Part I: The Science of Personal Success
When people can’t change, it’s rarely because they lack the will. It’s usually because they’re blind and outnumbered: They’re blind to all but one or two of the six sources of influence that make them do what they do. And there are far more invisible sources of influence working against them than there are visible sources acting in their favor. Our research shows that people who learn to see and use all six sources of influence are ten times more likely to create profound, rapid, and lasting change in their lives and the lives of others.
Be the Scientist and the Subject
Change happens when we stop looking for off-the-shelf answers to our one-of-a-kind challenges. You are unique. The change plan that will work for you is unique. In order to find it, you’ll have to be both the scientist and the subject of your unique experiment. When you take on this mind-set, even bad days become good data. You become progressively smarter at influencing yourself until you evolve a plan that works perfectly for your subject: you.
Part II: The Six Sources of Influence
If you are ever to succeed at changing–and staying changed–you’ll have to learn to disarm your impulses and make the right choices pleasurable. The only way you can sustain change is to change what brings you pleasure. How do we learn to change our likes?
If change is taking too much will, it’s probably because you lack skill. When change seems hard, we blame our character, but our character is usually not to blame. We are blind to the crucial role skills play in creating and sustaining change. The problem is not that you’re weak–it may be that you’re ignorant. There’s a difference! Ignorance can be fixed–and surprisingly quickly. With just a few weeks of deliberate practice, you can master skills that make change easy and permanent.
Sources 3 and 4: Turn Accomplices into Friends
Bad (and good) habits are a team sport– they require lots of accomplices to start and sustain. Few people have any idea how many others are involved in undermining their efforts to change through encouraging and enabling bad choices. If you want to change your behavior, you’ll have to turn a few accomplices into friends. More often than not, the transformation can happen with a single crucial conversation. Eliminate a few accomplices and add as few as two new friends to your influence strategy, and your odds of success increase as much as 40 percent.
Bad habits are often surprisingly cheap–in the short term. Also, human beings value pleasure today much more than they fear punishment tomorrow. You can use your own irrationality in a positive way by inverting this economy. Surprisingly, you can reverse incentives by bribing yourself to change–and it works! You can also reverse costs by raising the price of bad behavior. Research shows that you can dramatically change your own behavior by putting a bit of skin in the game.
We’re blind to the hundreds of ways our environment controls us. Our surroundings powerfully control what we think, how we feel, and how we act. If you want to take control of your life, you have to take control of your surroundings. Learn to use distance, cues, and tools in your favor, and you enlist the environment as a powerful, constant, and sleepless ally.
Part III: How to Change Anything
Skillful Changers have created vital behaviors and engaged all six sources of influence to dramatically improve results with colleagues and loved ones and in themselves. Learn how real people have integrated all of the strategies and tactics of the new science of personal success into an effective change plan in achieving career success, weight loss, financial fitness, addiction recovery, or relationship renewal.
Career: How to Get Unstuck at Work
Weight Loss: How to Lose Weight and Get Fit—and Stay That Way
Financial Fitness: How to Get—and Live—Out of Debt
Addiction: How to Take Back Your Life
Relationships: How to Change Us by Changing Me
Conclusion: How to Change the World