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A review by mzdeb
Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts--Becoming the Person You Want to Be by Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter
4.0
This book adds to the call for self-awareness--something that a large number of people still don’t have, which surprises those who do. Nevertheless, even those with such meta-awareness could use reminders, and at times must find new ways to reword concepts to keep them fresh in their minds. Goldsmith’s book does in fact achieve this goal. It’s easy to go from place to place--your home to the highway to your job, then back again with other stops along the way--and lose track of how your thoughts and feelings change, why they change, and what the outcomes from those changes are. There is much food for thought here.
Still, the subtitle: “Creating Behavior That Lasts; Becoming the Person You Want to Be,” makes the book sound more personal than it is. Your local library might still stick it in the 150s (self-help), but there’s enough reference to corporations and CEOs to throw one off and make you wonder whether it should go in the 650s. Maybe it’s my coming from a working-class background, currently working two part-time jobs, that raises my hackles. It is mostly upper-middle class, full-time white collar professionals who can be allowed these indulgences. Most don’t have the luxury of pondering AIWATT--”Am I Willing At This Time to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic?”-- while waiting tables or scrubbing toilets. Their bosses or parent corporations, yes; them, no. This, coincidentally, leads to one of Goldsmith’s concepts of “Ego Depletion”--ego strength depleted throughout the day by constant self-regulation of one’s thoughts and actions. The CEO has the luxury to address things that deplete him (like delegating tasks so there’s less to worry about) and reconfigure his environment; the wage slave does not. It’s what leads people to openly mock the fast-food worker who makes minimum wage yet goes out and buys $10 packs of cigarettes. It’s not necessarily that the former’s over-confident in their willpower (Trigger #2), but that he/she is not as depleted as the latter and can’t put themselves in the other’s shoes and appreciate that.
Speaking of which--I agree that this book still depends on the concept of willpower. Since one of the tenets of the book is that structure is what helps us take control of our environment, hopefully leading to less ego depletion that are just waiting for the right triggers to come along to make bad decisions, then the right amount of structure (hint: A LOT) with constant awareness of one’s actions and goals in any given moment should do the trick. I know the book says we have a choice in not doing what it outlines, but then if the book’s not compelling us over and over again to do what’s on its pages, it wouldn’t have done its job now, would it? Yet I feel the need to address that there will be people who will never do these recommendations, and that’s because, whether it’s psychological or biochemical, their ego depletion will always be fast and swift. I’m really not offering this an excuse--but for these individuals it’s like they’re a quadriplegic being told that with the right environment and structure, they should be able to do a triathalon. (If someone has done this, please tell me.) I know this book is not meant to address that, but I’m just putting it out there.
Still--as I happen to have my own personal copy (keeping a damaged library copy after I replaced theirs with a new one), I will be going back and breaking out the highlighter.
Still, the subtitle: “Creating Behavior That Lasts; Becoming the Person You Want to Be,” makes the book sound more personal than it is. Your local library might still stick it in the 150s (self-help), but there’s enough reference to corporations and CEOs to throw one off and make you wonder whether it should go in the 650s. Maybe it’s my coming from a working-class background, currently working two part-time jobs, that raises my hackles. It is mostly upper-middle class, full-time white collar professionals who can be allowed these indulgences. Most don’t have the luxury of pondering AIWATT--”Am I Willing At This Time to make the investment required to make a positive difference on this topic?”-- while waiting tables or scrubbing toilets. Their bosses or parent corporations, yes; them, no. This, coincidentally, leads to one of Goldsmith’s concepts of “Ego Depletion”--ego strength depleted throughout the day by constant self-regulation of one’s thoughts and actions. The CEO has the luxury to address things that deplete him (like delegating tasks so there’s less to worry about) and reconfigure his environment; the wage slave does not. It’s what leads people to openly mock the fast-food worker who makes minimum wage yet goes out and buys $10 packs of cigarettes. It’s not necessarily that the former’s over-confident in their willpower (Trigger #2), but that he/she is not as depleted as the latter and can’t put themselves in the other’s shoes and appreciate that.
Speaking of which--I agree that this book still depends on the concept of willpower. Since one of the tenets of the book is that structure is what helps us take control of our environment, hopefully leading to less ego depletion that are just waiting for the right triggers to come along to make bad decisions, then the right amount of structure (hint: A LOT) with constant awareness of one’s actions and goals in any given moment should do the trick. I know the book says we have a choice in not doing what it outlines, but then if the book’s not compelling us over and over again to do what’s on its pages, it wouldn’t have done its job now, would it? Yet I feel the need to address that there will be people who will never do these recommendations, and that’s because, whether it’s psychological or biochemical, their ego depletion will always be fast and swift. I’m really not offering this an excuse--but for these individuals it’s like they’re a quadriplegic being told that with the right environment and structure, they should be able to do a triathalon. (If someone has done this, please tell me.) I know this book is not meant to address that, but I’m just putting it out there.
Still--as I happen to have my own personal copy (keeping a damaged library copy after I replaced theirs with a new one), I will be going back and breaking out the highlighter.