Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Gollwitzer says that, in essence, what action triggers do is create an “instant habit.”

Solutions-focused therapists, in contrast, couldn’t care less about archaeology. They don’t dig around for clues about why you act the way you do. They don’t care about your childhood. All they care about is the solution to the problem at hand.

If you want people to change, you don’t ask them to “act healthier.” You say, “Next time you’re in the dairy aisle of the grocery store, reach for a jug of 1% milk instead of whole milk.”

The most important lesson we can learn from Kazdin and the animal trainers is this: Change isn’t an event; it’s a process.

This is a book to help you change things. We consider change at every level—individual, organizational, and societal.

Researchers who study social movements call situations like these “free spaces”—small-scale meetings where reformers can gather and ready themselves for collective action without being observed by members of the dominant group. Free spaces often play a critical role in facilitating social change.

One way to motivate action, then, is to make people feel as though they’re already closer to the finish line than they might have thought.

what looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.

We’ve seen the importance of pursuing bright spots, and we’ve discussed ways of instructing the Rider how to behave, but we haven’t answered a very basic question: Where are we headed in the end? What’s the destination? Crystal Jones provided a great destination postcard: You’ll be third graders soon! Notice that the goal she set for her students d

SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.