I get how it happens. If you live in a no pain, no gain world long enough, you start believing that good training involves breaking things. Just look at the way we talk about behavior change: We break horses, habits, spirits, and each other's backs. We even break houses to teach puppies where to pee. The expectation that training requires force and coercion is so ingrained in our culture that we actually idolize those who break behavior best: Hail Caesar!

It's time to take a deep breath and blow away that cultural fog. You don't need to break anything to change behavior, but you do need to notice how behavior works. That's exactly what behavior scientists have been doing for over 100 years and the resulting behavior-change technology, applied behavior analysis (ABA), is applicable to all species of learners.