Don’t get triggered, this book has nothing to do with that. Instead, Triggers is about identifying the behavioral queues in your environment and then learning how to handle them. Fortunately, it goes quite far beyond just triggers and spends a long time on self reflection and asking yourself specific questions to help with improving your life.
I came across this book by listening to an old episode of a podcast called Cortex. The hosts were doing a book club of their own and their reviews came back quite positive whereas they had often dumped on other business or self-help books. In fact, this might be the first self-help style book that actually got a positive review from both hosts. I took it as a sign to give Triggers a try.
I too thought the book was pretty good. One thing that sets this book apart is who it’s coming from. The author, Marshall Goldsmith, is a leadership coach who has worked with a ton of high powered CEOs and other business leaders. With most self-help authors, their crowning achievement seems to be writing a successful book, but I don’t get that impression here. Goldsmith seems like someone who has walked the walk for many years and is now passing on his earned wisdom.
As is common in these types of books, it does spend a decent amount of time trying to convince you why their methods work rather than just telling you what to do. However, this book has believable anecdotes unlike a lot of its book peers who seem to be making things up to build a narrative. It feels grounded and not just theoretical which comes from a place of actually working with a lot of people in the business world and seeing what works.
There’s plenty of “common sense” advice in the book, but that’s almost the point. There’s no real magic and Goldsmith even says it near the beginning that it should mostly sound like common sense. Yet, breaking through that resistance to common sense is key and he’s got a few methods to help, like giving yourself a daily test to keep on track. You even get to write your own questions and the format is pretty interesting. The format for the questions is “Did I do my best to _____” That simple phrasing puts you in command. It tells you that the world is not acting on you, you are acting within it.
It also emphasizes effort, not results. If you’re familiar with Dweck’s work on Mindset, emphasizing effort is great for improvement. I’ve personally started to use this method and ask myself five questions every night before I go to bed and I’m seeing some results already. However, whether or not the results will be sustainable and build on top of each other is the biggest question of all. If it is, then this book is absolutely amazing. If it’s not, then it’s another well written and somewhat interesting book that doesn’t actually help in the long run.
I’m betting it is a good one that could help a lot of people if they put the effort into following the advice. My plan is to re-read (or listen to) this book about once a year to freshen up on the concepts. I can’t say I’ve ever planned to do that with any other book.