How to Make Life Changes Using Psychologist Kurt Lewin's Unfreeze - Change - Freeze Method

Nobody likes change. Change is difficult. Change forces us out of our comfort zone. However, more often than not, changes occur because they must, and when they do we usually find we are better off afterwards. But what do you do when you acknowledge that something needs to change and yet you don't know where to start?

Kurt Lewin was a psychologist in the early 1900's who taught that change had to occur in three stages. He labeled these stages Unfreeze, Change, Refreeze. Once you study these phases and understand how to use them to your advantage you can begin making changes in any area of your life: use them to change your career; to change your relationship; even to change your health.

The basis of Lewin's model was changing a block of ice. If you wanted to change ice from one shape to a completely different form, what would you need to do? You could try chipping away at the ice and hoping it would come out looking somewhat close to your desired goal form. But wouldn't it be simpler to alter the ice from a block into liquid and then back into the shape you want? That is the premise of this technique. Unfreeze the "block of ice", Change it into water, the Refreeze it into the form you'd like it to be.

Okay, so you understand the concept of changing ice, but how can you apply that to your life? The steps are pretty simple, although that doesn't mean it will be easy. Each phase takes time. How much time? Well, precisely as long as it takes! For example, let's say that you would like to make the changes it would take to finally lose weight and get into shape.

Starting at the beginning, you will need to Unfreeze your current situation. Basically you will list the why's, what's, when's and who's. You would do this by determining a convincing reason why the change needs to take place, what needs to happen for this change to occur, when these things should take place, and who needs to be involved in the steps to the change. So if your desired change was to lose weight, your Unfreezing might go something like the scenario below.