Break Free to Joyful Living!

Transform Your Obstacles into Possibilities for Inspired Action

The most powerful influence in your life is change.

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​No matter how old you are, where you live in the world, or what you’re doing, change affects you.
 
Every day, the power of change causes you to seriously consider significant questions such as:
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  • What can you do with the changes you encounter around you?
  • How do you manage yourself?
  • What intentional changes do you want to make?
  • How can you overcome the barriers to change?
  • What steps can you take to live your possibilities?
 
To help you address these questions, here are some critical truths about change and ways to make change a creative ally in your life.

Change is a vital and natural quality of life.


​Everything in and around you is in a constant state of flux.
 
Consider some examples of relentless change:
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  • The seasons, weather, day and night
  • The life cycle of birth, growth, death, and decay
  • Continental drift, volcanic activity, and glacial movement
  • Your thoughts, moods, cellular (microbiological) processes, and physical structures
  • The smallest subatomic particles/waves, the largest stars, and the Universe
 
Some things change in a moment, while others take eons to shift. Yet all forms are in some way evolving, fluctuating, vibrating, transforming, expanding, contracting, or deteriorating.
 
Since the core and pervasive theme of life is change, any time you resist change, you push against the natural flow of life. Your resistance is counterproductive, and may eventually create unhealthy consequences for your body, mind, or emotions.
 
In order to sustain health, happiness, and ease, you must learn how to release resistance and move with the current of change.​

​​You can only change yourself.


​No matter how hard you try, how supportive you are, or how skilled you might be, you won’t be able to make someone else change. The desire and motivation for change has to come from the other person.
 
The conclusion is clear.
 
Since you can’t change others, the focus must be on yourself, and any changes you want in your life must begin with you.
 
At first, this orientation may seem selfish, especially if you haven’t devoted much time, attention, or energy to you. However, by changing yourself, you have the opportunity to become healthier, happier, and more fulfilled.
 
Your dedicated investment in yourself will then significantly benefit your own life, as well as all the people around you. As you give more to yourself, you will expand your capacity and effectiveness to give to others when you wish. 

Change represents one of the primary challenges of your life.


​While change is natural and universal, life changes can sometimes feel incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to manage.
 
In such cases as accidents, illness, and other traumatic events, you may feel completely overwhelmed, shocked, and unable to move. During these crises, people usually require some time, support, and assistance to rest, recover, and heal. Then, they can more fully engage in their lives.
 
Fortunately, these major, unsettling situations occur much less frequently in everyday life. Typically, in your daily routine, you have many expected, mundane responsibilities to handle mixed in with only a few surprises.
 
Though these tasks appear less dramatic than crises, the persistent demands from others on your time and energy, combined with your own unmet needs, can result in exhaustion, boredom, joylessness, and other disturbing stress-related symptoms.
 
At some point, these symptoms may become so severe that you feel the compelling, even desperate, need for things to be different in your life. If you also feel discouraged or hopeless, you may wonder how these necessary and long overdue changes will ever happen.

​​What makes conscious change so difficult?


​The fundamental barrier to changing your life involves the power of habit.
 
As you know, your thoughts, words, emotions, and actions establish healthy and unhealthy patterns with experience. These patterns are similar to the ruts in a well-traveled road. Just as the traveler will move in the familiar ruts, you will tend to think, speak, feel, and act in predictable ways.
 
These habits also correspond to actual physical structures in your body. That is, scientists have discovered neurological pathways and cellular activities that maintain expected patterns of behavior—habits or your “comfort zone.”
 
Finally, your habits usually reflect conscious and unconscious conditioning or programming that has developed from frequent repetition, over a long period of time, and sometimes beginning in utero. The sources of this persistent, programming (socialization) vary and include yourself, your family, school, religion, society, and the environment.
 
In this context, you can easily appreciate the formidable nature of habits and the sheer challenge of change.
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​Another significant barrier to change includes memories, two laws of nature, and an important characteristic of human behavior.
 
Memories consist of recollections of the past. Although this “past” no longer exists in the present, your bodymind can call up experiences from your subconscious (or unconscious) storehouse.
 
