Quotes About Change

The only natural law I've witnessed in three decades of observing successful people's efforts to become more successful is this: People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.

Peter Drucker famously said, "Half the leaders I have met don't need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.

Excusing our momentary lapses as an outlier event triggers a self-indulgent inconsistency—which is fatal for change.

Understanding the past is perfectly admissible if your issue is accepting the past. But if your issue is changing the future, understanding will not take you there.

You can continue doing what you're doing for a long time. But you'll never become the person you want to be.

We can't admit that we need to change—either because we're unaware that a change is desirable, or, more likely, we're aware but have reasoned our way into elaborate excuses that deny our need for change.

We also cling to the past as a way of contrasting it with the present—usually to highlight something positive about ourselves at the expense of someone else. Do you ever find yourself beginning a long self-serving story with the phrase, "When I was your age . . ."?

It takes extraordinary effort to stop doing something in our comfort zone (because it's painless or familiar or mildly pleasurable) in order to start something difficult that will be good for us in the long run.

Everyone around you has to recognize that you're changing. Relying on other people increases the degree of difficulty exponentially.

where there is no system for honoring the avoidance of a bad decision or the cessation of bad behavior. Our performance reviews are solely based on what we've done, what numbers we've delivered, what increases we have posted against last year's results. Even the seemingly minor personal goals are couched in terms of actions we've initiated, not behavior we have stopped. We get credit for being punctual, not for stopping our lateness.

The pain that comes with regret should be mandatory, not something to be shooed away like an annoying pet. When we make bad choices and fail ourselves or hurt the people we love, we should feel pain. That pain can be motivating and in the best sense, triggering—a reminder that maybe we messed up but we can do better. It's one of the most powerful feelings guiding us to change.

If we're satisfied with our life—not necessarily happy or delighted that we've exceeded our wildest expectations, just satisfied—we yield to inertia. We continue doing what we've always done.

Your people are changing constantly and it's right in front of your eyes. If you don't change accordingly, you may as well be managing with your eyes wide shut. That's the most unforgivable prejudice of all.

Narcotized by technology, we sacrifice long-term purpose and fulfillment for the short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops created by Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. This is not healthy. As with the pace of change, I don't see a horizon where this societal problem slows down because a majority of us suddenly stop using social media's irresistible tools. Only we can control how profoundly we allow vicarious living to infect our life, one individual at a time.

If I change I am "inauthentic." Many of us have a misguided belief that how we behave today not only defines us but represents our fixed and constant selves, the authentic us forever. If we change, we are somehow not being true to who we really are. This belief triggers stubbornness. We refuse to adapt our behavior to new situations because "it isn't me.

Mike thought a minute, and then said, "I'm going to change, and the reason I'm going to change has nothing to do with money and it has nothing to do with this firm. I'm going to change because I have two sons, and if they were receiving this same feedback from you in twenty years, I'd be ashamed.

We do not appreciate inertia's power over us. Given the choice, we prefer to do nothing

Understanding the past is perfectly admissible if your issue is accepting the past. But if your issue is changing the future, understanding will not take you there. My experience tells me that the only effective approach is looking people in the eye and saying, "If you want to change, do this.

Apology is where behavioral change begins.

We can always get better at something, even if it's just preserving the progress we've made. I

Not all of us require a violent life-threatening knock on the head to change our behavior. It only seems that way.

It's hard to help people who don't think they have a problem. It's impossible to fix people who think someone else is the problem.

a changing environment changes us. The

Marshall Goldsmith