A trigger is any stimulus that influences our behavior. We are constantly influenced by environmental conditions: the smell of bacon wafting from the kitchen, a trigger goes off, and we instantly forget about the doctor's recommendations about cholesterol levels. The phone rings, and we instantly glance at the screen - instead of looking into the eyes of the interlocutor. Such triggers are ubiquitous and constant.

At the same time, the triggers themselves cannot be good or bad. The main thing is our reaction to them. For example, one child has good and caring parents are capable of causing a positive perception, while another will consider that he is being “smothered in arms.” Parents of two or more children know well how this can happen. The same amount of devotion and care can make one child grateful and another child rebellious. Same parents. Same triggers. The reactions are different.

Goldsmith's advice and stories, based on his experience working with the most successful business leaders, will help you overcome the triggers that lead to undesirable reactions, learn to use external conditions to achieve your goals, and become the person you dream of being.

Who is this book for?

For everyone who wants to achieve positive changes in life and consolidate them for a long time.

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Rated the book

A trigger is any stimulus that influences our behavior.

A rare book on self-development that I finished reading and which turned out to be very useful and concise. It focuses on one question: Why is it difficult for a person to change behavior patterns?(i.e. long-term changes)?

Often the problem is that in our head, changing habits is like a click, a change in state. There was one person, but he became another. In reality, this is a process, and often a long one. The authors reveal some internal illusions that prevent change (and with which we deceive ourselves), and also note that most often we do not even suspect how much influence the environment has on us: people, change of scenery, even the scenery of our social and professional roles.

Interestingly, we underestimate the environment, but at the same time we often overestimate ourselves. The authors offer a version that lives in each of us excellent strategist(we, when we plan something) and dubious performer(we, when we need to implement this plan). We plan taking into account some spherical genius of productivity in a vacuum, but every day we meet with our real selves, with our fatigue, temptations and other obstacles.

So how can you help yourself through the process of change? Through awareness and structure.
Stephen Covey also described the need to introduce an additional step between stimulus and response. For the authors of the book, this diagram looks like this:

TRIGGER (STIMULUS) – impulse – awareness – choice – BEHAVIOR (REACTION).

What does it mean? In most situations, we do not behave as we should, but as we are used to, that is, automatically. Then a person begins to change when he notices his standard reactions, all the triggers that cause them, and learns to respond to these triggers differently. In each situation, the authors propose to formulate a problem, imagine the environment that will influence it, and then perform Exercise “Wheel of Change”: think about what in their behavior they need to 1) preserve, what 2) remove, what 3) create something new, and what they need to 4) come to terms with and accept as a factor that is outside their zone of influence.

To structure work on yourself, the authors suggest active question technique. They are built according to the scheme “Did I do everything possible to...?”. For example, “Did I do my best to make time for my wife/to make myself happy/to be more active during the day, etc.” In this case, in each situation a person evaluates what he can influence. Plus, he notes not the presence or absence of a result, but his efforts, his progress. What does this give? Goals become a manageable process. Day after day, on a 10-point scale. We ask ourselves questions that reflect what we want to change. We help ourselves. We structure our lives. Such inner work reflects our aspirations, and thus Active questions can be considered analogous to an enabling environment for long-term change.

Rated the book

Who has a problem with habits? A? Do habits control you or do you control habits? Oh, to be honest?
- How do you solve problems? Calm and reasonable? Me not.
- And also, for example, how often do people around you annoy you? Me often. I don't really like people at all. Sometimes))
- How often do you buy something in a store that is not what you wanted?
Fortunately, you can fight all this (and much more). Marshall blames everything on triggers, well, these are people or situations that force us to act differently than we ourselves want.
This book is without pictures, without an abundance of diagrams and frames, but with a huge amount of informative text.
I found it very interesting to read.

Rated the book

"It's incredibly difficult for all of us to look in the mirror every day and see a reality where we're not trying to do what we say is most important in our lives."

