Steve Levinson
Ph.D., Psychologist Emeritus (Minnesota)
Free
Habits / Follow Through Expert
Steve Levinson Quick Facts
- Main Areas
- Habits, Attention, Follow Through, Clinical Psychology
- Best Sellers
- MotivAider: Habit Change the Easy Way!, Following Through: A Revolutionary New Model for Finishing Whatever You Start
- Career Focus
- psychologist, inventor, author, speaker, consultant
- Affiliation
- Behavioral Dynamics, Inc.
Dr. Levinson was born and raised in New York City. He earned a bachelors degree in psychology from Queens College of the City University of New York and a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Rochester. After completing his training, he moved to Minnesota to direct an innovative rural mental health program that flourished under his leadership for thirty-five years.
Levinson has spent most of his career helping people follow through on their good intentions. In the early 1980's, he discovered a design flaw in the human mind that's largely responsible for poor follow through. Levinson used his discovery to create the MotivAider - a remarkably simple tool that dramatically improves follow through by automatically keeping its user's mind focused on making virtually any desired change in behavior. Levinson co-founded Behavioral Dynamics, Inc. in 1987 to develop, perfect, manufacture and market the MotivAider. In 2008, he left the healthcare industry to devote his fulltime attention to supporting MotivAider users worldwide.
Levinson teamed up with peak performance consultant, Peter Greider, to write Following Through: A Revolutionary New Model For Finishing Whatever You Start. This critically-acclaimed book is based on Levinson's groundbreaking discovery about the paradoxical way the mind treats good intentions.
Free Articles & Book Excerpts
SAMPLE CHAPTER: The Power to Get Things Done (Whether You Feel Like It or Not)
https://habitchange.com/docn/CHAPTER 2 TPTGTD 31-45.pdf
EXCERPTS: Following Through: A Revolutionary New Model for Finishing Whatever You Start
https://habitchange.com/folthru/ft_sampler.php
How (And Why) To Do A Reality Check Before Buying Your Next Self-Improvement Program
https://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/How_And_Why_To_Do_A_Reality_Check_Before_Buying_Your_Next_Self-Improvement_Program.html
Why Wishful Thinking Won't Help You Lose Weight
https://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Why_Wishful_Thinking_Won_t_Help_You_Lose_Weight.html
How to Get All the Willpower You Need to Succeed
https://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/how_to_get_all_the_willpower_you_need_to_succeed.html
It's Not Exactly Your Fault: The Truth About Why You Don't Follow Through
https://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/its-not-exactly-your-fault-the-surprising-truth-about-why-you-dont-follow-through
How to Defeat Procrastination and Get More Done
https://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/how-to-defeat-procrastination-and-get-more-done
Following Through: A New Perspective (Online course)
https://followingthrough.org
Free Audio & Video Samples
Changing Habits: The Missing Link (video)
https://habitchange.com/videos.php
Why the Human Mind Should Be Recalled: Exploring the Great Disconnect Between Intention and Action (video)
https://habitchange.com/recall.php
MotivAider iPhone app
https://habitchange.com/virtual_motivaider.php
Following Through: A New Perspective (online course)
https://followingthrough.org
AUDIOBOOK SAMPLE: Following Through
https://www.audible.com/pd/Business/Following-Through-Audiobook/B014PY4EEY/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1460660218&sr=1-1
AUDIOBOOK SAMPLE: The Power to Get Things Done (Whether You Feel Like It or Not)
https://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/The-Power-to-Get-Things-Done-Audiobook/B019IXIVHI/
Steve Levinson Audio & Video Programs
Steve Levinson Books
Articles by this expert
SelfGrowth articles and saved writing connected to this expert.
Article
Why "Staying Focused" is Easier Said Than Done
What you pay attention to can make a huge difference in your life. It can affect how you feel, what you think, and what you can accomplish. In a very real sense, you are what you pay attention to. A colleague shared with me a great story about the value of controlling attention. An old Cherokee Indian is teaching his grandson about life. "A battle is going on inside each of us," he tells his grandson. "It is a terrible fight between two strong wolves. One wolf is evil. The other is good.” The grandson thinks about this for a minute.
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Article
How to Get and Stay Motivated: Creating Compelling Reasons
Wish you had more motivation? Do you set ambitious goals, start off with a bang , and then fizzle out long before the job is done?
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Article
How to Get All the Willpower You Need to Succeed
Willpower is one of those concepts that everyone assumes they understand. Yet most people are wrong about what it really is, where it comes from, and how much of it they have. Being wrong about willpower does more than place you at risk of losing points on a psychology quiz. It prevents you from taking advantage of the ability you have to “manufacture” as much willpower as you need. So, what is willpower? Willpower is basically a measure of your ability to do what you intend to do when you don’t feel like doing it.
