Book review: SWITCH by Heath brothers - a positive way to change
📖Books
If you’ve been following my Twitter stream and my blog lately, you may have realized I’m on an audiobook frenzy right now… and last week I “read” two books this way, Rework by 37signals founders and now the Switch by Chip and Dan Heath:
I admit this book was really great. I a real eye-opener as to how people react to change and how to achieve change. Change in your family, business, environment, etc.
The basics - we have a rider and an elephant inside of us
“Rider” is the rational part of us and the big “elephant” is the emotional part of us. In order to provoke change, we need to do three things:
1. Direct the Rider… (convince rationale)
…by finding bright spots, scripting critical moves and pointing to the destination
2. Motivate the Elephant… (motivate feelings)
… by finding the feeling, shrinking the change and growing people
3. Shape the Path… (and get going)
… by tweaking the environment, building habits, rallying the herd and keeping the change going
There are lots of great real-world examples in the book showing how practically cause change… and these examples really spoke to me and helped me understand the book a lot better. However the real gem I found “reading” this book was this:
Focus on the good stuff - find the bright spots
While this was just a part of the first process, it was something people rarely think about. We just prefer to focus on the bad stuff, not the good stuff. We don’t see the A’s on the child’s school grades, we prefer to focus on the F’s. We prefer to shout and not to praise. It’s against our instincts… but yet it’s so powerful. Focus on the good stuff. When you do, more of it will happen.
Question: How do you change your habits? How do you change others? Do you tend to focus on the bad or on the good? Why on the bad? :-)