Thought provoking

Ambiguity is the enemy. Any successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors. In short, to make a switch, you need to script the critical moves.

Once they’ve helped patients identify specific and vivid signs of progress, they pivot to a second question, which is perhaps even more important. It’s the Exception Question: “When was the last time you saw a little bit of the miracle, even just for a short time?”

Are you better off ordering your favorite food off a menu or something you have never had? Rozin had suggested to me it might depend on where you want your pleasure to occur: before, during, or after the meal. “The anticipated pleasure is greater if it’s your favorite food. You’ve had it, you’re familiar with it, you know what it’s like. The

What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.

You can see how easy it would be to turn an easy change problem (shrinking people’s buckets) into a hard change problem (convincing people to think differently). And that’s the first surprise about change: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the