your problems that define you, but how you react to them and recover from them. Problems will not disappear unless you take action. Do what you can, when you can, and acknowledge what you’ve done. It’s all about taking baby steps in the right direction, inch by inch. These inches count, they add up to yards and miles in the long run. #3. Start being honest with yourself about everything. – Be honest about what’s right, as well as what needs to be changed. Be honest about what you want to achieve and who you want to become. Be honest with every aspect of your life, always. #5. Start being yourself, genuinely and proudly. – Trying to be anyone else is a waste of the person you are. Be the best version of yourself. #6. Start noticing and living in the present. – Right now is a miracle. Right now is the only moment guaranteed to you. Right now is life. So stop thinking about how great things will be in the future. Stop dwelling on what did or didn’t happen in the past. Learn to be in the ‘here and now’ and experience life as it’s happening. Appreciate the world for the beauty that it holds, right now. #7. Start valuing the lessons your mistakes teach you. – Mistakes are okay; they’re the stepping stones of progress. If you’re not failing from time to time, you’re not trying hard enough and you’re not learning. Take risks, stumble, fall, and then get up and try again. Appreciate that you are pushing yourself, learning, growing and improving. Significant achievements are almost invariably realized at the end of a long road . One of the ‘mistakes’ you fear might just be the link to your greatest achievement yet. #8. Start being more polite to yourself. – If you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way that you sometimes speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend? The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others. You must love who you are or no one else will. #9. Smile because you can. Choose happiness. Be the change you want to see in the world. Be happy with who you are now, and let your positivity inspire your journey into tomorrow. Nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning we give it Traits of Successful people: Passion, Belief, Strategy, Clarity of Values, Energy, Bonding with People, Master Communication Key to life:the way we communicate with ourselves and the actions we take State: Word, Physiology, Picture (put yourself in a reasourceful state) The difference between those who fail to achieve and those who do is being able to put yourself consistently in a state that supports striving. Focus on what we want in life not the opposite…..why focus is power…you go to what you focus on "one person with belief is equal to a force of 99 who only have interest" Seven beliefs of Success….(Healthiness)1 Everything happens for a reason ( I seek a God who is good, and He loves me)2 There is no such thing as failure only results3 Whatever happens take responsibility for it4 It is not necessary to understand everything to be able to use everything5 People are your greatest resource6 Work is Play7 There is no success without commitment 14. Admit Your Mistakes and Correct Them Immediately Remember you have the same neurology as warren buffer, Arnold Schwanegger Albert eistein and King David. Also communicate using imagery and stories…people remember them… Success Formula – Know Your Outcome, Know Your Reasons, Actions, Getting, and Change · Emotion is created by motion · Quality of questions – the meanings you assign · Change “Should” to “Must” · Success leaves clues – find them · Change is never about ability, it is always motivation · Who you spend time with is who you become · “I am going to have the best meeting ever” – decide! · Bait the hook to appeal to the fish. The human brain is wired for inattention and inertia. As a result, many people already have good intentions, but don’t follow through due to forgetfulness, procrastination, or a general lack of awareness. We can bridge the gap between our intentions and our behavior by using strategies to lock in our future behavior like active choice, pre-commitment, good design, reframing, and simplicity. Our brains are extremely sensitive to losses, the group, and the present. Generally speaking, behavior is the “rate limiter” in our lives. We can usually get information, access, technology, and resources fast enough these days. But doing the right thing with all the resources at our disposal is a much harder task. The human brain prefers to focus on things that are either painful or pleasurable. What we need is to activate the good intentions that people already have. We should expect people to forget and procrastinate often. Non-adherence is accidental, not deliberate. It’s just a result of our brain being wired for inattentiveness. Example of priming? One study claimed people named “Dennis” are more likely to become dentists. Asking people why they do what they do (for example, in a customer survey or focus group) can be a misleading way to get behavior or — at best — incomplete. People are only telling you the 50 bits of conscious thoughts that impact what they do. Everything else that impacts their behavior simply isn’t on their mind and won’t be mentioned. Brain Shortcut 1: Fit in. Humans have a strong urge to fit in and work with one another. For example, one reason many people buy green cars like a Toyota Prius is to “fit in” and showcase their personality and beliefs about living green. Additionally, we often keep track of who is doing the work in a group project or who pays for dinner because people want to feel like things are “fair.” We do not like cheaters or people who don’t contribute their fair share. Social contracts are very important to humans. Brain Shortcut 2: Avoid losses. All losses have a reference point and our brains are wired to feel pain if we just miss that reference point. Examples: Wharton study found the