Description:
Marshall Goldsmith, bestselling author and leading business thinker, talks about the triggers that prevent us from achieving our goals in his new book.
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 across 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.

Additional Information:

Who is this book for?
For everyone who wants to achieve positive changes in life and consolidate them for a long time.

Quotes from the book
Planning
“Boxer-philosopher Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a plan until they hit him in the face.” Traveling along the road of life, most often we receive this blow from the environment.”

False excuses
"An excuse is a convenient explanation we use when we disappoint others. These excuses are essentially variations on the theme 'the dog ate my homework"We say them so often that it's hard to understand why anyone else believes us even when we tell the truth."

Magical changes
"I'm skeptical of the 'one-time life-changing experience'. It may affect a person in the short term, but it won't do anything meaningful or lasting. It's not a process of impulse, hope and prayer; it's based on strategy."

Ego
"I often work with managers who say things like, 'I don't great master praise people. It's not mine." Then I ask them if they have an incurable genetic disease that prevents them from recognizing people for their merits."

Success and stagnation
“Even when we achieve success, we cannot remain in one place without maintaining concentration and discipline. Fairy tales end with the words “and they lived happily ever after.” That’s why they are fairy tales, not documentaries.”

Who is guilty?
“We are great at finding scapegoats and are just as adept at giving ourselves indulgences for our shortcomings. We rarely blame ourselves for mistakes or bad choices, because it’s so easy to place the blame on those around us. How often have you heard that a colleague accepts responsibility for his mistakes with with the words “What kind of bad luck!”? Guilt is always somewhere outside and never inside.”

Screenshots:

Neil Gaiman

Beware of triggers

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 such 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 planning to put these warnings on some works of literature, art, and film 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.

To this day I see it on the Internet, in books, real life things that seriously upset me. And no matter how much time passes, it doesn’t get any easier: my heart again and again falls into the same traps, from which it never manages to get out unharmed. But these same pitfalls teach me important things and open my eyes. Even if it hurts, they make me think, grow and change.

So I read about this initiative from some colleges and thought: I wonder if they will ever put a trigger warning on my books too? And if so, how justified will it be? And then I decided: I’ll do it myself, without waiting for other people’s decisions!

In this book, as in life, you may encounter something that unsettles you. It contains pain, and death, and tears, and failures, and all kinds of violence, cruelty and even bullying of the weak. But, I dare to hope, there is also kindness - at least sometimes. There are even a few happy endings (well, at least stories that end badly for everyone characters, not so many). And that is not all. I know a lady named Rocky who is very afraid of tentacles, especially ones with suction cups. And she must be warned about any possible collision with the owners of tentacles: otherwise, when she sees an unexpected piece of octopus or squid on the plate, she will squeal, tremble and crawl to hide behind the sofa. Why am I saying this? And besides, somewhere on the pages of this book there is a huge tentacle lurking.

Many stories end badly for at least one character. I warned you.

II. Pre-flight briefing

Sometimes incredibly important truths can be heard in places where you would not expect them at all. Let me start by saying that I have to fly too often. It would never have occurred to me to say or even think such a thing as a child, when every plane journey was an exciting and wonderful adventure and I looked down at the clouds from the window, imagining that this was a city or a whole world where you could walk around without fear . Nowadays, a lot has changed, but still, before every flight, I always admire those great words that flight attendants repeat over and over again, like some kind of koan or a tiny parable. These words are the pinnacle of all human wisdom:

“Put your mask on yourself first and only then help others.”

When I hear this, I always think about people, about all of us and about the masks we wear. About the masks we hide behind and the masks that reveal our true essence to the world. I think about how people sometimes try to pretend to be who they really are. About how it sometimes dawns on us that other people are incomparably greater or, conversely, incomparably less than that who they imagine themselves to be or try to present themselves to others. And I also think about the need to help other people and how in order to do this we sometimes have to hide behind masks, because when we take off the mask we become too vulnerable...

We all wear masks. This is what makes us interesting.

The stories collected in this book tell about masks and about the people hidden under the masks.

Each of us, writers who earn our living by writing, is the sum of everything that we have seen, heard and, most importantly, read in our entire lives.

Some of my friends are indignant, indignant and seething with righteous anger when readers do not notice allusions, do not recognize hidden quotes, forget authors and put out of their minds the stories and worlds they once read about. Personally, I look at this from a slightly different angle: after all, I was once like a blank slate myself. But I read books and learned from them about different things and people. And including about the people who wrote these books.

