Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success!

Dr. Hashim AlZain

24 min readAug 15, 2020

Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success!

By Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

Why Change Anything?

If you’re like most people, you feel stuck in one area of your life and can’t seem to find-out how to get out of the bottomless pit you’ve fallen into. If you’re like most people, you’ve tried several promising strategies, but continue to remain trapped and discouraged, despite all your efforts. Yet, you still want to change, but feel frustrated about not knowing how! Perhaps you’d like to stop a bad habit, start exercising regularly, qualify for a promotion, or start your own business. The problem is that most of us falsely believe that we’re stuck in a rut because we don’t have enough Willpower to trigger change!

Allow me to break the news to you: there are many Sources of Influence that are working against you without you even realizing it! In other words, it’s not that you don’t have enough Willpower, rather, you’re simply outnumbered by different Sources of Influence that are working against you & all you can see is the finite resource of Willpower, which has nothing to do with why you feel stuck!

The Willpower Trap

When you want to make a Change but fail along the way, for some odd reason, the first thing you tend to blame is your lack of Willpower! However, this view is tragically wrong because it is incomplete, and it gives you nowhere to go when you fail to Change. To overcome this vicious cycle of the Willpower trap, you need to find the motivation to manifest the Change you desire, then stick to whatever plan you decide on pursuing, and then return back to the bad habits you want to get rid of and monitor your progress.

In your attempt to Change for the better, you must be aware of the hidden forces that are acting against you, which go beyond your lack of Willpower. As we will discover, there are Six Sources of Influence that are potentially working against you! You must realize that you’re being blind by those Influences because once you start seeing them, you stand a better chance at Changing them!

Just for the sake of argument, suppose that Willpower isn’t the answer that you’re seeking to help you Change into the person you aspire to be, so what else could be working against you? Suppose that the real key to Changing your life has nothing to do with Willpower at all?

To Change anything, you need to understand the power of Influence on both yourself & others! Influence is about Changing of hearts, minds, and behavior that produce meaningful & impactful results. The truth of the matter is that there are Six Sources of Influence that affect your daily decisions. This book explains what these Six Sources of Influence are and how they can work for or against you in order to help you achieve your goals. By learning how these Six Sources of Influence apply to your life, you can put these forces to good use in a positive way that brings impactful results.

Study “YOU”: Become the Scientist & The Subject

Accept the fact that nobody really cares about you, and nobody is going to take the time to “Study” you! That’s why you need to discover what motivates you to stay on track and you also need to know what causes you to stumble over the bumps in your path towards reaching your goals. People who successfully implement a long-term Change plan use a semi-scientific process of trial-and-error to identify what techniques help them modify their own habits. As a result, people must realize that purposeful experimentation that they conduct on themselves is one of the keys to developing an effective personal Change plan with lasting effect. In essence, it’s necessary for people to become Social Scientists, and to use themselves as the research subject.

There are four scientific strategies that can help you in your Change Plan:

Identify Crucial Moments: There are few situations where you are most vulnerable, where you feel at risk of falling back into your old bad habits and behaviors. To identify these Crucial Moments that create your greatest temptations, it’s prudent to evaluate whether they occur at certain times and places, around certain people, or when particular physical or emotional triggers occur.
Create Vital Behaviors: These are rules that you define for yourself in order to follow when Crucial Moments occur, and you know that you’re most vulnerable. When you establish rules before facing a Challenge, you’re more likely to Change your behavior when temptations arise. Crucial Moments indicate when you’re at risk, whereas Vital Behaviors indicate what should be done in that moment.
Engage All Six Sources of Influence: It’s important to develop a Change Plan that incorporates all Six Sources of Influence, which I’ll explain later in this article in due course. This is a proven way that I’ve been using over the last 10-years to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.
Turn Bad Days into Good Data: It’s inevitable that you’ll give-into temptations during your Crucial Moments. However, a differentiating factor that can set you apart from the rest of the crowd is how you respond to these situations. When you fall victim to moments of temptations, you’re likely to follow a certain pattern of bad habits. However, when you respond to bad habits with curiosity; you become able to take a step back, learn from what had happened, and modify your plan accordingly.

