What I Care About
My name is Dr Howie, and I’ve been geeking out about how people change and grow and transform — and why they sometimes don’t — for a quarter of a century. I love the idea of positive change and how we can take charge of what’s next for us.
Having written a few books now on change, I am really excited to be working on a trilogy which sit as assets under my “Map Your World” body of work.
The first book, Triggers, talks about how people and situations can bring out your worst thoughts and impulses — in totally predictable ways that nevertheless feel startling and unavoidable — and how you can liberate yourself from your conditioned reactions through reframes, neurological weightlifting, and practice.
Triggers is all about increasing your capacity to be Courageous.
It's followed by Glitches, which explores the features of the outdated maps that cause the triggering, and shows you how to update them so they help you navigate present reality rather than compelling you to respond to conflict with anger, resentment, disengagement, or worry.
Glitches is all about increasing your capacity to be Gracious.
Next comes Scars, which shows how to navigate other people's glitches with wisdom, compassion, and effectiveness, and create a team culture that allow people to own their scars and work with the scars of others. This ends the cycle of triggering and retriggering that can corrode team safety and trust.
Scars is all about increasing your capacity to be Contagious.
The three work together to help you become aware of the hidden drivers and dynamics around how you see the world.
Once we own our triggers, debug our glitches, and attend to others' scars, we literally start to map meaning and take charge of our responses in all areas of our work and life. When teams work together, acknowledging and improving each other's maps visible, we develop deeper understanding and more effective working cultures.
I feel so fortunate that this work is my day job!
My Professional Background
I’ve explored everything from Rational Actor Theory to Trans-Theoretical Model to NLP to CBT to ACT to Tiny Habits to Atomic Habits to Immunity to Change to Behavioral Economics to Motivational Interviewing to Evolutionary Psychology to Rapid Resolution Therapy to Memory Reconsolidation. (Whew — pause for deep breath.)
I’ve also studied organizational dynamics, from Learning Organizations to Complex Systems Theory to Stages of Team Development to Sociocracy. I’ve worked closely with one of the world’s experts on leading change, Peter Bregman, since 1999 (and wrote a book with him in 2021).
At this point, I think I’m pretty good at distinguishing between evidence-based models and fluff.
And I’ve had enough sacred cows slaughtered in the practice arena to hold every theory lightly. (Apologies to my vegan readers for the metaphor.)
I’m now what ACT founder Steven C Hayes calls a functional contextualist (or is it contextual functionalist — I always forget). Which means my approach is always: “What’s most likely to work in this situation? Let’s try that! And if it doesn’t work, let’s apologize and try something else.”
That said, I do have a few core beliefs.
All behavior is coherent
That is, there’s no such thing as irrational behavior or resistance to change. What we call self-sabotage or dysfunctional behavior is simply people doing their best to avoid suffering and harm based on their subconscious model of how the world is.
Which means that the way to help people transform unwanted behaviors is to uncover those models and dissolve them in the cleansing light of updated knowledge.
Humans aren’t the only measure of all things
That is, when we design systems and create organizations and set goals, we have to use all of nature as context. Economics functions in the wholistic context of biology.
And biology functions with limits and feedback loops. If it’s not good for the diversity of an ecosystem, it’s not good, period.
Change can be fun — joyful, even
When we grow and transform based on truth rather than distorted mental models, it feels good. We don’t have to suffer as we let go of outmoded perceptions and bask in direct experience of the world as it really is.
In the Dr Howie community, we explore the dynamics of positive change and make our maps of meaning clearer and our operating models more conscious. That way, we can all work together to make our lives and the lives of those we work with better.