Sometimes your memory retrieval is intentional, while other times it happens in response to something or someone. In any case, you may then relive that experience as if no time had passed. And, that replay may be accompanied by a wide variety of unpleasant or pleasant thoughts, images, feelings, and sensations.
 
Through these replays, your memories create another way for you to remain connected to your past, and potentially stuck in habits and paradigms that no longer support your health and well-being.
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​​In your attempts to change your relationship to the past and your memory-driven habits, you will encounter two essential laws of nature; that is, momentum and inertia.
 
The Law of Momentum implies that you will continue to move until acted upon by a force to slow down or stop. The Law of Inertia indicates that you will stay at rest or continue moving in one way unless acted upon by a directional force.
 
These laws together suggest that you will have to stop, get started, or alter your behavior in some purposeful, new ways to successfully create change. You must skillfully apply your energy with respect to these laws to get your desired results.
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​​Furthermore, you will need to be aware of this truth about human nature:​

​You will only let go of what you have when you have something of equal or greater value to replace it.


​You will fully allow yourself to stop or alter a self-sabotaging habit, release the past, begin other important life changes, or leave your comfort zone, if you feel confident (convinced) that you have something (e.g., thoughts, words, feelings, actions) equivalent or better to engage instead.

​You can create purposeful life changes that last.


​Now you know that everyone encounters one or more of these difficulties when they try to change. And you have some understanding of the origin and mechanism of these challenges—within yourself.
 
Therefore, by overcoming your habits and other self-defeating patterns you can create the changes you desire.
 
You cannot expect a different result from the same routine that has led to your current dilemma. For a real breakthrough, you need something new!
 
An important step in this new direction involves a “map” we developed in 1984—the Creative Change model—that has guided thousands of people just like you to make practical, systematic changes in their lives.
 
Their change efforts have focused on relationships, career, health, finances, renewal, mind, emotions, spirituality, and the environment. In addition to these personal areas of daily living, the Creative Change process has supported various groups and corporations to improve their organizational systems and operations.
 
In all these situations, the model acts as an important tool for breaking free from your habits to create, achieve, and sustain a desired future outcome.
 
In the Creative Change model (see figure below), you engage in seven key processes for a specific area or Context of your life.

​Note: hover, or tap on your device, to interact.​
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CONTEXT

ASSESSMENT

Identify your strengths, positive qualities, skills, and related characteristics

IMAGE

Create a sensory‑rich representation of your desired future

BARRIERS

Examine the obstacles that might block your imagined future
 

VALUES

  

SUPPORT

Indicate the necessary resources to sustain your actions

ACTION

Specify the small steps to implement your plan

PLAN

Develop your strategy to transform these barriers into possibilities

ASSESSMENT

Identify your strengths, positive qualities, skills, and related characteristics

IMAGE

Create a sensory‑rich representation of your desired future

BARRIERS

Examine the obstacles that might block your imagined future
 

VALUES

  

SUPPORT

Indicate the necessary resources to sustain your actions

ACTION

Specify the small steps to implement your plan

PLAN

Develop your strategy to transform these barriers into possibilities

You begin with clarifying what is important to you, your values, and finish with support needs. These processes demonstrate an important truth:

Successful change starts from the inside.


​For intentional change to be effective and long lasting, you must begin by establishing a foundation for yourself with your core values and purpose. Then, you will be aligned with or rooted in these values and purpose as you work on your assessment, future image, barriers, plan, action, and support.
 
With this alignment in place, you will feel a compelling energy (“pull”) from the future as well as an inspirational energy (“push”) from your values.
 
When these two energies work together, you are purposeful, your efforts feel more joyful, you can creatively adjust your actions as needed, and you take steps with ease despite challenges you encounter along the way. 
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​To learn more about how you can intentionally and successfully experience your desired future, please refer to Journey of a Lifetime. In this article, you will see how the key ingredients of the Creative Change process can help you transform your barriers and use change as an ally.
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We hope you enjoy the benefits of this proven method and engage the process to make lasting changes in any area of your life.

​​Copyright © 1984- by David J. DePalma. All rights reserved.