[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.]
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 three stages. You don’t have to look at the change as going through stages. Or you could think of different stages. I think of three stages. I’ll give each its own post.

1. Transition – starting the transformation, before you’ve changed much
2. Support – after you changed a few things
3. Regular life – after completing the transformation

And here is an illustration of these steps.
In general, transformations take on the characteristics of the emotions in the cycle you’re working on. Changing long-term cycles usually takes longer. Changing intense cycles can require intense effort. Changing subtle cycles may require subtle changes.
I never want to imply that transformations must take time or effort. Of course, done through the Method they will always be rewarding, but long-term changes can happen in an instant so I don’t want to create expectations that become self-fulfilling prophecies slowing changes that could happen faster, bringing about a life you want faster.