Method

Life Changing

How to Change

You're here because you want to change something.

It's easier to change things outside of us - cities, jobs, partners, etc. It's harder to change the things inside of us - cognitions and emotions that lead to behaviors. This is why people tend to focus on changing external circumstances.

Change is a slog. It takes intentional focus and consistency over a period of time.

This is true whether it's your relationship with your spouse or writing with your non-dominant hand. You have to focus intentionally, consistently, and over a period of time.

Change is intentional and structured, not accidental.

When you understand the principles behind change, you begin to recognize them in real time. Your increased awareness increases your capacity to change.

Gratification

Immediate vs. Delayed

Short-term always competes with long-term. The magic is in delayed gratification. It's paradoxical - the quickest way is the slowest way.

Competence

Skill only develops through intentional repetition. For example, you type on a keyboard everyday and you haven't gotten any better. Your practice has to be intentional.

  • Unconscious Incompetence: Unaware of what you're not good at
  • Conscious Incompetence: Aware of what you're not good at
  • Conscious Competence: Practicing what you're not good at
  • Unconscious Competence: You're good at it and it's automatic

Feedback

Consistent vs. Inconsistent

Some domains provide consistent feedback. For example, weights at the gym or keys on a piano. While other things in our life provide inconsistent feedback. For example, relationships and other people's behaviors.

"Those that can't change their minds, can't change anything."

— George Shaw

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Emotional Agency™

'Agency' is a sense of control. It's a felt sense. It's like confidence but deeper. It's a knowing of one's capabilities.

Someone that is low agency blames their surroundings. Someone that is high agency simply finds a way.

"Whether you think you can, or think you can't — you're right!"

— Henry Ford

This is agency.

Consider levels in a video game. The character is doing what you tell it to do. You either allow the surroundings to improve your skills or you blame the same surroundings for being too difficult.

The point is, you have a choice in how you see your surroundings. What was once compulsive will become intentional.

Agency exists in three domains: physical, mental, and emotional. Guess which one we work on?

As an adult, you have physical and mental agency. You can go where you want and you can think what you want. But what about your emotions?

The Problem

Low Emotional Agency

  • Does it feel like sometimes your emotions control you?
  • Does it seem like people and circumstances make you feel?
  • Do you find yourself worrying about an imagined future that doesn't exist?

This all reflects very little emotional agency.

The Solution

Develop High Emotional Agency

  • Teaches you that the only person that makes you feel is you
  • Simplifies all worries, anxieties, and fears into one single problem and helps you solve it, for good
  • Helps you start to create your subjective reality intentionally rather than compulsively

Roadmap

8 Tenets of Emotional Agency™

1
The Chain Reaction Understand how stimuli reveal your beliefs and perceptions. The world truly is a mirror.
2
Primary Emotions This lesson demystifies emotions once and for all. You start to see how deep your childhood conditioning really is.
3
The Predicament This is where the paradigm shift happens. Like a fish out of water for the first time.
4
The Charade An absurd pretense in how you literally use your emotions. Your emotions have utility.
5
One Problem The root cause of all your symptoms. Change your conditioning to this and you're a free person.
6
Your Compass Two distinct categories of your 'One Problem'. Let them be a compass pointing to what you need to work on.
7
Safety vs Security At first glance these words feel interchangeable. You will soon learn they are worlds apart. This takes you out of childhood conditioning and truly into adulthood.
8
Aware of Both. Focused on One Two points of awareness. Focus on one. Simple but powerful. An instant mindset shift.

Results Oriented

What Do You Want?

It's really quite simple- you can either focus on what you want or what you don't want.

Therapy and coaching can either focus on your problems or your goals. Either way it's self-fulfilling. Having goals for yourself, your relationship, or you business will naturally reveal your limitatitons. Limitations are simply, lack of knowledge, skillset, and/or attitude.

You start seeing all of your behaviors (or lack thereof) as serving a purpose, whether it's conscious or not. Instead of seeing your behaviors (or lack thereof) as downstream effects. This is the switch from a "victim" mentality (low agency) to a "victor" mentality (high agency).

From compulsive to intentional. From backward looking to forward looking.

Teleology

the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve

Etiology

the explanation of phenomena in terms of the cause by which they arise

"What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you."

— Anthony De Mello

Next Steps

"Jesse has helped me uncover beliefs I didn't even know I had, making a real impact on how I lead. Honestly, I wish I'd started working with him years ago!" -Austin, TX

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