On Russian market More and more business and motivational literature is appearing; for me, everything that comes out of the editorial office of MIF has long been a sign of quality, but, nevertheless, I have my own criteria for evaluating such literature. The first is the desire to change something, which intensifies while reading and does not disappear after closing the book, the second is effective schemes that you can adopt in your life. I found both of these points, not without pleasure, in Goldsmith's Triggers.
The author is a leading business coach who works with CEOs of major corporations and influential companies. His main difference from many of his colleagues is that he takes money after the expiration of his work, and this is almost 18 months, only if his help turned out to be effective. Not everyone will give such a guarantee for their service. And this says a lot at once.
The undoubted advantage of this book is its narration style. Goldsmith writes simply about difficult things, creating a sense of one-on-one conversation and a sense of mentoring, which is what he does with his clients in real time. Its peculiarity is the many examples from the sphere of finance and business that can be transferred to events in personal life.
One of the new, for me personally, ideas that emerged while reading is the power of influence environment on our lives and our behavior, this phenomenon is called “trigger”, which literally translated from English means “trigger”. The influence of triggers is always invisible, but their presence should not be underestimated. Having realized this, you can turn all negative situations to the other side of the coin and even benefit from boring duties. Tempting, isn't it? It would seem, how can you go from having to attend a boring meeting at work or a tiresome meeting with business partners squeeze out at least a gram of positivity? Believe me, it is possible. And this is only a small part of the components raised by Goldsmith efficient work And successful life, it affects literally all areas interpersonal relationships and criteria for a proper motivational growth program. One of the components of success is a simple and durable frame, an uncomplicated scheme, following which you can achieve unprecedented heights. An ordinary sheet of paper on which you will sum up the results of the day, adding to each item you wrote: “What did I do in order to...”, instead of the usual list of current affairs, will be raised powerful force Your Ego to fight laziness and procrastination. It’s better to read for yourself how to write this magical recipe correctly :)

Neil Gaiman

Beware of triggers

Copyright © 2015 Neil Gaiman

© A. Blaze, translation into Russian, 2016

© A. Osipov, translation into Russian, 2016

© AST Publishing House LLC, 2016

Preface

I. Small triggers

GENERALLY SPEAKING, TRIGGERS are what throw us off balance. But that’s not what we’re going to talk about here. Here, by triggers, I rather mean those images, words or thoughts that swing open under our feet like secret trap doors - and we fall from our safe, rational world into some other, much darker and inhospitable one. Our hearts start racing in our chests. The blood drains from the cheeks, the hands become cold. And we stand, gasping for air, out of breath, pale and shocked to the core.

And in moments like these, when a trigger occurs for us, we learn something important about ourselves. We understand: what happened is not gone forever. Ancient monsters patiently wait for us in the dark corners of our lives. We believed that we had outgrown them, thrown them out of our heads, left them in the past, where they had long since dried up, rotted and crumbled into dust; but we were mistaken. The monsters are still waiting in the darkness, gaining strength and preparing to strike us with the most insidious and merciless blow in the most defenseless place.

The monsters under our bed and the monsters in our heads are indestructible: they always lurk in the darkness, like mold under the floor or behind the wallpaper. Where there is night, there they are, and there are more than enough nights in this world. The universe is generous with darkness.

So what do I want to warn the reader of this book about? The fact that each of us has our own personal triggers.

The expression “Beware of triggers!” I came across it for the first time on the Internet. There it is used mainly to warn the reader that by clicking on the following link, he will be taken to a page with such images or texts that may unsettle him, upset him, provoke unpleasant memories, cause anxiety or fear. Accordingly, when seeing such a warning, the reader may simply not follow the link or internally prepare for what he will see there.

Then warnings about triggers migrated from the Internet into the world of tangible things, and this aroused my keen interest. I read in the news that several colleges are going to put such warnings on some works of literature, visual arts and cinema, so that students know in advance what to expect from a particular book or film. On the one hand, this seemed like a good idea (because it’s really better for a person with a delicate mental organization to know in advance that familiarity with a particular work can traumatize him), but on the other hand, it caused serious concern. When my "Sandman" was published in monthly sequels, each issue had a warning on the cover: "For readers with a mature outlook on life." And, in my opinion, it was reasonable. Such a warning not only informed potential readers that these comics were not for children and that they may contain scenes or images that could frighten or unsettle, but also assumed that a person with a mature outlook on life (no matter how old he or she was). family) is capable of making responsible decisions himself. I myself did not feel the right to decide for a mature person what exactly might bother him, frighten him, shock him, or make him think about something that had never occurred to him before. If you are a mature person, you decide for yourself what to read and what not to read.

In short, I believe that the books we read as adults should not have any warnings on them, except perhaps this one: “Enter at your own risk.” It is possible to understand what this or that work of literature is and what it means for us personally only through our own experience, and each person’s experience of perceiving any book is special, peculiar only to him.