From this totality of what I read throughout my life came many, if not all, of the stories in the book you are holding in your hands. They were born due to the fact that there are already other authors, other voices, other souls in the world. And I hope you will not be offended if here, in the preface, I remind you of some writers and some other books to whom my stories literally owe their lives.

Marshall Goldsmith

Mark Reiter

Triggers

Creating Behavior That Lasts – Becoming the Person You Want to Be

Published by permission of Marshall Goldsmith, Inc. c/o Quenn Literary Agency, Inc. and literary agency Synopsis

Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.

© Marshall Goldsmith, Inc. 2015

© Translation, publication in Russian, design. Mann, Ivanov and Ferber LLC, 2016

* * *

This book is well complemented by:

Key skills to achieve your goals

Les Hewitt, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen

How to develop and strengthen

How ordinary people become extraordinary

Dan Waldschmidt

This book is dedicated to Avery Shriner and Austin Shriner, my newborn twin grandchildren. You are my hope for the future!

I saw a beggar leaning on a crutch.

He told me, “You shouldn’t ask for so much.”

And a beautiful woman broke open her dark door.

She shouted to me, "Hey, why don't you ask for more?"

Leonard Cohen, Bird on a Wire

Introduction

My colleague Phil was going down to the basement and landed poorly, hitting his head. For several seconds he lay on the floor with trembling arms and legs, thinking that he was paralyzed. He was too weak to stand, so he sat down against the wall and began assessing the damage. The shaking in his limbs meant he had some sensation (good news). Something was pulsating in my head and neck. He felt blood dripping down his back from a laceration on his head. He knew he needed to see doctors to clean the wound and check for broken bones or internal bleeding. But he understood that he would not be able to get to the hospital himself.

This happened on Saturday morning. Neither his wife nor his adult son were at home. Phil was left alone in his quiet country house. He took out his cell phone to call for help. Looking through the numbers, he realized that there was not a single friend nearby whom he would be comfortable asking for help. Until now he had not bothered to really get to know his neighbors. He didn't want to call 911 because he wasn't bleeding or having a heart attack. He found the home phone number of a middle-aged couple who lived next door and called. A woman named Kay answered the phone (Phil recognized her on the street, but barely communicated with her). He explained the situation and Kay hurried towards him, entering the house through the unlocked back door. She found Phil in the basement, helped him up, took him to the hospital and spent five hours with him while he was examined. He was diagnosed with a concussion. The doctor said that his head would hurt for a few more weeks, but nothing was broken and he would soon be back to normal. Kay took him home.

While relaxing in his dark house that evening, Phil thought about how close he had come to disaster. He remembered the moment when he hit the floor, there was a distinct crunch, as if a hammer had landed on marble and smashed the stone into small pieces. He remembered the electricity that coursed through his limbs and the terror of thinking that he might never be able to walk. He thought how lucky he was.

But Phil's fall triggered more than just gratitude for avoiding disability. He recalled the incredible kindness of his neighbor Kay, who selflessly spent the whole day with him. For the first time in many years, he thought about how he was spending his life. Phil said to himself, “I need to learn how to make friends.” Not because he might need people like Kay to save him if he had to. But because he wanted to become like her.

But not everyone needs a dangerous blow to the head to change. It only seems so.

This book is about how an adult can change his behavior. Why is it so difficult? How to become better? How do we choose what to change? How can you ensure that others appreciate the change? How to become more decisive and pass the never-ending test that leads every successful person to a dead end? In other words, how do we become who we want to be?

To answer these questions, we need to take a closer look at the triggers in the world around us. Their influence is enormous.

A trigger can be anything that provokes changes in our thoughts and actions: people, events and circumstances. They appear unexpectedly. These can be difficult moments in life, like Phil’s injury, or minor ones, like a torn sheet. They can be pleasant, like a teacher's praise that boosts our self-esteem and turns our lives around, or they can lead to undesirable results, like a scoop of ice cream that tempts us to break our diet, or peer pressure that confuses us into going against our grain. will. They can arouse the competitive instinct, like the lure of a big paycheck or an unnerving rival who passes us at a turn. They can be devastating, like news of a loved one's serious illness or the sale of our company. They can be quite simple, like the sound of rain, which evokes pleasant memories.

The number of triggers is almost endless. Where do they come from? Why do they force us to act contrary to our interests? Why don't we pay attention to them? How can we identify the things that irritate us, throw us off course, or make us feel like all is well in our world so we can avoid the bad triggers and find the good ones?

