The Three Major
Stages of any Life Change

The kind of change I’m talking about is a "transformational" life change. It's not a change that you get excited about, dab at it and then go back to doing things the old way. Transformational simply means to ACTUALLY making the transition. Making a true life change is difficult, very difficult, especially if it's been conditioned over the years. We all know plenty of people who have tried to break bad habits (including you and me) and didn’t quite succeed in making it happen. There are plenty of “tools” out there such as NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) to change your mental associations, or tracking systems to help you focus on the changes, but like any tool it takes effort on your part to make it work.

I use a military analogy to give the right mindset on the changes you want or need to make. If you think of a particular change as a battle, it may give you a mindset to keep you fully engaged. For instance, if you’re a military commander you will use as many tactical tools at your disposal to overwhelm the resistance. When making a difficult life change, it works in a similar way: it requires focus and using your personal assets to overpower your resistance to change. Nobody reached a 5 star general status without paying the price.

You may reach a change threshold, which is where you absolutely CANNOT tolerate the way things have been going. It could be a serious life incident like a heart attack, or your boss treats you like a minion and you’ve had it at your dead-end job. However, it could be something you’ve been meaning to do for a long time such as losing the 20 lbs of flab and realize you are better than that. Whatever it is, you’ve reached a point where your motivation is at peak levels. In military analogy, this process can be considered as an “act of war” on a particular aspect in your life. If you've reached that threshold, then you're in a good place to start, but following the 3 stages will help you MAKE the life change.

All right, so let’s begin! There are three phases to making a life change. Call it the triple-a (AAA) of change if you will: Acquire, Attack and ACTION.

Stage 1 - Acquire Knowledge and Assess Resources
Stage 2 - Attack the Perimeter
Stage 3 - ACTION. Lead the Charge

In the most fundamental state, these are the 3 steps or phases you need to have to make a successful life change. A lot of people dive into phase 3, and take action without setting up a strong foundation, resulting in failure to reach their goals. So, if you're having a tough time achieving goals, take a good look at the first two stages.

STAGE 1 - Acquire Knowledge and Assess

This is where you gather the preliminary information and create the basic game plan. At this stage of the game you take the time to figure out the end result. If it's a LARGE change, chunk them down to actionable steps that you feel you can accomplish. If you’re having a hard time getting started, start with the easiest change. If you have a relatively strong “change muscles” then start with the changes that you fear the most and it will go downhill from there. Ultimately at this point don’t worry about the all the steps, just get the ball moving and get the high level details clear, you may find that you need to make a few transitions along the way.

After acquiring the knowledge, assess your personal assets you need to beat the resistance to change. Assets include your talents, abilities, skills, network, money, time, surroundings, energy and hard assets to name a few. Think of resources that can help you master and dominate the change you need to make and use it to your advantage. You're going to need every bit of help, it's usually not easy.

Performing this step usually builds motivation, you may want to just dive right in, but taking just enough time to get your end results clear in your head can build momentum. You may uncover a better way to do something if you just take enough time to do the research. However, do not take too much time which will have the opposite effect and dampen your enthusiasm (aka Paralysis by Analysis).

Let's say you were to start your internet business. In this case, you would figure out how other people have started their businesses by reading books or interviewing them. After that, assess what skills you have that could be profitable or that you will enjoy doing. If writing is something you hate doing, and you're not then either partner up with somebody or hire someone to do that for you. Once you've gotten that far, then you're ready for the next step.

STAGE 2 - Attack the Perimeter

Like military commander attacking a fortress, he must destabilize the infrastructure, not directly on the fortress initially. The fortress would be too strong and will be easily defeated if attacked directly. First, it first uses air support to knock out communications, then it uses the navy to bombard the coast line, then it takes over a flank, etc. After many initial battles, you have weakened their ability to fight back and then the commander attacks directly on a fortress. In our case, the more elements you can control, the greater chance of success. Give yourself whatever advantage you can give yourself at this point to support a new life change.

At this point you have the core knowledge on starting your internet business. Now it’s time to get your environment set up and kick-up the pace a bit. For me it meant getting my office setup properly, laying out my goals where I can see them, paying for the right software, regularly meet with people who have successful businesses, removing distracting software (like computer games!), and communicating with my wife when and where I will work. Your family/roommates are probably the biggest part of your environment which can really help your chances on a successful life change. If you live alone, you are truly the master of your destiny. Consider going to a library or renting your own very co-op office space for a couple hundred a month, whatever works!

Be aware of the little things that can distract you from your change goals. The TV, internet and the bed mattress has been mankind’s ultimate distraction. Unplug the TV, the internet and even take the sheets off your bed! Do whatever it takes to make your surroundings help you. After all, the change you're trying to make is always something important, don't be afraid to do something a bit odd.

STAGE 3 - Take ACTION

NOW you’re ready to take your first direct steps. Since you’ve established a CLEAR set of actions you need to do and developed the support systems in place, you got your you are far more likely to succeed in making any life change. For big changes, you take MASSIVE action to plow through the resistance. If you’ went through this properly, you’ve been building on a strong foundation to make a life change.

Militarily speaking, this is where the “ground war” begins, you send in your troops to attack. This can get tough and ugly, but if you persist and the first 2 steps (Acquire Intelligence, Assess and Attack the perimeter), you will have increase the chances of success by a magnitude of at least a thousand fold. The commander now has destabilized the resistance enough to push forward to ensure maximum possibility of success. As in any battle, things are not always predictable so be conscious of what is working and what’s not, so keep track of what’s working and what’s not and adjust the proper course of action. You have positioned yourself in a strong place to make the transformation.

In conclusion, if you feel you have to make herculean efforts to make the transformation, then you are likely to have not performed one of the first 2 steps well enough. Go back and evaluate which of the steps you didn’t do well enough. If you've been banging your head against the wall, not succeeding on making then change, then it's time to go back and REALLY take the time to do steps 1 and 2. You may need a mentor, or more leverage to force you to make a change. Whatever it is, it's always worth taking the time to get it right.

The Three Major Stages of any Life Change

The Three Major
Stages of any Life Change