I read this article in a magazine and typed up part of it for a friend but I thought it was interesting. Maybe someone else will get some benefit out of it to:
Phase One: Dissolving
The first phase of change is the scariest especially because we aren't taught to expect it. It's the time when we lose our identity and are left temporarily formless: person soup. Most people fight like crazy to keep their identities from dissolving. "This is just a blip," we tell ourselves when circumstances rock our world. "I'm the same person, and my life will go back to being the way it was."
Sometimes this is true. But in other cases, wehn real metamorphosis has begun, we run into a welter of "dissolving" experiences. We may feel that everything is falling apart, that we're losing everyone and everything. Dissolving feels like death, becasue it is, it's the demise of the person you've been. I don't care if you're Jane Q. Normal or Wonder Woman; this is scary. But you'll get through it. You won't have a choice.
When we're dissolving we may get hysterical, fight our feelings, try to recapture our former lives, or jump immediatelly toward some new status quo. All these measures actually slow down Phase One and make it more painful. The following strategies work better:
-Live one day (or 10 minutes) at a time. Instead of dwelling on hopes and fears about an unknowable future, focus your attention on whatever is happening right now.
-"Cocoon" by caring for yourself in physical immediate ways. Wrap yourself in a blanket, make yourself a cup of hot tea, attend an exercise class, whatever feels comforting.
-Talk to others who have gone through a metamorphosis. If you don't have a wise relative or friend, a therapist can be a source of reassurance.
-Let yourself grieve. Even if you are leaving an unpleasant situation you'll probably go through the normal human response to any loss: the emotional roller coaster called the grieving process. You'll cycle through denial, anger, sandness, and acceptance many times. Just experiencing these feelings will help them to pass more quickly. If you think this sounds frustratingly passive, you're right. Dissolving isn't something you do; it's something that happens to you. The closest you'll come to controlling it is relaxing and trusting the process.Phase Two: Imagining
For those of us who have just a few tiny control issues, Phase Two is as welcome as rain after a drought. This is when the part of you that knows your destiny, the image in your psyche, will beigin giving you instructions about how to reorganize the remnants of your old identity into something altogether different.
You'll know the beginning of Phase Two when your mind's eye starts seeing images of the life you are about to create. These can't be forced. Like dissolving they happen to you and they are never what you expected. You're cecoming a new person, and you'll develop traits your old self didn't have. You may feel compelled to change your hairstyle or wardrove, or redecorate your living space. The old oder simply seems wrong, and you'll begin redordering your outer situation to reflect your inner rebirth. Here are some ways you may want to respond when you being spontaneously imaging the future:
-Cut out magazine pictures you find appealing or interesting. Glue them onto a piece of butcher paper. The resulting collage will be an illustration of the life you're trying to create.
-Let yourself daydream. Your job is to try out imaginary scenarios until you have a clear picture of your goals and desires. You'll save a lot of time, effort and grief by giving yourself time to do this in your head before you attempt it in the real world.
Phase Two is all about images: making them up, making them clear, making them possible. Moving through this stage, you'll start to feel an impulse to go from dreaming to scheming. Write down both dreams and schemes then gather information about how you might create them.Phase Three: Re-formingAs your dreams become schemes you'll begin itching to make them come true. This signals Phase Three, the implementation stage of the change process. Phase Three is when you stop fantasizing about selling your art and start submitting work to galleries, or go beyond ogling a friend's brother to having her set you up on a date. You'll feel motivated to do real, physical things to build a new life. And then you'll fail, repeatedly.
Re-forming your life like anything new, complex, and important, inevitabley brings up problems you didn't expect. That's why in contrast to the starry eyes that are so useful in phase two, phase three demands the ingenuity of Thomas Edison and the tenacity of a pit bull. So:
-Expect things to go wrong. To become all you can be you must keep working toward your dreams even when your initial efforts are unsuccessful.
-Be willing to start over. Every time your plans fail you will briefly return to Phase One, feeling lost and confused. This is an opportunity to release some of the illusions that created hitches in your plan.
-Revisit Phase Two adjusting your dreams and schmes to include the truths you learned from your experimenation
-Persist. Keep debuggin and reimplementing your new and improved plans until they work. If you've followed all the steps above, they eventually will.Phase Four: Flying
Phase Four is the payoff, the time when your new identity is fully formed and able to fly. The following strategies which can help you to optimize the delightful situation are about fine-tuning, not drastic transformation.
-Enjoy! You've just negotiated a scary and dramtic transformation, and you deserve to savor your new identity. Spend time every day focusing on gratitude for your success.
-Make small improvements. Find little ways to make your new life a bit less stressful, a bit more pleasurable.
-Know that another change is just around the bend. Tehre's no way to predict ho long you'll stay in Phase Four; maybe days, maybe decades. Don't attribute your happiness to your new identity; security lies in knowing how to deal with metamorphosis whenever it occurs.