5 Phases of Self Transformation: Find Your Number and Be Successful

You know what’s rough? Making lasting change in your life. Whether it’s getting fit or toned, or changing your career, or changing the quality of your relationships after years of dysfunction; it can be a rough process.

Rough because our natural instinct is to fight against change. To fight against something that is unfamiliar and unpracticed. When you want to wake up at 6am to do a workout and you’ve previously slept in, it takes something powerful in you to wake up and begin the practice of something new.

But I’m ahead of myself a bit; I first want to talk about key phases of change or self transformation. Knowing what phase you’re in will help you have far more success than suddenly deciding to wake up one day and say something like “I’m going to commit to a 3 years master’s program,” and you haven’t a clue where to actually get started.

Phases of Change

There are 5 main parts to change: (1) Pre-contemplation, (2) Contemplation, (3) Research, (4) Action, (5) Maintenance. There a bunch of different way to break this up further, but for our purposes we’ll leave this at 5 main parts.

So what are they? Well number one is “My life is fine, although, I wake up sad everyday. I don’t see what I should change.” Also known as denial or unawareness that something needs attention in your world.

Number two is, “I can see that being sad every morning and not feeling my best overall isn’t a sustainable way to live, something needs to change.” Also known as awareness and personal responsibility.

Number three, “I should probably find out what my problem is and how to fix it, rather than just suddenly saying I’m going to meditate 30 minutes a day and that’ll fix this sadness.” Also known as research and fact checking.

Number four, “I looked up some stuff to help with this sadness; and I’ve decided to try working out, a short guided meditation in the morning, and I’ve got an appointment with a therapist in a week. Progress!” Also known as planning and taking action.

Number five, “I’ve been doing those things for a few weeks (or months) and I do feel better, but now I need to focus on continuing to keep this new behavior or even add new stuff to help me to continue feeling better and happier.” Also known as keeping it up and tweaking your practice along the way for best results.

Find Your Number

So where are you? What number do you identify with the most? And please know that identifying with any number on this spectrum is fine, including the first. The reality is that self transformation is usually sparked by pain or discomfort. Something is amiss and that pushes you out of pre-contemplation into another phase.

There is however a reason why it’s laid out in this order though. Sometimes you really do wake up one day more clear than ever and you just know something in your life has to change drastically. Here a natural instinct is to act on impulse because you feel so driven.

But if you haven’t looked up information to help you be successful, then you will probably fail. Not because you’re defective, but because information is literally power. When you know precisely what to do and what to avoid in your quest for self transformation your chances for success and maintaining that success rise by a lot.

About The Phases

Pre-contemplation

Pre-contemplation is nothing to ashamed of. Furthermore sometimes there is more going on than meets the eye and it could be you need to have an experience or talk to someone else to find out more about what is now only a potential problem. Most important is not be self critical and also not critical of others while you navigate this decidedly gray space. You could also call this place, just living.

Contemplation

Contemplation is still a pretty gray state too unfortunately, but it includes more awareness and the opportunity to explore what matters to you. This is a great time to talk with a good friend who knows you well, journal out some ideas or even look up some prompts on google about what you value and why.

It can help you get clearer on what direction you want to go in and what action or actions you want to take. Sometimes it’s exactly what the word implies, simply sitting quietly somewhere for a while and just thinking. The idea here is that some form of thinking and pre-action is occurring and it helps you get

motivated.

Research

You need information, you need good information, you need information relevant to who you are. When we’re contemplating a new direction in our life like changing our eating habits or adding a new mediation practice or revving up a workout routine we need information that helps us get to the goal efficiently and in a healthy manner.

Unfortunately not all information is created equal, but a good start is again... google. When you see a trend on tiktok or other social media, check out it’s validity. If you have a weight loss goal type in something like, “weight loss for a 40 year old woman” because not all weight loss information is relevant.

If ‘40 year old woman’ happens to be part of your identity, look up information that works for you. The idea here is to find information that helps you get what you desire and this same information may very well help you avoid pitfalls that would make it harder to reach your goal.

Action

You need to set yourself up for success, remove triggers if possible, and change your routine to prompt new behavior. Like if on a new eating plan, don’t have bags of chips laying around if that’s an easy food trigger.

Change your route when coming home from work if you you’d like to add in a 20 min walk to get in some exercise. You actually want to rely on will power as little as possible. Do everything in your power to make this new, reasonable sized change easy and simple to implement. Your own resistance will be more than enough to deal with at first.

Planning is your friend. Plan your food for a week if your self transformation is food related. Plan a new journaling exercise if your therapist has recommended it for emotional processing. Above all, write your plan down, and go over it as many times as you need to remind yourself what you’d like to accomplish, why, and what specific steps you’re going to take to reach your goal.

Maintenance

Do you have rewards? Healthy rewards? Things that positively re-inforce your behavior? Because we are motivated by pleasure and we avoid pain, that’s our human story. Accepting that will help you make the best decisions in order to keep up with your new behaviors and giving yourself grace/forgiveness/self compassion when you don’t do it perfectly.

Maintenance of new behaviors in your self transformation journey can include rewards likes going to a fun event, giving yourself a gift of something you’ve wanted for a while, using a chart or habit tracker and giving yourself stars for number of days/weeks/months/tasks completed.

There are a lot of ways to be good to yourself in exchange for the discipline maintained. Discipline isn’t about willing yourself with force, it’s about creating carrots or candies or whatever motivates you to keep moving forward, no stick required.

So these are the five phases of self transformation and what you can expect throughout the process of reaching a goal to improve the quality of your life. The main point I want to leave you with is that change is a process, it’s easy to feel driven toward a thing and skip out on the steps required to actually make it successful. Don’t set up yourself up for failure, set yourself up success because you rock and you deserve it!

Santee Blakey is a Life Coach and Licensed Massage Therapist at Soul Growth Wellness. When she's not biking, reading, or biking, or reading (she needs new hobbies, suggest her some:-), she'll be writing and enjoying a caramel frappacino in her favorite Starbucks (this is obviously pre-Covid) *sigh*. Follow her on Youtube for her series --> Self Acceptance: What It's Really Like (A Journey).

You know what helps you through the 5 phases of transformation? Having the energy to do it at all! Increase your energy here!