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…

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 step was a once-per-lifetime step. Once you understand your emotional cycle once, you can retain it all your life. Step 2 begins the preparation for each situation. The main part of understanding your current emotional cycle is to understand the elements -- the relevant environments, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors. The other part is to know what you can and can't change and what you will and won't change. Your situation For the elements, I recommend writing them out. Below are three examples of the elements to situations in my life when ripe for applying the Method. Example…

[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.] Today's examples of the Method are simple but effective so they illustrate the Method well as well as how to use it. The first is an effect you probably already know. Everyone knows feeling happy tends to make you smile. Most people also know…

[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.] Today's example of using the Method came a year after yesterday's. That one was my first by-the-book implementation and test of the Method, this one was my first automatic implementation. I had practiced it enough to internalize it enough I did it without thinking…

[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.] This example illustrates my first by-the-book implementation of the Model and Method. I don't pretend that the change was earth-shattering or bigger than it was because the magnitude of the change was not the point. The point was that the Method produced the results…

When do I think of when to implement the Method? In leadership situations: especially when times call for me to motivate or influence others, to negotiate, to listen, to empathize and see things from another person's perspective. Times like these make self-awareness and knowing how to act on it important. In personal leadership situations: when times call for me to motivate myself, to understand myself better, and so on. I've learned approaching introspection with the structure of the Method more effective than an unstructured or haphazard approach. When I sense my level of reward below potential: since the feeling of reward (of all different characteristics) indicates how well my life is going, raising reward is among my most important tasks. The Method keeps me from…

This post covers patterns of several non-Method methods to give context to the Method. The reason you want to improve your life is that you're feeling less reward than your potential. Unless you're highly emotional aware, in which case you would see your way forward clearly, all you know then is that at least one element of an emotional cycle is out of sync but not which. The non-Method methods of the past few posts only work on one part of your emotional cycles. In general, if your way forward isn't clear, you'll be lucky if working on only one element works. Working on only your environment can cost resources and lead to delay or giving up. Working on only your behavior is grueling and…

This post covers the second of several non-Method methods. People often try to improve their lives by changing only their behavior. After doing something one way for a while they resolve to do it differently. This strategy comes from a belief that something rooted in their behavior holds them back from a better life, or at least that changing only their behavior will improve it. I call this strategy "New Year's resolutions." The change in behavior doesn't have to come over New Year's. It just has to be based only in behavior. Typically people resolve to eat more healthily, to exercise more, to finally do that thing they've meant to do for years, etc. But the change could be anything. Sometimes changing only your behavior…