Take the time to examine when & where you currently give into urges and feel weak. In response to these moments of weakness, your plan needs to consist of what you will do during your Crucial Moments to resist, eliminate, or transform your urges at these moments. Then when you implement your plan (whatever it may be), observe the results, make changes to the plan, and repeat the process as needed until you reach the level that satisfies you. As you start to embark on your Change Plan, you’ll start noticing the emergence of Six different interrelated Sources of Influence…

These Six Sources of Influence will dovetail nicely into your “Change Plan” that we will explain later on in further detail. As a prequel to your “Change Plan”, here are the Six Sources of Influence that you need to be aware of:

Personal Motivation: Finding-out what your triggers are by examining your own behavior, just like a scientist. During the process, you’ll learn how to start transforming and redirect your impulses & subconscious thoughts into new Choices that start bringing you pleasure and a glimmer of the impact you want to achieve. Although personal impulses can be very tempting, it’s possible to interrupt these urges by connecting with your personal goals during these Crucial Moments that you need to clearly define beforehand.
Personal Ability: To change anything, you need a set of skills to manifest that Change. These skills are very rarely taught in school and are necessary to change bad habits into good ones, which can happen when you enhance your Personal Abilities and learn new skills.
Social Motivation: There is a clear social component to bad habits that most people overlook. When friends encourage bad behavior, this becomes very difficult to resist. If you can transform “Accomplices” into “Friends” who encourage good behavior, you’re more likely to have lasting Changes in your habits. You may need to muster the courage to change these Accomplices of your bad behavior into the Friends who will support your new desired behaviors.
Social Ability: To have a lasting Change plan, you might need to consider a social support group. People who usually get a qualified and licensed life coach or an experience mentor are often more successful at changing their behaviors.
Structural Motivation: When you connect short-term rewards (instant gratification) or punishments with newly formed habits, you stand a better chance at adopting new desirable habits. Instant gratification is a behavior that you’ll have to reverse by creating a higher present “Cost” to the bad behavior you’re trying to get rid of and make the deferred gratification more desirable by rewarding yourself for the behavior that you want to create.
Structural Ability: As crazy as it may sound, minor environmental changes can have a significant effect on your choices. You can experience faster behavioral changes when you include visual cues in your environment to help you focus on your goals. Until you recognize these environmental levers, they will continue to control you.

Now, let’s go a layer deeper into the Six Sources of Influence…

The Change Anything Model is about Changing behavior to achieve measurable results, and you can Change behavior by Changing what Motivates you and your Ability to navigate across personal, social, and structural aspects. The beauty about this model is that it scales-up & down from personal lifestyle Changes, such as losing weight, to global Changes, such as eliminating diseases. I really like this model because it’s simple and addresses the problems that we struggle with on daily basis; especially when Change seems impossible! The trick is knowing how to use all Six Sources of Influence in moderation & in combination by developing the right mix that is suited for you & only you!

Most Change efforts fail because they look at only one Source of Influence or they don’t focus on Vital Behaviors. That’s because Vital Behaviors gets to the specifics of what actions you need to take in order for you to produce exponential results. Change efforts fail most of the time because they don’t identify Crucial Moments; especially when your Willpower is at its lowest level.

3 Steps Towards Change

When you understand what’s influencing your decisions and you have a model that can guide your effort, you can dramatically improve your effectiveness! The prequel to Changing Anything is developing the required Skills to make Change possible! While the Change Model is simple, the challenge is knowing how to put it all into practice because Change is a life-long quest!

