This exercise transforms your life. It has you do the first three steps of the Method, prepares you for the fourth, and sets up accountability with others for step 4. Accountability is how things get done, so it can help a lot. I do this exercise halfway through my seminar. People get deeply into it, even after sitting in a room for five or six hours. When we review the exercise people sometimes tell me it gave them their first experience ever sharing some problems, then finding themselves surprised to find simple solutions to them. Requirements (or good-to-haves) You can do the exercise alone, but I prefer to group people into three to five. Everyone should know the Model and the Method. Preferably you've prepared…

The Method's steps 2 and 3 have you conceive of new emotions, environments, beliefs, and behaviors for emotional cycles you want to change. The challenge How do you pick the new beliefs to crowd out the old ones? Choosing the opposite to existing beliefs rarely helps. You end up debating yourself in your head. Discussion I find complements to beliefs crowd out existing ones more effectively. For example, I found an effective alternative to rising anger is not to try to be calm, but to be curious about the situation causing the anger. The curiosity crowds out the anger and I get calm anyway. I've found effective complements to many emotions, though curiosity works well for many situations for me. When I feel frustrated, impatient,…

Many people feel they can't change themselves or that doing so is fake. Here is a quick exercise to show you how easily you can change yourself because you do it already. Step 1 First answer the question "Who are you?" by describing yourself with three or four adjectives. I know you're just reading a web page, but if you have pen and paper or can open a window on your computer to write in, write a few adjectives that describe you before going to the next step. No one will hold you to them, so you don't have to pick the best ones. Just a few. Step 2 Now imagine yourself in a job interview and answer the same question. Write a few adjectives…