The 3E Change Model

1/16/23. If there is something we wish to bring about in our lives, we can harness our natural tendencies using what I call the 3E Change Model.

It's like swimming with, rather than against, the stream of change...

Minimum Viable Structure

1/23/23. Setting up a control structure for ourselves immediately invites resistance from the parts of us who by nature rebel against control.

A better alternative may be to think in terms of enablement structures...

Gaining Agency

1/30/23. Acting from programming or triggering rarely produces results aligned with what is most important and precious to us.

Expanding and strengthening choice is the life's work of turning inward...

Why We Get Stuck

2/6/23. We all get stuck not doing something important we want to be doing. Or stuck doing something that is not serving our best interests that we want to stop doing.

The problem surfaces at the behavioral level...

Desire

2/13/23. Our word Desire comes from the Latin Desiderare and means “to long for, wish for, demand, or expect.” But the more literal Latin definition is “to await what the stars will bring.”

Desire is normal, natural, and very human...

Plasticity

2/20/23. In the End the Fight approach, we have a set of foundational beliefs that thwart limitation and stasis. One of these beliefs is Plasticity.

Plasticity is the quality of being shapable or moldable...

Locus of Control

2/27/23. Imagine a donut. Locus of Control refers to where on the donut we place our attention and energy.

The space outside the donut consists of things happening in the world that do not...

AM-CHOOSE-WILL

3/6/23. This is one of the most powerful language frameworks I've found for reclaiming agency and initiating action.

AM-CHOOSE-WILL quickly pulls together and aligns key levels of our internal organization...

The Mess of Identity

3/13/23. As teacher of radical inquiry J. Krishnamurti put it, “Our consciousness is in perpetual conflict, and rather messy.”

Identity is a level of organization that gets especially tangled. It has 3 levels that can be in conflict...

The Reward Reframe

3/20/23. The Reward Reframe is a mindset shift that can remove resistance to doing important things by taking them OFF the To Do List.

Consider activities that lead to greater health, prosperity, fulfillment, and freedom...

3 Empowering Questions

3/27/23. I read a lot of books on leadership and management and and learned a double-digit number of coaching models.

The intent of those models was to influence the behavior of others—individuals and teams...

Legit Good Feelings

4/3/23. Philosophers from time immemorial have pointed out that life is difficult. Reality serves us indigestible sandwiches from time to time.

And when things are ostensibly going well, we've still got the chaos of our minds and hearts...

Possible, Probable, Inevitable

4/10/23. If we want to accomplish anything, we pass through the stages of possibility, probability, and inevitability.

This framework is helpful for both discerning where we're at and what are our next best steps...

Plugging In Our Cords

4/17/23. Given half a chance, we give away our agency and power to others, organizations, or even things.

This self-sabotage takes a thousand forms, from outright childlike dependency to...

A Frictionless World

4/24/23. I was reminiscing recently with a dear friend and somehow the topic of high school physics came up.

She said, “You remember those thought experiments about frictionless ponds?"...

Theory of Constraints

5/1/23. The theory was introduced by Dr. Eli Goldratt in his 1984 book The Goal.

Although it originated as a tool that revolutionized manufacturing, it has broad application and can be considered a thinking model...

Sharpening Versus Cutting

5/8/23. You likely know of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits, which are close to gospel in personal development.

His 7th Habit is “Sharpen the saw.” The metaphor is of a dull saw requiring considerably more effort when cutting, then eventually becoming unusable…

Authentic Self-Esteem

5/15/23. How much we regard ourselves seems to delimit our success and fulfillment. It's as if our happiness, health, and prosperity can only rise to the level at which we value ourselves.

Like a hard ceiling we bump up against...

Dead Ends

5/22/23. No matter how talented, energetic, and committed we are, we hit dead ends. We hit minor dead ends in a work session. We hit major dead ends on projects and life intentions.

That just seems to be how we're made, but...