Here are the three steps that you need to consider as you embark on exploring the process of positive Change in your life:

Step 1: Clarify Measurable Results
Step 2: Find Vital Behaviors
Step 3: Use the Six Sources of Influence

Now, we will delve into each of the three steps in further detail…

Step 1: Clarify Measurable Results

Don’t waste your time on how to create Change until you’ve clarified what you want, why you want it, and when you want it!

An effective Change plan includes the following elements:

Specific & Measurable: Make sure that your plan is quantitative and not qualitative, and just because you can’t measure it doesn’t mean that it’s immeasurable.
What you Really Want: The outcome or impact that you desire the most based on the contributions you’ve put forth.
Time Bound: Requires completion date or simply a line in the sand to gauge your level of performance.

Step 2: Find Vital Behaviors

Mastering your Vital Behaviors exponentially improves your results! That’s because if Crucial Moments tell you when it’s time to act, Vital Behaviors tell you exactly what to do and how to do it! Vital Behavior tends to stop self-defeating bad behaviors because they often start a chain-reaction that leads to good results.

Here are three strategies to identify high-leverage behaviors:

Strategy 1: Insist on vital behaviors that you notice about yourself because it tells you exactly what to do & how to do it in order to get more or less of what you want.
Strategy 2: Identifying Crucial Moments is vital to any change plan because you’ll get to learn more about yourself because it tells you when it’s time to act and when it’s time to run. When mastering your behaviors during Crucial Moments, the right behavior would lead you to the results that you want.
Strategy 3: Study positive deviance from the greats before you, who’ve succeeded where most others have failed. Avoid reinventing the wheel.

Step 3: Six Sources of Influence

Instead of just looking at one source for influence, explore all six sources of influence in moderation and combination. People who align themselves with the following Six Sources of Influence are more likely to achieve personal success. I speak from experience when I say that the principles shared in this book really work in a practical sense because you get to create your own alchemy of Change by mixing and matching between the Six Sources of Influence that we’re about to unfold.

We will address each of the Six Sources of Influence separately & suggest different Tactics for each of the Six Sources to provide you with additional tools that would help you in your Change plan!

Source 1: Personal Motivation — Love What You Hate

What do you really want to achieve or avoid with your behavior?

One of the hardest things when changing your behavior is the fact that the things that you need to do are often boring, tedious, or uncomfortable at best. That’s why we often put them off until tomorrow or we never start them in the first place. However, by facing these things, you can turn your future-self into a positive force for Change that can influence your actions today. Although personal impulses can be compelling, it is possible to interrupt these impulses by connecting with personal goals during crucial moments. We need to start finding that passion and drive to start loving the things we hate, but how? More importantly, why should anyone strive to love what they hate?

Here are some Tactics for you to consider when trying to develop skills that would help you Love What You Hate:

Visit your Default Future: Try to visit someone or someplace that is close to where you want your future to be.
Tell The Whole Vivid Story: Write-down specific descriptive words on your phone, notepad, or voice note that will describe where you are going to gauge where you stand and where you’re heading.
Use Value Words: Find some key words that will help motivate you on your journey of Change. That’s because these words should make you feel good about yourself and how Change is going to have a positive impact on your life.
Make it a Game: Why suffer through your Change Plan, make achieving your goals fun! Make time your friend and set benchmarks along the way and involve your support group to help motivate you on your journey of self-discovery.
Create a Personal Motivation Statement: I can’t emphasize how crucial this tactic is because I use it all the time; especially when I’m down on my luck or depressed. I call it my “Why Statement”, where I have one created for me personally and another for my company because I see it as an extension of who I am. I urge you to create a Motivational Statement to help you through hard times and to remind yourself with why you are doing what you are doing in the first place.

Source 2: Personal Ability — Do What You Can’t

What do you need to learn & what skills do you need to acquire?

When it comes to personal Change, skills & knowledge are just as important as Willpower because building skills will equip you with what you need to support your personal Change initiatives. Skill development is a proven way to change bad habits into good ones. Many of our problems stem from our lack of knowledge in certain areas of our lives. So, by just gaining knowledge in areas that we struggle in can help us win those battles because when we learn how to do what we previously couldn’t, Change becomes faster and a whole lot easier.

