The Main Lesson from the book 'Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard'

            Have you ever struggled with changing your habits? Most of us have. But luckily, research can come into play in figuring out how to make the process less difficult than it might be otherwise. I found the premise of the book Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, particularly interesting. (Being one of four brothers, I was also pleased to see that the authors, Dan and Chip Heath, are brothers who have learned how to play nicely and write books together.)
            Basically the book Switch tells us that, to maximize the chances of motivating ourselves or other people to achieve a goal, we need to make that goal justifiable, desirable, and accessible. This process of mobilizing your audience (whether yourself, another person, a group of people) may involve, first, convincing your audience that a given outcome might be a good goal theoretically (reasons); second, motivating them to desire the theoretically reasonable goal, so that it becomes a personal goal that they want to work toward (desires); third, directing their attention to the concrete steps to the goal you have persuaded them to wish to seek out. If you have persuaded them effectively enough, supervision during implementation can be done with a light touch, because they will want to take those steps of their own accord; sometimes, perhaps, they will even have to be restrained from taking them too quickly. 
            The first two steps, convincing and motivating, constitute persuasion. But clearly, persuasion is not enough without direction. In the same way, direction is not enough to lead an audience to pursue a goal unless they are already persuaded of its value, whether by you or someone else. 
            For those who have read it already, the connection of this description to the metaphor used in the book is that reason is the rider you must convince, desire is the elephant you must motivate, and the steps to success are the path you must direct reason and desire to follow.
            Though there are no silver bullets or magic potions for the difficult process of losing twenty pounds or getting a better job, persuasion and direction can help you direct the intelligence, desires, and skills you already have to better outcomes. Knowing what habits you need to change (reason), why you want to change them (desire), and how to change them over time (direction) are the first steps. 
            Feel free to email me at wilson_zach(at)yahoo.com, or comment below. What tips and books on change have you found most helpful? In the meantime, keep fighting the good fight. Or, as the Heath brothers might say, keep riding that elephant!