professional golfers make more par putts (avoid bogey) than birdie putts (gains) even though both count for one stroke. Students are more likely to retry SAT if they narrowly miss a round number. Baseball players change strategy near end of season if close to batting .300. The key here is that the losses are close to the reference point. Losses that are far away don’t cause the same pain and motivation. Winning a silver medal is more painful than bronze because you narrowly missed gold. With proper design, you can utilize this function of loss aversion to motivate good behaviors. Brain Shortcut 3: hyperbolic discounting. We give more weight to long-term benefits when they are in the future and more weight to immediate pleasure when we are in the moment. This leads to a cycle of making earnest plans, procrastinating and choosing something outside the plan in the moment, making more earnest plans for the future, and so on. (I believe this is the same idea as time inconsistency.) Strategy 1: Active choice. This strategy interrupts the user during a process or workflow and asks them to make an active choice about their preferences. For example, PetSmart interrupts the checkout process to ask users if they want to donate to “help save homeless animals.” Through that strategy alone, they raised over $40 million in a year. This is an interesting indication that there was a lot of latent demand to donate for homeless animals. People didn’t need to be convinced, they simply needed to be asked at a moment when they had the power to act. The rest of the time, the issue of donating simply wasn’t on their radar (even though the desire / intention was there). It’s important to note that this strategy asks you to make processes less seamless for the user, but the interruption occurs at an important and well-considered moment. Strategy 2: Lock in good intentions for the future. Use pre-commitment and implementation intentions to secure good behaviors. Remove all of your TVs from your home. Throw out all sweets and candy. Voluntarily add your name to the “do not gamble” list. Take the drug antabuse to make yourself feel sick if you drink alcohol, etc. Richard Thaler ran an experiment on pre-commitment and created an automatic 401k saving program that increased savings as employees earned raises. What they found was that people saved nearly double the amount they would have for retirement. Most people WANTED to save more, they just never got around to it when their pay increased because of inattention and inertia. Thaler’s plan made it automatic. The author ran an implementation intentions study at Express Scripts to increase participation at the annual walk. People who pledged to walk were 3 times more likely to show up vs. those just saying they would walk. When used as prescribed, the pill has a failure rate (i.e. unintended pregnancy) of only 1%. But in the real world, people delay getting prescriptions, forget to take it, etc. and the failure rate jumps to 9%. Meanwhile, implantable contraceptives (known as “long-acting reversible contraceptive methods”) have a failure rate in the real world of less than 1%. That is, they make contraception happen automatically everyday in the future once the decision to use them have been made. This technological fix makes the right behaviors automatic by shifting it to a one-time decision that bypasses our daily inattention and inertia. Behavior-based commitments (e.g. “workout 3 days per week”) work better than outcome-based commitments (e.g. “lose 20 pounds”) because it is too easy to make exceptions in the moment when the outcome is in the future. Meanwhile, the behavior is also in the moment, so sticking to your behavior is a choice for the here and now. Of course, the outcome are often a natural consequence of the behavior as well. Strategy 3: Let it ride. Make the default decision a better one. Rely on people to “opt out” rather than “opt in.” It’s the difference between requiring consent vs. assumed consent. Basically, people procrastinate on everything. In this way, you let people lock themselves into better behaviors. This is also a really compelling example of the fact that people aren’t paying attention. We live our lives with inattention and inertia. Strategy 4: Get in the flow. Items that are most frequently bought are at eye level and on the displays at the ends of aisles. You post a sticky note on the mirror to remind yourself in the morning. Amazon adds recommendations beneath the items you are browsing. Netflix does the same with shows. Home delivery prescriptions coming with a message on the final refill that says on top of the cap: “Last refill. Call your doctor. New Rx needed.” These are all examples of injecting reminders into the normal flow of the user. The power of getting in the flow is best when they user can act upon the reminder immediately. In other words, it should be a hot trigger. Strategy 5: Reframe the choices. Consider if Petsmart asked customers to “donate to animal shelters” vs. “donate to save homeless pets.” It’s a small shift, but a big difference. Homeless pets is a very personal, emotional phrase and it leads to more action. Basically, this is just great copywriting. Word choice matters. This is especially big to consider when crafting behavior for businesses and governments. Social norms messaging can shift behavior is a positive way. For example, showing people how they compared on energy consumption to their neighbors led to improvements in energy consumption. You have to be careful using this strategy though. Social norms mean some people are “in the group” and some people are “out of the group.” That “out of the group” segment can often react negatively to social norms messaging, which nullifies the positive impacts. It is best to “bundle losses and enumerate gains.” Amazon Prime is a good example. They bundle all of the losses (shipping fees) into one yearly cost. Then, they