[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.]
Eventually a transformation’s new environments, beliefs, and behaviors synchronize completely with each other. The cycle you changed brings the emotions you want and reward.
At this stage this cycle becomes a part of your regular life, a life now more rewarding for the change.
You haven’t replaced the old you. In circumstances where the new you fits you crowd out the old part of you. In situations where the old you belongs, the old you comes out. In my life, for example, by the time I was a full-time CEO of the company I co-founded, I no longer identified primarily as a physicist. Still, when I met with my old classmates or professors, I could return to identifying myself as a physicist (though less able to solve the harder problems I once could).
Likewise, after having had a couple solo gallery shows in New York City, having installed a few large public works, and having taught at world-class art schools, identifying as an artist became a part of my regular life.
I started blogging less than a year ago and at just under 400 posts, I feel like blogging is part of my regular life, especially now that I post two or three posts a day, including the North Korea and My Art pages.
As the new you becomes part of your regular life and all the elements in it resonate to bring you reward, the fakeness you felt earlier not only dissipates, feelings of authenticity greater than the feelings of fakeness will crowd the fake feelings out.
For example, if you wanted to take on new leadership responsibilities at work, but held back because you didn’t feel confident, you might have felt fake the first time you took on those responsibilities. If you made that move a transformation by changing your environments, beliefs, and behaviors in sync, you might eventually make the new role a part of your regular life. Once comfortable with the new roles and responsibilities, you might recall how you held back from taking them on as a sign of being fearful and fake.
Or if you always wanted to dress more stylishly but felt awkward or that you stood out too much in them, you might, after wearing the new clothes a few times and getting complimented on them by stylish people, feel fake going back to khakis and boring clothes. Or even just thinking of how you used to wear them.
Each completed transformation creates a building block for a new lifestyle. Completing one makes the next one easier. Transforming more and more parts of your life creates a more and more rewarding lifestyle. As you transform cycles with different combinations of characteristics, you get reward of different characteristics. A good life gives you reward across all combinations of characteristics from all different cycles.
But that’s for later posts. For now we’re just covering one transformation.