We all recreate stories in our heads. We take words and put power into them; we look at the world through someone else's eyes - and we see what others see, joining their experience of perception. I think about this and wonder, “I wonder how safe all these made-up stories are?” But then the next question comes: “And, actually, why do we think that they must be safe? As a child, I had the opportunity to read such books, after which I thought that it would be better not to open them at all: I was not ready for them, and I was very upset by all these stories about people who found themselves in a hopeless or humiliating situation, about how some people tortured or maimed others, about a world in which adults were as helpless as children, and children were forced to rely only on themselves, without receiving support from their parents. All this frightened and worried me, haunted me at night in nightmares, occupied my thoughts, worried and saddened me to the depths of my soul. But thanks to this, I realized one important thing: if I want to read at all fiction, I have to accept that the limits of my comfort zone will sometimes become clear only after I leave them. And now that I'm an adult, I would never agree to exclude this childhood experience from your life.

Let's start with nouns and verbs that can't help but make you smile when you read them.

No, this is not a word for small children who drag everything that is lying on the road. This word translates as cookies, or pie, sponge cake, bun. For example, gingerbread cookies, which we can all find in Ikea, are called Pepparkakor. Chocolate cake that's so easy to make - Chokladkaka. So, absolutely no bullshit!

This word is read as PENDELTOG, and is translated as Suburban train, also known as electric train. There is also a verb Pendla, and it means to go somewhere by commuter train, for example, to work from one city to another.

Now let's move on to funny verbs, which are not at all as fun to read in Russian. Gnida means RUBBING. For example, grating something when cooking food. Nothing unpleasant.

Well, forgive me, forgive me....No swearing, actually. This word means in Swedish row oars, kayak. And it looks like this)) This summer my husband and I tried kayaking on the lake. It was really cool and I encourage you to kayak on the lake downtown if you get the chance.

Dimma translates as fog or haze.

And now to the really unusual words that are not in our dictionary.

Fika is not just a word. This is a whole tradition, Lifestyle. Something that meeting with friends and office life is indispensable without. You may have already heard about the Swedish phenomenon and the Swedes' love for coffee. Fika- This is a break for coffee or tea with buns or cookies. They make fun of everyone, everywhere, in the office free time and at home. And cinnamon buns are considered traditional - Kanelbullar. Like these ones.

Kanelbullar

Hen is a new pronoun included in the dictionary. It is usually used when the gender of the person being spoken about is unknown. And in order not to offend anyone, they say hen. Or when a person himself asks to be called neuter, since he/she does not definitely classify himself as the other two. The word, which was considered controversial by many, was much discussed, but during recent years The situation has calmed down and now everything is very calm.

We definitely don’t have such a word! And it means something like a wonderful cozy evening in the company of friends or family at home. Perhaps with wine, snacks and in front of the TV, and yes, on Friday! Fredag ​​- Friday Mysigt- this translates into Russian as cozy. A cozy Friday evening with family. This is so cute.

In moderation, here's how you can explain the meaning of this word. It is very often used, and popular due to the fact that all Swedes do not like extremes.

There is no analogue for this word in Russian. It can be translated as follows: dad is on maternity leave. Pappa - dad, Ledig - free. That is, a dad who is free from work and on maternity leave. In 2016 in Sweden, according to the State Insurance Fund (our analogue is the Social Insurance Fund), 27% of maternity pay was received by men. And the trend of taking maternity leave among men is growing. But, here you need to pay attention that by law a man is required to take at least 90 days maternity leave. Dear daddies can be found everywhere, and I tell you, they cope with their responsibilities very well.

Here we are not talking about strange types of Swedish dances, no. These are accepted abbreviations to describe “marital status.” Cohabitation is very popular in Sweden, and quite often couples live together for a long time without getting married. So this is the union and is called SAMBO, and it's actually just short for cohabitation — Sammanboende. SARBO On the contrary, it means living separately, but when the partners live separately. In our opinion, they are just dating. Well, the last of the trinity is sonorous MAMBO- this is when you still live with your parents.

Well, since we’re talking about family topics, here’s a bonus for you:

Dada, bonus dad. This is what they call stepfathers, and of course there is also a bonus mother by analogy. As another parent in addition to your family. There are also Sunday moms and dads. This is when the parents are divorced and the child certain days spends time with one or the other parent.

These are so interesting and unusual words is in the Swedish dictionary. I still have some left over, so I'll probably make another note on this topic.