enumerate gains by showing you the “free shipping” options every time you purchase. This matches with the philosophy of “stacking the pain” that I learned in business school. Decoy options are another way to change behavior and nudge people toward a particular option. Piggybacking is when you use pleasure in the present moment to pull people into behaviors that are better over the long term. One example was making toothpaste pleasant to use. One way to do this is to change the experience (like the toothpaste example). Another way to do it is with temptation bundling (Katy Milkman’s strategies). When you are presenting multiple options to someone, you should offer them in order of decreasing effectiveness. That is, the most effective option is covered first. Then, the second most effective. And so on. This ensures that the entire conversation is framed around the topic of effectiveness and, thus, the person you are talking to can make a decision for what they want while always knowing what works best. Offering alternatives in a different order often colors the conversation and frames it around something besides effectiveness. For example, the conversation might be framed around the option you are currently using or around the option you are most familiar with already. Write out, in plain language, the behavior you intend to follow. Avoid deception. Ask yourself whether a reasonable person armed would feel deceived by the way you are presenting information or nudging behavior if they knew everything you did. Typically, we use big data to change behavior by targeting specific populations and tailoring recommendations to them. Which segment should receive a coupon? And so on. These choices are often made from a marketing and persuasion standpoint. By realizing that most people fail to act because of forgetfulness and procrastination (not a lack of desire), you can open up new opportunities for using big data. 15min Walk or otherwise work out lightly for 150 minutes a week in order to improve your health. You can split these 150 minutes into almost any chunks and still benefit (two 10 min walks a day will work) Accept opportunity to entice good luck Act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be All change is from the inner to the outer.All change begins in the self-concept. Become,then,the person you want to be on the inside,first,to see the appearance of this person on the outside. An asset puts money in your pocket.A liability takes money out of your pocket. To become wealthy, acquire assets. Any successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors.In short,to make a switch, you need to script the critical moves Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling,the more sure we can be that we have to do it Commit to what’s right rather than who’s right Decide what you want to do.Then decide to do it.Then do it Demand not that events should happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well Do your thing and don't care if they like it Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you.Be afraid of the friends who flatter you Don’t be afraid to say no to projects. Prove that you’re serious about specialization by turning down work that falls outside your area of expertise. The more people you say no to,the more referrals you’ll get to people who need your product or service Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants Eat raw nuts.Raw almonds, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, hazelnuts,Brazil nuts, and cashews are wonderful. Eat as much as you want.They’re filling and full of fiber, monounsaturated oils, and protein.They reduce blood pressure, reduce LDL cholesterol (including small LDL particles), and consuming them several times a week can add two years to your life Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones Every time you feel depressed about something,try to identify a corresponding negative thought you had just prior to and during the depression.Why? Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood, by learning to restructure them, you can change your mood For all of the most important things,the timing always sucks.If something is important to you and you want to do it, do it and correct the course along the way From the greatest scientist to the most humble artisan, every brain within every body is infested with preconceived notions and patterns of thought that lead it astray without the brain knowing it Get the result you want by finding the time and doing the work If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you,the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say,‘Bye.I have to go.I’m going crazy, and 6 I’m getting out of here.’And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. If you’re hungry, use the apple test.If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, you're not hungry If you’ve got the time, use it to get ready.What else could you possibly have to do that’s more important? Yes, maybe you’ll learn how to do a few things you’ll never wind up actually needing to do, but that’s a much better problem to have than needing to do something and having no clue where to start In moments of crises,focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead. It’s better to be first than it is better. So, if you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in Learn what the rest of the world is like.The variety is worthwhile Lift hard, lift heavy, get sufficient rest, and feed your body correctly Live on less than you earn and invest the rest Look at things not as they are, but as they can be.Visualization adds value to everything.A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn't stuck with the present Lower the activation energy for habits you want to adopt, and raise it for habits you want to avoid.The more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our desired actions,the