The Layers of Change

                Change can be scary, sad, unexpected, exciting, and sometimes well-needed. Regardless of if the change you are entering is intentional or appearing before you whether you like it or not, change is inevitable – so why not make whatever change that is coming work for you and serve you well?

                Thus comes the layers of change. The elements to explore to make the most of the experience. Let me wave the red flag that with all experiences being so different and with different contexts, the layers are intentionally left just a bit vague for you to better fit it into your own personal experience time and time again.

                Let’s start at a basic, but necessary level. You want to identify what your results will be with this change. Ask yourself what you will hear, see, feel during and after this change. What will you gain? What will you eliminate? While answering this layer, you are picturing it all working out and fully connecting to those results.

                For the next layer, think about what behavior is needed. What will you do? How will you act? What will you choose? What will you stop? Think of the actions you will need to engage in and the actions you will need to avoid.

                Next, you connect with potential. You want to unlock the possibilities coming with this change. You will now have the ability to do what? What will you learn? Is there something you will release or something you will expand on? You realize you can do great things. In this layer, you know you can.

                Now you start to dig a bit deeper as you explore your beliefs.  With this exploration, you decide what you know, understand, accept, and trust. You are positive in these beliefs. There may also be beliefs that you now know to reject or release for they are no longer serving you. As you connect with your beliefs, you have faith that you can create amazing things with this change.

                Then, there is selecting values. Values are very important for guiding our behaviors. There are two important questions to consider. First is to ask what is important to you, what motivates you, what do you feel driven or compelled to do? You have the virtue to do what? Second, you want to acknowledge what becomes unimportant, irrelevant, meaningless, or useless. These may be values you held for other people, but not yourself. From here you connect with what actions will honor your selected values and what actions would be unserving to your chosen values.

                The final layer, and the most powerful layer is acknowledging your identity. With this layer you embrace who you are and/or who you are becoming. Recognize your character, your integrity, your personality, your status, and your existence. Using the statement “I am…” and answering to all of these element will help you explore this layer.

                There you have it, the layers of change. While I presented them in order of starting basic and moving deeper, you are welcome to go through the steps backwards and start deep and move out to the basic. The order does not really matter, and some find one way easier than the other. What is important is to connect with and fully explore each layer. You can see how they feed into one another and overlap, yet still each one is important.

                I wish you amazing, wonderful change and as always, I am here to help, simply reach out.