Leadership

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Eventually a transformation's new environments, beliefs, and behaviors synchronize completely with each other. The cycle you changed brings the emotions you want and reward. At this stage this cycle becomes a part of your regular life, a life now more rewarding for the change.…

Once the elements of a transformation start supporting each other the transformation starts to feel like it will take root. You may still feel some inertia, fakeness, and conflict between the old and new you, but decreasingly. Examples of elements supporting each other include After starting a new hobby (behavior) you start meeting others who do the same hobby People compliment you on losing weight People you meet in new circles of friends or colleagues have mutual friends Confirmation biases start reinforcing new beliefs and so on. You also start feeling reward from new cycles as the elements in them resonate with each other. That reward means you decreasingly need to use willpower. Once you start feeling some reward, you generally don't doubt if the…

I should note a caveat for the transition stage. Since this stage involves conflict, feeling fake, and overcoming inertia, you may use a lot of willpower. How do you know you're moving in a direction that improves your life? How do you know you aren't pushing hard on something that you thought would help but isn't? The best answer is through experience. After a few transformations you pick up the subtle cues that show inertia decreasing or that what seemed feeling fake at the beginning also carried feelings of exploration and discovery. For example, if you tried a new style of clothing or haircut, it could happen that everyone you know and trust tells you they don't like it, but one person you don't know…

You can usually do the preparation stages of transforming a part of your life easily since you can do them yourself, without someone else. Working with other people usually makes things more complex. Still, you generally do benefit from involving others. Because they have different perspectives and can see your life from further away, their input usually helps. At the end of the preparation stages you have two sets of environments, beliefs, and behaviors in mind -- your current one and your desired one. You know your current situation so, however little reward it brings, you know how to get the reward it does bring and whatever emotions you want from it. You know what other parts of your life it conflicts or harmonizes with.…

We've covered the preparation stages of transforming a part of your life to bring more reward by choosing environments, beliefs, and behaviors based on your interests. Of course your life changes all the time whether you intentionally cause those changes or not. Using the Method, based on the Model, lets you do it systematically, intentionally, and makes you more likely to succeed than alternatives. Now let's look at how the transformation evolves in your life over the next few posts. Unplanned life changes can start and unfold unpredictably. Planned structured ones like intentional transformations following the Method can unfold unpredictably too, but tend to follow a more structured route. I tend to think of the route when I transform a part of my life following…

EDIT: I modified how I present the Method slightly. Please see the new version of this page and the updated series on implementing the Method. Having conceived of new environments, beliefs, and behaviors consistent with each other, the emotions you want, and what you will, won't, can, and can't do, the next step is to create and implement them. Creating and implementing them means more than just doing some simple task. It means creating a lifestyle for yourself based on your emotional cycles, which you learned about in the first two steps. That is, choosing your environment means choosing whom you spend time with, where you work, where you live, and so on. Choosing your behavior could mean changing your wardrobe, your hobbies, you physical…

EDIT: I modified how I present the Method slightly. Please see the new version of this page and the updated series on implementing the Method. The next step after awareness is to plan -- in particular, to conceive of new environments, beliefs, and behaviors that are consistent with each other and what you can't or won't change to replace the old ones and designed to bring about emotions you want. Choosing environments, beliefs, and behaviors to bring about the emotions you want leads you to live according to your values, nobody else's. It makes you resilient to feeling bad and to some extent to other people's influence Choosing them consistent with each other means you will feel reward once the emotions become consistent with them.…

EDIT: I modified how I present the Method slightly. Please see the new version of this page and the updated series on implementing the Method. The Method's first two steps -- knowing your emotional system and understanding your current emotional cycles -- involve little action. They constitute awareness. The appeal to act on a situation you want to change quickly and decisively can tempt you. I advise against it, whether you are leading yourself or others. Acting without awareness can point you in counterproductive directions. It can spur you to ever more action to make up for the initial wrong direction until you finally stop and reset yourself. I call acting that way reactive. Besides wasting your time, holding you back from your potential, and…