more we enhance our ability to jump-start positive change Make others better as a result of your presence, and make sure that impact lasts in your absence No matter what happens, always be yourself We obtain knowledge by the ear rather than by the tongue Own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories.If people wanted you to write warmly about them,they should have behaved better People like to have reasons for what they do. So, when asking someone to do you a favor, give a reason. You will be more successful People listen better if they feel that you have understood them.They tend to think that those who understand them are intelligent and sympathetic people whose own opinions may be worth listening to. So if you want the other side to appreciate your interests, begin by demonstrating that you appreciate theirs Prioritize your problems and take care of them one at a time,the highest priority first.Don’t try to do everything at once, or you won’t be successful. Pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you Remember that nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it Remember: we all get what we tolerate. So stop tolerating excuses within yourself, limiting beliefs of the past, or half-assed or fearful states.Use your body as a tool to snap yourself into a place of sheer will, determination, and commitment. Face your challenges head-on with the core belief that problems are just speed bumps on the road to your dreams.And from that place, when you take massive action—with an effective and proven strategy—you will rewrite your history. Rule #1: Avoid white carbohydrates (or anything that can be white).Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again.Rule #3: Don’t drink calories.Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit.Rule #5: Take one day off per week and go nuts Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t The 80/20 Principle says 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your efforts, and 20 percent of your results come from the other 80 percent. So,to maximize your results, invest your time, energy, and resources in the 20 percent for each area of your business The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE.Keep this constantly in mind.Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat To achieve style, begin by affecting none To be a great leader, inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more To be happy, keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much, Scatter sunshine,forget self,think of others. Try this for a week, and you will be surprised. To be successful, develop persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds To be successful, put yourself out there and hit the ground running To be successful,take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life To bring a fundamental change in people's beliefs and behavior, create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed, and nurtured To extinguish a bad habit, insert a new routine but keep the old cue and deliver the old reward To gain strength, perform a few very important exercises, movements that train the whole body as a system, not as a collection of separate body parts To get leaner, lower your insulin levels to get fat out of your fat tissue To improve an irrational behavior, ask yourself,How did it begin? Second, ask yourself,What amount of pleasure will I be getting out of it To learn hope, update your beliefs about intelligence and talent, practice optimistic self-talk, and ask for a helping hand. To make a change in your life or work, raise your standards and believe with 100 percent sincerity that you can meet them. To move to a higher level of life, let go of your old ways of thinking and adopt new ones To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary, become independent of the social environment to the degree that you no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, give rewards to yourself.Develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances To proceed very far through the desert, you must be willing to meet existential suffering and work it through.In order to do this, your attitude toward pain has to change. To do this, you must accept the fact that everything that happens to you has been designed for your spiritual growth Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be Treat every piece of advice as a gift or a compliment and simply say,‘Thank you Whatever your income, always live below your means. When learning a skill, don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek small improvements one day at a time When meeting with prospective clients,tell them what your weak points are before he notices them.This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points When you don’t know what to do, don’t just sit there.Do something.The answers will follow The best climber in the world is the one who's having the most fun. don't fear failure...fear being in the exact same place next year as you are today..... How can I build a company that helps millions and enjoy the process? How can I show up as a fun dad daily? What am I grateful for? What person in my past am I grateful for? What work associate today am I grateful for? What health factor am I grateful for? How can I drop this bad habit and enjoy the process? What is one tiny step I can make to get better organized today? “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” What is something I could do right now that would make me more likable? What's the most important thing I could do to make sure I accomplish my goal? What has been the best hour of my week? How can I make it easier to have more hours like that? How do I become an outstanding team player….. How can we revolutionize self help? Where are the bright spots? What are all the actions I can take? for self help
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