I’m all about you attaining your highest professional stature and making significant contributions to the benefit of others. That’s the essence of this weekly message and your professional service. So you can imagine how interested I was when I stumbled upon a survey conducted by Joseph Grenny (coauthor of Crucial Conversations), finding that 97% of employees can identify one habit this is career-inhibiting—the one thing holding them back.

That didn’t surprise me as much as another finding in the survey: that most people won’t make the necessary changes to release them from THAT ONE THING. WHAT!? Even though people know they do something detrimental to their career progress, they refuse to act on changing it.

Too often you blame being stuck on other things like not having a mentor, ineffective management, you’re in the wrong office, or a bias against you. You use those outside forces as a pass, because you think that changing THAT ONE THING won’t matter.

It seems that knowing something you should pay attention to doesn’t necessarily translate to actually doing something about it. So, if you don’t have a professional coach, at least understand the pattern of THAT ONE THING using a therapeutic model called the ABC Method.

First, identify the Antecedent that activates the pattern. There are some good examples in the article cited above. Once that trigger is pulled, a following Behavior occurs—THAT ONE THING that gets you into trouble because it causes a Consequence that you don’t want. If you don’t understand the pattern, you’ll struggle overcoming THAT ONE THING. Once you get the pattern, there are numerous interjections you can use to disrupt and redirect it.

So, what’s the pattern that replicates YOUR ONE THING? And what will you do about it? Your choice.