Top Highlights

• many of them lamented how long it took them to succeed in their change. Our Changers tenaciously stumbled their way into success in the way anyone who succeeds will have to. What you’ll learn in this book, however, is that with a little more study, you can do a lot less stumbling.
• When you understand the science behind their success, you can be much more deliberate in your attempts and efficient in your progress.
• Either way, when explaining why we do what we do, we see, think about, and eventually blame or give credit to one thing—our willpower.
• When people believe that their ability to make good choices stems from nothing more than their willpower—and that willpower is a quality they’re either born with or they’re not—they eventually stop trying altogether.
• The willpower trap keeps them in a depressing cycle that begins with heroic commitment to change, which is followed by eroding motivation and terminated inevitably by relapse into old habits. Then, when the built-up pain of their bad habits becomes intolerable, they muster up another heroic but doomed attempt at change. We