A couple of months ago I received a recommendation on Amazon that caught my eye.  The title was Succeed—How We Can Reach Our Goals by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.  Frankly, the title didn’t impress me much.  Haven’t we all read too many books that claim the same thing, only to nod in agreement while stifling a yawn?  What hooked me instead were the reviews.  Dozens of reviewers said, “It’s a smart, fun, highly practical look at what we ‘scientifically’ know about setting and achieving goals.”  As a person who enjoys learning why people do what they do (or don’t do what they should do), this book backs up its claims with scientific research.  And while the pursuit of goals is the focus of the book, it is done in terms of behavior psychology and research. In fact, a key strategy to learning how a person pursues a goal is to discover whether they like to “Be-Good” or “Get-Better.”  That choice says a lot about us and often determines whether or not we eventually succeed. [Read more…]