summary ofWhat Got You Here Won’t Get You ThereBook by Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter

first KEY POINT

Successful people are often afraid to change anything about their routine in fear that it might affect their success

Oftentimes, successful people are prone to letting themselves get comfortable with their current successes. They refuse to invest further in their ventures and simply want to enjoy what they already have. This complacency is dangerous because it stagnates any further progress, leaving you comfortable but stuck.

This resistance to change is often due to a strong feeling of confidence in their skill and talent, and a largely overinflated sense of optimism about themselves. But the thing with success is that it can be down to luck, simply. This confidence sours and can turn into a darker thing, it can become arrogance.There is a growing belief within their heads that they survived this long being successful because of certain behavioral patterns. However, these behaviors can be terrible and off-putting, but they’ve been convinced that they are responsible for their success. They let superstition creep in, and they begin to ritualistically act within the patterns they’ve come to believe are responsible for their success.The average successful person sees no reason they should change anything they are currently doing. The notion that they need to change in fact confuses them. They disregard any kind of criticism since they are already successful, any kind of criticism has to be misguided in their opinions. There is the usual hostility that welcomes the call to change when it is said to successful people because they feel attacked, questioned, and offended.

Find out what motivates them and use it to pique their interests. The usual motivators are mostly self-centered and revolve around the benefits it’ll bring to them personally. These include money, power, status, and popularity. Once you are able to trigger any or all of these things in them, you will have a better chance of making them see reasons to change.A common reason why successful people refuse to change is because they overestimate their strengths and underestimate their weaknesses. This usually means they have traits that they’ve regarded as lucky charms and are refusing to let go of them. It is of course a delusion and a dangerous one at that. A successful person sees themselves as untouchable or invincible, refusing to recognize that even they are victims in the long run.Oftentimes, the fix for said traits is quite simple and wouldn’t really harm their success in any real way.