Change Your Story, Change Your Life

🌀 The 4 Phases of Change: Paradigm Shift, Catharsis, Corrective Experience, and Integration

Of Change.

Transformation. Change.
We crave it and we resist it.
We pray for it, but on our terms. We try to control it.
But change rarely shows up the way we want.

We don’t want change, we want our desires to come true.
But life brings change according to its rhythm. Not to our likings.
Change is inevitable.
Everything, everyone changes.
Yet masterful change is rare.

Because to master change, we must change from the inside out.
And that requires one radical move:
Taking full responsibility for our reality.
Owning our creatorship is an all-or-nothing deal.

Most people would rather blame something than claim everything.

Because responsibility is confronting.
It does not feel right, it does not feel good, it does not feel fair.
Blame is easier. Victimhood has perks.

But no true transformation happens without this shift in the story:

I create my story. I shape my experience. 100% of it.

From that point forward, everything becomes possible.
And still, it doesn’t happen overnight.
Transformation unfolds in phases.
Each one matters.

© Philippe Lopez

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Phase 1: Paradigm Shift / The Mind Sees Differently

In the post “Creating Reality” we have seen how Beliefs Systems (BS) shape our thoughts, emotions and experiences. With that understanding we can begin to change, and that is phase one of transformation: the paradigm shift.

I also like to call this phase “Clarity” because that’s what it feel like.

Yet Clarity is not change.
It’s the recognition of where I stand now.
It’s awareness of what’s really happening.
It’s the awakening from the sleepwalking, not the cure to it.

Form a scientific perspective this shift is possible due to neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to change its neural connections), and neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons). Neuroplasticity is the brain’s remarkable capacity to rewire itself in response to experience, learning, and intention.

In the post "Psychedelic Healing Part 1", I described how psychedelics can tremendously enhance this process, but they’re not the only way.

The oldest method in the book? Slow down.

Observe the inner process. Start from the moment of sensory input. Pause here. Before the mind get’s online with a story. Stay with it through presence and feeling. Then only, move on to interpretation, to your response.

Break it down. And discover where in the cognitive process you have agency.

In sleepwalking mode, we jump from stimuli to response in microseconds. But once we realize that sensory stimuli pass through filters, our belief systems, we begin to understand the power of those filters.

A simple example: An unknown person shouting at me in the street might trigger one response. My partner shouting the exact same words will likely trigger another.

The difference? My filters. My BS.

A great way to reveal your filters is to listen to someone whose filters differ from yours, or better yet, someone who has done the work to clear most of them.

You stop searching for the glasses already sitting on your nose.
Now, you see the glasses. It’s the “aha” moment.

You gain insight.

Clarity allows you to discern between facts and stories.

And that’s when, psychologically, the possibility of new choices opens. That’s when, in yogic terms, you can start unraveling your samskaras, the conditioned imprints shaping your perception.

This moment is important. It is sacred. It has an associated feeling of homecoming, the smell of Zen. But it is not enough to stabilize change.

Because seeing the story doesn’t mean it has changed.
It means now, you can begin to change.