Here are some Tactics for you to consider when trying to develop skills that would help you Do What You Can’t:

Start with a Skill Scan: It’s important to assess which skills you already have and which skills you need to acquire in order to have a successful Change Plan. Find out what you know and what you don’t know and bridge that gap.
Employ Deliberate Practice: Develop a clear plan to learn the skills that would take you from Here to There by first breaking the skills into smaller pieces and practice implementing these pieces in short intervals. Then try getting immediate feedback and evaluate your progress accordingly. Mind you that you need to prepare yourself for setbacks because this isn’t exactly a walk-in-the-park and acquiring new skills is not an easy process, but it can be done if you want it bad enough.
Learn the Will Skill: Learning how to say NO is a difficult skill; especially when temptations are all around you. Distracting yourself is a good first step when temptations arise. In order for you to develop an effective “Will Skill”, you need to place yourself in those tempting situations, BUT only after you’ve developed a plan that will help you exercise the “Will” to resist your temptations.

Source 3: Social Motivation — Turn Accomplices into Friends

Do you have support from friends and family for your desired behavior?

It’s possible to make peer pressure a positive force for making behavioral Changes. That’s because social influence play a major role in how you interact with others and how people have a strong influence on your life. We often get stuck in a rut because others around us are in the same position, and it’s easy to fall into our old habits when our friends are in the same boat as we are. Finding a way to have peer pressure work for you and not against you is how social interactions can help you achieve your goals. When you can clearly see the difference between a “Friend” & an “Accomplice”, you’ll start taking decisive action towards transforming Accomplices into Friends, where you’re no longer blinded & outnumbered by the invisible forces that are working against you. Rally the crowd behind you, and you can change anything you set your heart on!

Here are some Tactics for you to consider when trying to develop skills that would help you Turn Accomplices into Friends:

Know Who’s a Friend & Who’s an Accomplice: Often times, Accomplices hold us back by establishing a view about “Normal” that keeps us stuck in our bad habits. Friends, on the other hand, are those people that coach us through our Change and cheer us up when we are victorious. We need more Friends than Accomplices in our life to help us reach our goals.
Redefine “Normal”: Pay close attention to what is perceived as “Normal” in your life according to your Accomplices. This “Normal” can be very dangerous because it prevents you from achieving your goals. You need to stop measuring yourself against unhealthy “Norms.”
Hold a Transformation Conversation: Try to position your Friends to help you achieve your desired goals by having a candid Transformation Conversation with them to inform them about the Change that you want in your life. Also, share with them how you would like them to help you on your new journey, so that they could “Nudge” you in the straight-and-narrow path whenever you get derailed.
Add New Friends: Fine new people who could help you create a new healthy “Normal” behavior in your life. These people will be interested in supporting you on your Change journey and give you encouragement along the way.
Distance Yourself from the Unwilling: Consider trying to distance yourself from the people in your life who’re not supportive of your new Change Plan or who make it difficult to live the new way you want to live. There are times when you deliberately need to distance yourself from these toxic people who could sabotage your new Change Plan.

Source 4: Social Ability — Turn Accomplices into Friends

Whom can you enlist to provide the help, information, and resources that you require to support your desired behavior?

This Source of Influence is very much intertwined with Source 3, and they work hand-in-hand. To change longstanding bad habits, people usually need support from other people around them. So, would you classify your social group as being more of Accomplices to bad behaviour or Friends who model the behavior you want to acquire? Are other people encouraging the right behavior & discouraging the wrong behavior? There is a clear social component to bad habits because when friends encourage bad behavior and engage in it, it’s extremely difficult to resist. If individuals can transform “Accomplices” into “Friends” who encourage good behavior, they are more likely to Change their bad habits into good ones. In fact, those who get themselves a licensed and experienced life coach or a qualified mentor become more successful at Changing their behavior.