The environment is the most powerful mechanism of influence on our lives, and this influence is not always for our benefit. We make plans, set goals, and put our well-being on the line to achieve those goals. But the environment constantly interferes with the process. The smell of bacon wafting from the kitchen makes you forget the doctor's warnings about your cholesterol levels. Every night when co-workers are working late, we think we have to “fit in” and miss our son’s baseball game; and so on over and over again. Once we hear the phone chirping, we look at the screen instead of looking into the eyes of our loved one. Thus, the stimuli around us provoke unwanted behavior.

External factors are often beyond our control. It seems to us that we are not able to influence them, and we feel like puppets of fate. I don't accept this. Fate is the cards we are dealt. The choice is how to play them.

Despite the heavy blow to the head, Phil did not shy away from the circumstances. by fate he was meant to fall, hit his head, and then recover. And he chose become a good neighbor.

* * *

There is a feeling familiar to all of us. It will not become the subject of our close attention, but will hover above these pages. However, this does not make it any less real. It's a regret. It arises every time we ask ourselves why we haven’t become what we would like to be.

B O I spent most of my research for this book asking people a simple question: “What was your biggest life change?” The answers were varied, but the most emotional were the confessions that related to memories of what people failed to change. These were experiences of unfulfilled dreams of becoming different, which filled people with an inescapable feeling of regret.

We do not have the narcissism of Lady Catherine de Bourgh from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, who boasts of her innate musicality and then, without irony, declares that if she studied music, she would become a great master. In contrast, we feel painful stings of regret when we think about missed opportunities, unmade choices, unfinished actions, buried talents - all the things we didn't do. We usually feel this when it is too late to do anything.

Regret was clearly in the air as I spoke with Tim, the once-influential sports network producer. Tim's career suddenly ended when he was in his fifties, because he did not get along with the management. Ten years later, in his late sixties, Tim was working as a consultant. He still remained a sought-after specialist, but could no longer find a stable leadership position, which he had once missed. He has earned a strong reputation: plays poorly in a team.

Tim had years to think about what happened. But he never voiced his thoughts until his daughter asked her father for advice before she started working in television.

“I told her the most important virtue is patience,” Tim said. – This is a business where everyone looks at the clock. The transmission begins and ends exactly at the appointed time. On the control panel, monitors show everything down to the hundredth of a second. And it never ends. There's always another show to do. The clock is constantly ticking. It gives everyone an incredible sense of urgency. But if you are responsible for everything, this is a test of your patience. You demand that everything be done Now or even earlier. You become very persistent and when you don't get what you want, you can become upset and angry. You begin to perceive people as enemies. They not only disappoint you, but also make you look bad. And you start to get angry."

These thoughts became a catalyst for Tim. Until he expressed all this, he did not understand how his irritability created an atmosphere of intolerance at work and how this trait permeated other areas of his life.

He admitted to me, “I was that guy who writes an email to a friend and gets angry if he doesn’t get a response within an hour. Then I started to harass this friend for ignoring me. In general, I treated my friends the way I was used to treating my subordinates. This is how I communicated with the outside world. And you can’t live like that.”

It took a heart-to-heart conversation with his daughter for Tim to have the epiphany that triggered an acute sense of regret. “If I could change something in my life,” he concluded, “it would be to be more tolerant of people.”

Regret is an emotion we experience when we evaluate and analyze our current circumstances. We remember what we have already done, knowing what we should have done - and understand our shortcomings. Regret brings pain.

This deep and painful feeling does not receive the attention it deserves. We perceive it as a small thing that can be denied or logically explained. We tell ourselves, “I made stupid decisions, but they made me who I am. Lamenting the past is a waste of time. I've learned my lesson. It's time to move on." Regret can be seen as a form of protection from pain and awareness of one's wrongs. We are sometimes consoled by the fact that no one is immune to regret (we are not alone) and time heals all wounds (the only thing worse than pain itself is not knowing when it will go away or whether it will go away at all).

I suggest a different approach to these feelings: “embrace them” (but not too tightly and not for long). The pain that comes with regret is necessary. You can’t say “shoo!” to her like an annoying puppy. When we make a bad decision and let ourselves or the people we love down, we are bound to feel pain. It can motivate us and, at best, be a reminder that we made a mistake but can improve. This pain is one of the most powerful feelings that leads us to change.

If I succeed and you do too, what will happen is that you will become more like the person you want to be and you will have fewer regrets.

Part I
Why don't we become what we would like to be?

Chapter 1
The Immutable Truths of Behavioral Change

As an executive coach, I have been helping successful leaders achieve lasting positive behavior change for over 30 years. Almost all of my clients are ready to take advantage of this opportunity, but some are reluctant at first. Most realize that changing their behavior will help them become even more effective leaders, partners, and even family members. But not all.

