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Trigger · also called cue

what sets me off

A trigger is the specific condition that initiates an automatic behaviour — a time, a place, an emotional state, a preceding action, or the presence of other people. Behaviour change is far easier at the trigger than mid-routine.

What to do about it

Change the environment that hosts the trigger, not your resolve once it fires.

Books that work on this

Each is a 90-day programme. Start with the first — later books assume the work in the earlier ones.

Part of the Discipline series.

How people say it

Nobody looks this up by its clinical name. These are the ways it actually gets said.

  • what sets me off
  • I know what starts it
  • avoiding my triggers
  • the thing that makes me relapse
  • stress makes me do it
  • certain people set me off
  • environment makes me fail
  • I do it when I am bored

Written by Brian Spiker, who has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — the receipts. More terms in the encyclopedia.

About the author

Brian Spiker has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — a real service business with real customers, real Google reviews, and 13 years of work most self-help authors will never do.

He writes the way operators talk: brutal, funny, and built from work that actually has to get done. Verify everything at spikercarpetandtilecare.com.