Source 5: Structural Motivation — Invert the Economy

What things can you use to support your desired behavior? In what ways are rewards, promotions, performance reviews, perks, or costs encouraging the right behaviors & discouraging the wrong behavior?

One effective way to Change habits is to Invert the Economy by creating penalties for engaging in unhealthy behaviors. In other words, you should strive to making it expensive to engage in bad behaviors and rewarding to adapt good behavior. People who connect short-term rewards or punishments to new habits are usually more likely to adopt new desirable habits.

Here are some Tactics for you to consider when trying to develop skills that would help you Invert the Economy:

Use Carrots-and-Sticks: Reward yourself for a job well done by make short term goals for yourself and set a prize, “Carrot”, for that goal, which will make the journey a lot more attainable & enjoyable. If you attach these prizes, “Carrots”, with the threat of losing them, it even makes them more likely to achieve. People hate losing money or opportunities, where they will prevent this loss as much as possible.
Use Incentives in Moderation & in Combination: This could be done by making incentives small and intermittent because over-the-top incentives will eventually backfire because they do not last for the long haul. It’s also important to use these incentives in combination with personal and social motivators too.
Reward Small Wins: Try to break your end-goal into smaller intervals (Milestones). Make sure that every time you get to one of those Milestones that you reward yourself, and remember to reward what you do, NOT what you achieve (Effort vs. Results to avoid disappointments!)

Source 6: Structural Ability — Control Your Space

What would you like to see around you in your environment that would support your desired behavior? Are there enough cues to stay on course? Does the environment (tools, facility, and proximity to others) enable the right behaviors or discourage the wrong behaviors?

The physical world around you, such as, the design of your home, office, and vehicle, affect your behavior in ways that are often hard to detect because they’re invisible, where they quietly influence your decisions. Research has found that minor environmental changes can have a significant effect on a person’s choices. How you organize & construct your physical space has a major impact on the bad habits and goals. That’s why you need to outfit your home & overall environment in ways that prevents you from falling prey to bad habits. You need to change your old patterns to help you become successful in your new pattern of life. You could experience faster behavioral changes when you add Visual Cues to help you focus on your endgame goals.

Here are some Tactics for you to consider when trying to develop skills that would help you Control your Space:

Build Fences: It’s important to create boundaries to help reduce things that are hindering you from reaching your goals. Forming rules and guidelines regarding old patterns will help keep you on the path towards positive Change. Make sure that you’re the one creating these fences and not a family member or friend to prevent relapse or resistance.
Manage Distance: Proximity matters, whether it’s being close to the “Candy” or being far from it. You want to make sure that you’re within close proximity to the things that will help you realize your Change Plan and distance yourself from the things that temp you.
Change Cues: Visual cues play a major role in our lives, where we could fall victims to flashy advertising gimmicks. Since Visual Cues play such a big role in our day-to-day activities, we should use them to our advantage. Hang-up posters or pictures that are going to prime you to achieve your goals. Creating new cues is a powerful way to take charge of the space you live in, so switch old cues with new ones to organically adjust your behavior, and consequently, your habits.
Engage your Autopilot: We’re all creatures of habit, where when something is stuck in our brains; it just stays there inevitably. You need to use your “Autopilot” feature to your advantage by automating the things that would trigger your desired behavior and prevent you from thinking.
Use Tools: The tools that make our lives easier today have also made it easy to fall in patterns that are less favorable. These tools are not going away anytime soon, so you need to make them work in your favor, so use electronic devices & the internet to help keep you on the straight-and-narrow path towards Change.

How to Change Anything

Every time you try your best to do what you know is right and fail, there’s a good chance that your failure can be traced back to a Gap in Knowledge & missing Skills! Knowledge & Skills can be just as important as your Willpower in any personal Change Plan. That’s why it’s important that you study “You” because nobody would care about you more than yourself!