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Article
How to Defeat Procrastination and Get More Done
Let’s face it, procrastination sucks. It’s exhausting, stressful, and it can do a number on your self-esteem. Even though you eventually finish most of the unpleasant tasks you put off, you pay dearly for having postponed them. It takes lots of extra energy to avoid doing something you know you must do. The famous psychologist, William James, put it best when he said, "Nothing is as fatiguing as the hanging on of an uncompleted task."
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Article
It's Not Exactly Your Fault: The Surprising Truth About Why You Don't Follow Through
I have some good news for you. You're off the hook. Poor follow through is not exactly your fault. You've been relying on faulty equipment. Poor follow through is caused primarily by the mixed up way the normal mind is designed. Although we humans are endowed with impressive intelligence that allows us to figure out what we should do to make our lives as good as they can possibly be, surprisingly, there's no built-in mechanism that guarantees that our intelligence will actually control our behavior.
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Article
Why Wishful Thinking Won't Help You Lose Weight
An exciting new diet can certainly nourish your optimism. But it won’t change reality. The truth is, a new diet is nothing more than a fresh set of restrictions that you probably won’t stick to any better than you stuck to the many (once fresh) sets of restrictions that came before it. "Not sticking" is the real problem. And like it or not, until you figure out how to stick to a diet – any diet - you have a much better chance of losing hope than losing weight.
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Article
How (And Why) To Do A Reality Check Before Buying Your Next Self-Improvement Program
The promises they make give you goose bumps. "Just follow these simple steps," one self-improvement program insists, "and we guarantee you’ll achieve happiness and success beyond your wildest dreams.” How can you resist? You’d have to be an idiot to not invest your time, money and hope to get incredible benefits like these. So, you invest. But if you're like most people, there's a good chance you'll end up with disappointing results. No problem. There are plenty of other self-improvement programs out there ready to whisper sweet nothings in your ear.
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Article
How to Use Willpower Engineering to Control Spending
Personal finance experts often offer excellent budgeting advice while ignoring psychological realities that make their advice essentially useless. The truth is, we humans have an enormous capacity for NOT doing what we know we should do. And failing to take that truth into account is like teaching someone how to shoot a bow and arrow as if gravity doesn't exist!
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Websites & resources
SelfGrowth-published websites, downloads, and contributor profile websites connected to this expert.
Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Steve Levinson
I believe that the self-improvement industry does people a great disservice by cultivating and reinforcing wishful thinking. The industry largely ignores an inconvenient truth that makes much of what they sell virtually useless to consumers. The industry - frankly, with the unwitting cooperation of consumers - ignores the overwhelming evidence that even the most hightly motivated people who load up on expert advice and head optimistically for success often get lousy results. We fail not because the advice we get is bad. We fail because we don't follow through! We fail to consistently transform the knowledge and good intentions we have into the tangible day-in, day-out actions that lasting improvements require.
I discovered, however, that Poor follow through isn't really our fault. It's primarily the result of a design glitch in the normal human mind! It's a species problem - not an individual problem. Fortunately, it's a problem that individuals can work around if they're willing to face the truth - even if the self-improvement industry won't.
Contacting Steve Levinson
Behavioral Dynamics, Inc.
Phone: 1.800.356.1506 (U.S.), 1+218.681.6033 (International)
Fax: 612.437.4784
How to get started
Visit http://followingthrough.org to learn more about Dr. Levinson's insights into why so much of the time, effort, money and hope we invest in self-improvment goes to waste and what we can do to start following through instead of fizzling out.
Visit http://habitchange.com to learn about the MotivAider, an ingeniously simple electronic device that Dr. Levinson invented to correct for the mind's design flaw. The MotivAider enables people of all ages to automatically stay focused on making virtually any desired change in behavior until the job is done.
Other highlights
*The Power to Follow Through website is dedicated to helping people improve their abiltiy to follow through on their own good intentions. It includes free and premium programs featuring online courses and other resources desinged to empower people to consistenty turn their own good intentions into life-improving action.
*The MotivAider is an ingeniously simple electronic device that enables people of all ages to quickly, easily and privately change their own behavior and habits. It works by automatically keeping the user's mind focused on making virtually any desired change in behavior. Designed from scratch to improve the mind's ability to consistently transform knowledge and good intentions into tangible life-improving action, the MotivAider attacks the root cause of many self-improvement failures.