Mastering Environmental Triggers: Part 2
Our lives don’t occur in a vacuum. They are usually the result of unappreciated triggers in our environment — the people and situations that lure us into behaving in a manner diametrically opposed to the colleague, partner, parent, or friend we imagine ourselves to be.
These triggers are constant and relentless and omnipresent.
You might think that triggers would cause you to act in new and novel ways, expanding your horizons, making you more successful with each passing moment. Hardly!
Triggers initiate a simple formulaic response in us:
TRIGGER-> IMPULSE-> BEHAVIOR
This is difficult enough, but add in the environment and unbeknownst to us, it is holding us in a rut even more by triggering old behaviors.
How do you recognize triggers?
Well, triggers come in many forms:
- Habits
- Smells
- People
- Sounds
- Sights
Triggers can be external, or they can be internal. They can be daydreams; they can be thoughts.
What is true about all triggers is: the trigger happens, it sets off an impulse, you act.
By becoming aware of our typical triggers, we can change that sequence to:
