This book shares common habits which holding successful people back to their next level and the framework to overcome them. Even it’s framed as helping successful people to become more successful, these traps are applied to all of us, successful or not. The difference is that it might be harder for successful people to realize or accept these given the past success.

The book starts with section to explain the trouble of success that why past success might be obstacle for future success, following that it listed common twenty behaviors that hold people back. Then it shares the 7-steps framework for change and then suggestions for leaders to apply the changes and know when to stop.

First, most things have two sides and the success in the past could be trouble to our success in the future. There are four key beliefs that help people becoming success including “I Have Succeed”, “I Can Success”, “I Will Succeed” and “I Choose to Succeed”. But these also makes it tough for us to change and these beliefs carries us here my be holding us back in our quest to go there.

Then it comes the twenty common behaviors which block us to be open, take responsibility, be humble, build connection, keep positive, look for win-win and etc:
1. Winning Too Much: The need to win at all costs and in all situation when it matters or not at all.
2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussions.
3. Passing judgment: The need to rate others and impose our standards on them.
4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.
5. Starting with “No,” “But”, or “However”: The overuse of negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right, you’re wrong”.
6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.
7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool
8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts when we weren’t asked.
9. Withholding information: The refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.
10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.
11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.
12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.
13. Cling to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events an people from our past.
14. Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.
15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong.
16. Not listening: The most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.
17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.
18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.
19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.
20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

Each person will have different challenges at different time to tackle, while change itself is not easy even after we accept and decide to change. So the author shares a 7-step method to change interpersonal relationship and make change permanent including Feedback, Apologizing, Telling the World, or Advertising, Listening, Thanking, Following up and Practicing Feedforward. This will help you to be open to area you need improvement, change other’s perception, take concrete steps and look forward to future.

With the framework the book adds more rules for leaders to change including Start Now, Focus on right one, Measure the progress, Be flexible, Face the truth and etc. Also it shares some special challenges for people in charge, particularly it’s impossible to fix people who think someone else is the problem. Eventually we cannot change others and only themselves can.

So what’s my next habit to change?