Conditional Fulfillment

5/29/23. The mindset of Conditional Fulfillment is one of the chief causes of both dissatisfaction and stuckness.

It arises from attaching some outcome we want to an external source outside our direct control...

The Power of How

6/5/23. The most useful tools for creating momentum through the Possible, Probable, Inevitable stages are HOW questions.

HOW questions are the bridge from ideation and consideration to tangible action...

Toward & Away

6/12/23. We move toward things we want and away from things we don't.

We want more health and less sickness, more connection and less alienation, more success and less failure....

Resource Recovery

6/19/23. We have resources of knowledge, skill, experience, perspective, and temperament.

We all show real genius in what we get done and how we do it, personally and professionally. Seriously. Life is challenging....

The Importance of Importance

6/26/23. Values clarification is part of most systems of personal development and organizational change.

You've probably been through the routine of brainstorming a list of values on a flipchart...

Law of Requisite Variety

7/3/23. The term “variety” was borrowed from Life Sciences and introduced to cybernetics by W. Ross Ashby in the 60s.

The Law states that the capacity of any system must have greater complexity (variety) than...

Time Slippage

7/17/23. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as “time management,” despite all the resources devoted to the topic.

On one hand, time marches on, regardless of my opinion about it, residing outside my control...

3 Antidotes to Overwhelm

7/24/23. Overwhelm is a common variation on stuckness, arising when energy and output grind to a halt because we don't know what to do next.

We cease the activity of enjoyable, focused productivity as our minds pinwheel...

Optimal Stress

7/31/23. Stress gets a bad rap, widely thought of as something to avoid or eliminate. That's problematic because there is no growth without stress.

Growth is the activity of developing resources in response to a stimulus...

Journey to ENUA

8/7/23. The good old Eisenhower Matrix— made popular by Covey in his 7 Habits book—is a tool most of us know.

But what this and most productivity systems lack is an essential distinction...

The Subtraction Solution

8/14/23. When we want to change an aspect of our wellness, efficacy, or life satisfaction, our default approach is additive.

We reflexively try to do MORE to bring it about. More books, more tactics, more hustle, more...

Guardrails

8/21/23. When we simply, clearly state what we deeply desire, creative options appear that we could not see before.

But I want to say more about the “without” aspect of the Intentional Desire statement...

Going Fallow

8/28/23. When I look around, I see seasonality everywhere. Wisdom literature that has stood the test of time also points toward this truth.

A season of sowing sets the conditions for reaping outcomes we desire...

3E Change: Connecting Purpose

9/4/23. We tend to do things we consider essential. Not just important, but essential. They concern a matter of life and death. Or they embody and express core values and identity.

In other words, they serve a purpose...

3E Change: Joyful Perspective

9/11/23. Let's start with a truism: we do things we like to do. We don't need to infuse more energy or strategy or oversight to get them done.

Enjoyment is the motivation—if that “M” word is even relevant in this case...

3E Change: Enabling Ease

9/18/23. We tend to “knock out” things we find to be easy. We don't fuss and fight with ourselves much about getting them done.

These activities have low perceived effort and a known process for completion...

2 Universal Constraints

9/25/23. Constraints are the real-world bottlenecks, obstructions, and snags that hinder the function of any system.

Two major constraints we all deal with are energy and commitments...

Knowing Your North

10/2/23. I've tried living without a good map or a direction calibrated to the stars.

The results were predictable: things I thought I wanted didn't appear and things I knew I didn't want accumulated...

Coupling & Decoupling

10/16/23. When we stall out doing important and essential things, we can ask what the activity has become connected to that causes drag.

Or from what source of acceleration it has become disconnected...

Tipping Into Action

10/23/23. We get stalled or struggle to get started on essential things. That just seems to be part of being human.

But there's a way to get back to healthy action by recognizing and using a particular tipping point.

Marathon Pacing

10/30/23. I'm interested in what we can learn from those who explore the limits of human experience and performance.

And more important, how to apply these learnings to our everyday hero's journey...