We change jobs, move to new neighborhoods, make and lose friends. As a result, we’re blindsided by change, which is a problem because change happens all the time.

Just as the human lifespan has grown and we’ve developed tools to cope with ailments that plagued our ancestors, we’ve come to believe that we have agency over our fortunes. With the rise of science and advanced medicine, and the decline of religious affiliation, we’ve developed the illusion that unending progress is a birthright, and that we have far more control over the world than we do. Our inability to forecast change is a relatively recent phenomenon. We expect sunny days and rainy days to continue, and financial stocks to keep performing the way they have in the past. and other Western countries, we expect things to remain as they are right now. When financial stocks go up, they expect them to tumble imminently when they plummet, they expect those stocks to appreciate in value when it’s rainy they expect it to be sunny tomorrow. I discovered in East Asia-China, Japan, and South Korea, for example-people expect change all the time.

Forecasting change is the first step to getting unstuck.Ībout fifteen years ago I was studying how people around the world perceive change. Listen to the audio version-read by Adam himself-in the Next Big Idea App. Adam Alter is a professor of marketing and psychology at NYU’s Stern School of Business, and the New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink.īelow, Adam shares five key insights from his new book, Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck and Thrive When It Matters Most.

Irresistible from adam alter