[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…

[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…

[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…

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…

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…

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…

People improve their lives in many ways. To give context to the Method, in my next few posts I'll describe several common non-Method methods you're familiar with. Then I'll describe how the Method differs from them and why I believe it improves your life better and is more rewarding to do. So far I've only described the Method broadly: to choose the elements in your emotional cycles you can control voluntarily -- your environment, beliefs, and behavior -- together to bring about the emotions and emotional reward you want. There is much more to it and upcoming posts will describe it…