I choose a direct and consistent method to help clients. I talk to key participants in the process. These could be colleagues, direct reports, or board members. I collect a lot of confidential information. Then I go directly to the client. My clients are directly responsible for the behavioral changes they would like to achieve. And my job is simple: I help them achieve positive, long-term behavioral changes that They choose. If clients make positive changes—according to those they can trust—I take the money. If those closest to me don’t see positive changes, I don’t take it.

The likelihood of success increases when I follow the client's every step, asking him not to deviate from the chosen path and not to return to his old self. But this does not diminish the importance of the following two immutable truths.

Truth #1: Genuine behavior change is very difficult.

It's hard to start making changes, and even harder to stick with it and stay the course. I believe this is the most difficult task for thinking beings. If you think I'm exaggerating, try answering these questions.

What would you like to change in your life?? It could be something significant, such as your weight (important), job (also important), profession (even more important). Or something more modest, such as a hairstyle, seeing your mother more often, or the color of the wallpaper in the living room. It’s not for me to judge what you need to change.

How long have you wanted this?? How many months or years have you gotten up in the morning and said to yourself something like, “Today I’m going to start changing everything”?

How does this happen? Can you remember a specific moment when you decided to change something in your life, then gave in to that impulse and achieved it to your satisfaction?

These three questions correspond to the problems we face when we begin changes in our lives.

We can't admit we need to change– is it because we don’t realize their necessity, or rather, we realize it, but we find many excuses that neutralize this need. In the following pages we will explore and break free from the deeply hidden beliefs that cause us to resist change.

We do not recognize the inertial force inherent in us. When faced with a choice, we prefer to do nothing. Here I foresee that in the answer to the question “How long has this been going on?” we will not call days, but rather years. Inertia prevents us from changing. For the first step it takes incredible effort. Difficult take the path, which will lead to a better life: after all, then you will have to leave your comfort zone (where it is calm, familiar or pleasant). My book will not give you strength. It’s all entirely up to you. But in the process of simple analysis and observation of yourself, with my help, you can launch positive changes.

We don't know how to change. Motivation, understanding and opportunity are different things. For example we have motivation lose weight, but no understanding And possibilities prepare special foods and stick to a diet. Or vice versa: we understand everything, we have the capabilities, but there is no motivation. At the heart of this book is the belief that all our behavior is shaped by our environment. And recognizing its power can have a significant impact not only on motivation, opportunity and understanding of change processes, but also on our belief that we are capable of it.

I clearly remember my first experience with behavior change as an adult. I was 26 years old, married to my first and only wife, Lida, and awaiting a PhD in organizational behavior from the University of California. I started going bald while I was in college, but I didn't want to admit it. Every morning I spent a few minutes in the bathroom in front of the mirror, trying to distribute the remaining side strands throughout my head. I combed my hair from the back of my head to my forehead, and then brought it down to the middle of my forehead, forming something like a laurel wreath. Then I would go out into the world with my weird comb-over, convinced that I looked normal, no different from the rest.

When I visited my hairdresser, I gave him specific instructions on how to cut my hair. One day I dozed off in his chair, and he cut my hair too short: the remaining hair was clearly not enough for my signature bouffant. I panicked and wore a hat for almost a month, waiting for my hair to grow. But one day, standing in front of the mirror and looking at my reflection, I said to myself: “You are bald. It's time to come to terms with this."

At that moment I decided to shave off the remnants of my former luxury and live bald. It wasn't a difficult decision and it didn't take much effort for me to make it. A haircut at the hairdresser - and that’s it. But in many ways, this decision remains the most important one of my adult life. It made me happy and helped me come to terms with my appearance.

I don’t know what exactly triggered my recognition of my new appearance. Perhaps I was intimidated by the prospect of daily procedure in front of the mirror. Or maybe I realized that I wouldn’t fool anyone with my hairstyle.

The reason is not important. The main achievement was that I decided to change and successfully implemented it. And it was not so easy. I have been struggling with the problem for years. It took me a long time to stop something that, on the scale of human quirks, falls somewhere between futility and idiocy. But for many years I persisted in my stupid behavior, unable to admit that I was bald, and lived by inertia: it seemed to me that it was easier to continue the usual procedure than to change something. But I had one advantage: I knew how to make the change. Unlike most changes—like losing weight, learning a new language, or acquiring a new skill—mine didn't require months of consistent practice and discipline. And no outside help was needed. All you had to do was stop giving your hairdresser stupid instructions and let him do his job. If only all changes were so simple.