5Surpass Your Limits

PERSONAL ABILITY

It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get.

—Arnold Palmer

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In Chapter 4 we examined ways to tap into personal passions as a way of influencing vital behaviors. To that we add that we can limit our success when we assume that any influence failure is exclusively a motivation problem. We commit what psychologist Lee Ross calls the fundamental attribution error.” We assume that when people don’t change, it’s simply because they don’t want to change. In making this simplistic assumption, we lose an enormous lever for change.

Even when we do realize that people may lack the ability required to enact ...

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