Top performers demonstrate three Vital Behaviors:

Focus on the technical aspects of the job and work hard at mastering the Skills required to get the job done right.
Contribute to tasks that are key to the overall success of the organization, tribe, or social group that you’re affiliated with.
Develop a reputation for helping others by solving their problems.

To succeed at work and in life, you must tailor these three Vital Behaviors to your own circumstances.

If you want to Change your World, consider the following three simple steps:

Just Do It — Act Small & Act Now: Start with one Source of Influence today because there is a very likely chance that you’re already doing some of the strategies listed in this book without you even realizing it.
Record It — Monitor & Record your Progress: Writing your progress down on your smartphone, tablet, or any other old school method is an easy way to hold yourself accountable and be proud of your progress.
Imagine It — Apply the Use of Your Creativity: Just imagine how your world would be like if you’ve succeeded at Changing the things you want to Change. You need to think big & Act NOW!

Change Anything has been a useful & practical way to apply Change in my own life, where I’ve read this book five times and still continue to find ways where I can implement more improvements in my life. I’ve found that I could relate to the examples shared in this book, where many of the strategies are very practical & applicable to start making Changes right away!

Looking at implementing all Six Sources of Influence at the same time could be a daunting & overwhelming task; especially at the very beginning of your Change Plan, that’s why I recommend starting small. Slowly but surely, you’ll start gaining momentum and the scale of your Change Plan will start growing organically and people around you will start to take notice. Most importantly, have fun while implementing your Change Plan because it’ll be the best journey you’ve ever embark on: The Journey of Discovering YOU!

Takeaways

We all have big plans to change aspects of our lives, however, when we’re asked when we will start, our response is usually tomorrow!
Change is hard & it’s difficult to give-up what feels comfortable to us today.
When we have a choice between enjoying things now or paying for those choices later-on, we tend to only think about the here-and-now and indulge ourselves in what makes us happy now!
One of the greatest challenges you’ll face when wanting to change your behavior is the fact that the things that people should do are often tedious & uncomfortable.
When it comes to personal change plans, skills & knowledge are just as important as willpower.
It’s possible to make peer pressure a positive force for making behavioral changes.
One effective way to changing your bad habits to good ones is to invert the economy & create financial penalties for engaging in unhealthy behaviors.
The physical world affects your behavior in ways that are often hard to detect because they’re invisible to you.
Know what’s influence: Influence is the ability to change your own behavior or the behavior of others.
Know the difference between influence & persuasion: When short-term isn’t enough, you need influence. Persuasion is short-term, while influence is about long-term impact. Persuasion often involves getting verbal agreement or support, while influence requires changing hearts & minds that would lead to action.
Know why most change efforts fail: Most change efforts fail because we have unrealistic expectations & we look at one simple solution.
Know how unrealistic expectations get in the way: It’s not realistic to expect that people will change even when the consequences for not changing are enormous, everyone knows the consequences, and the change required is simple, so you have to search for what motivates people into action.
Know what motivates people: The mistake that you could make is assuming that people do things for only one reason.
It’s not one simple solution: Profound problems persist because we look for one simple solution, and there’s rarely one cause. Analyze the Six Sources of Influence in combination to diagnose the problem. You can influence persistent & resistant behaviors when you know the forces driving them.
Use multiple strategies in combination: Overwhelm the problem with resources, so if you want to improve your success by 10x, then use 4 or more high-leverage behavioral tactics.
Identify effective results: Effective results are specific & measurable, they matter, and they’re time bound.
Insist on vital behavior: Vital behaviors are specific actions that dramatically influence your results, so focus on vital behaviors with cascading impact.
Identify crucial moments: Crucial moments tell you when it’s time to act.
Study positive deviance: Study those who have succeeded before you, where most others have failed.
Diagnose why change seems impossible: Your world is perfectly organized to create the behavior you’re currently experiencing, so when change seems impossible, use the Six Sources of Influence in combination to find the conspiracy of causes.