The most thankless decision I make is the one that prevents something bad from happening, because I can never prove that I prevented something even worse.
Whether the subject is climate change or the life span of unicorns, when you cite demonstrable facts to counter another person’s belief, a phenomenon that researchers call “the backfire effect” takes over. Your brilliant marshaling of data not only fails to persuade the believer, it backfires and strengthens his or her belief. The believer doubles down on his or her position – and the two of you are more polarized than ever. If.
If you know what matters to you, it’s easier to commit to change. If you can’t identify what matters to you, you won’t know when it’s being threatened. And in my experience, people only change their ways when what they truly value is threatened.
Structure not only increases our chance of success, it makes us more efficient at it.
Accepting is most valuable when we are powerless to make a difference. Yet our ineffectuality is precisely the condition we are most loath to accept. It triggers our finest moments of counterproductive behavior.
Sometimes the better part of valor – and common sense – is saying, “I’ll pass.
Improvement is hard. If it were easy, we’d already be better.
People don’t get better without follow-up. So let’s get better at following up with our people.
There’s nothing wrong with understanding. Understanding the past is perfectly admissible if your issue is accepting the past. But if your issue is changing the future, understanding will not take you there. My experience tells me that the only effective approach is looking people in the eye and saying, “If you want to change, do this.
It’s not about you. It’s about what other people think of you.
If you’ve ever binge-watched a season or two of a TV show on Netflix when you should be studying, or finishing an assignment, or going to sleep, you know how an appealing distraction can trigger a self-defeating choice.
Excusing our momentary lapses as an outlier event triggers a self-indulgent inconsistency – which is fatal for change.
If you want to change anything about yourself, the best time to start is now. Ask yourself, “What am I willing to change now?” Just do that. That’s more than enough. For now.
Understanding the past is perfectly admissible if your issue is accepting the past. But if your issue is changing the future, understanding will not take you there.
It’s the little moments that trigger some of our most outsized and unproductive responses:.
We can change not only our behavior but how we define ourselves. When we put ourselves in a box marked “That’s not me,” we ensure that we’ll never get out of it.
You can continue doing what you’re doing for a long time. But you’ll never become the person you want to be.
But the higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself.
Successful people never drink from a glass that’s half empty.
None of this makes sense. At best, you’ve spent a lot of time failing to change someone’s mind. At worst, you’ve made an enemy, damaged a relationship, and added to your reputation for being disagreeable.