[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” 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.]

Putting into practice the answers to all of life’s most important questions — that is, the Model — may seem like a tall order, but I’ve written up how to do it. I call the process the Method. If you worked with the Model long enough, you’d probably develop the Method yourself, but why not learn from my mistakes and get farther with less effort?

A model to implement the answers to all of life’s most important questions: The Method

I’ve written up the Method before too, so, like yesterday’s post, I’ll put the table of contents to the main posts on it at the bottom of this page. Here’s an illustration of the Method. The links in the table of contents below explain it, give it depth, and tell you how to implement it.

When I use this belief

I use the Method all the time, every day. I notice when parts of my life could give me more reward, based on the Model, and use the Method to create more reward.

What this belief replaces

This belief replaces being powerless to improve your life, or improving it inefficiently or not systematically with an efficient, systematic process that works.

Where this belief leads

This belief leads to greater self-awareness and emotional intelligence, which lead to a better life, better relationships,… better nearly everything.

Table of contents of posts on the Method

The Method is how to use the Model to lead yourself and others and to improve your life, in particular, using the elements you have voluntary control over.

The Method, step by step

Before anything else, the Method begins with you knowing your emotional system — the foundation of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. You only have to learn it once in your life. From then on you may refine it or refresh your memory, but you won’t have to re-learn that you have a consistent, reliable, and predictable emotional system.

So I call the step of knowing your emotional system step 0. You only do it once in your life, then when you do the Method, you start at step 1 for each application.

0. Know your emotional system
1. Understand your relevant emotional cycles and constraints (plus an extra note on points 0 and 1, on awareness)
2. Conceive of new emotions
3. Conceive of new environments, beliefs, and behaviors
4. Implement the environments, beliefs, and behaviors

Here is an illustration of the Method. Step 4, implementation, generally requires the most effort, so I break it up into a few stages.

Implementation stages

The following stages all lie within step 4 of the Method.

1. Overview
2. Transition (also a caveat)
3. Support
4. Regular life

Here is an illustration of the implementation stages.

These descriptions will benefit from examples so I’ll precede them with a few.

Examples

1. A home run after three strikes
2. Overwhelming joy on a bleak morning
3. Two simple but effective examples

Long term

One transformation — that is, one application of the Method — makes future ones easier, more productive, and more rewarding. So I wrote a few posts on what to expect with more transformations.

1. The Method from another perspective
2. Long-term growth from many transformations
3. Improving your life as much as you want is all based on one transformation

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

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