The four A’s have a precondition: they only work when they follow a genuine recognition — a real “Oh, I see it, that’s not how I want to be” — not when they’re driven by a should. Forcing yourself through the steps as a kind of boot camp (“I don’t like that I do X, I need to change, I’m going to make myself”) pushes the emotions down instead of feeling them, and the method goes messy and ineffective.
“It works really well when you have a recognition… If it is something that you think some way you think you should be and you haven’t had the recognition of oh, that’s not the way I want to be — you’re still in the should of it, then it’s much less likely to work.”
Joe contrasts this with how change is usually taught: identify what you’re doing wrong, beat yourself up, rub your nose in it, and bully yourself into compliance with an “accountability buddy” or a “dummy style coach.” That approach doesn’t create lasting change. Adopting a morality you haven’t actually seen the cost of — deciding to be “100% honest like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar,” or to be “more committed” — produces forced, often harmful behavior, because there’s no genuine recognition underneath it.
The method also doesn’t fit every behavior. It’s built for relational, interpersonal change — patterns inside a company, a marriage, parenting. It doesn’t work for solo “bad habits” like smoking, nail-biting, or exercising, which involve stopping or repeating a behavior daily rather than taking immediate one-time contrary actions (“what are you apologizing to?”). For those, different tools apply.
Related Concepts
- The four A’s change behavior after you’ve seen a pattern: announce, apologize, ask, act
- Awareness transforms behavior where action plans fail
- Should creates stress, not change
- The method works powerfully only when you feel the emotions while doing it
- Take five clean contrary actions immediately, as reps
- Tools stop working when used for self-improvement
- Awareness changes what shoulds cannot