ChangeWorks Institute

Leading your life.

On purpose.

Why I Care About This Work

I know what it is like to be lost and confused and not know what to do next.

Years ago, I was preparing to teach a class about coaching with hypnosis and NLP. I had the tools, I had experience, and I thought I knew what I wanted to say. Then I turned on the camera and heard myself say, “Have you ever been lost and confused and you didn’t know what to do? Well, I have.”

I had to stop the recording.

In the years leading up to that moment, I had experienced a series of difficult losses and transitions in my family, my marriage, my work, and the life I thought I was building. What became clear to me was that knowing techniques for helping people change was not the same as understanding how change actually works when you are the one living through it.

That question stayed with me. How do we help people think clearly, manage themselves, make useful choices, and find their way through change without adding more pressure, impossible demands, or unnecessary struggle?

That became the work.

Today, I care especially about helping coaches, counselors, therapists, and other people who spend their lives helping others. The people who support change need support too. They need useful ways to understand their own experience and stay grounded in what matters, while helping their clients activate and learn to trust their own inner learner.

In particular, I want to help practitioners support their clients in developing greater agency, greater ease, and a better sense of what it takes to be okay in their world.

That's what I needed to learn to do. It's something I still practice today, and it's why ChangeWorks Institute exists.

What ChangeWorks Institute Does

ChangeWorks Institute is a training and coaching organization focused on one very practical question: How can we get better at working with change?

We teach the Self Directed Change® Frameworks, a collection of thinking models, practices, and coaching tools designed to help people understand what is happening, clarify what they want, identify useful options, and take reasonable action.

The Self Directed Change Method is our core teaching and informs everything we do at the Institute. It is at the center of our Self Directed Change Curriculum and Master Syllabus, and it provides the underlying organization and thinking that informs the Aligned Practitioner Series.

Our work is designed for coaches, counselors, therapists, helping professionals, and thoughtful people who want to become more skillful at navigating change for themselves and as they guide others.

Throughout the Aligned Practitioner Series, we offer practical tools and frameworks, along with what Richard Bandler simply called “models that work well.” We use them to help practitioners create an aligned practice that feels light and easy to run, with a steady flow of clients who are a good fit, services that are a good fit for those clients, and a practice structure that is also a good fit for the practitioner.

Through workshops, coaching, professional training, certification, and practical tools, we help people build greater clarity, confidence, agency, and ease in the way they approach change.

These trainings do much more than give practitioners another stack of techniques to fill the gap between starting points and desired outcomes. Instead, we carefully help practitioners build foundations, pathways, and practices that offer greater peace of mind and a more organized and orderly way of working, so both practitioners and their clients can feel more confident and in control.

Our aim is to help practitioners develop reliable ways to think, inquire, practice, and respond generatively, especially when being with and managing change gets complicated.

Why Practitioners Need Self Directed Change

Helping other people change can be deeply satisfying, and clearly it is demanding work.

Here's what we see at ChangeWorks Institute.

Clients arrive with uncertainty, stress, conflicting goals, difficult emotions, unexpected setbacks, and sometimes no clear idea of what they want instead.

The practitioner is expected to develop an alliance, listen carefully, understand what matters to each individual client, know what to ask, and all along the way help create useful movement without simply giving advice or taking over the client's life.

Meanwhile, practitioners have their own lives, stress, doubts, expectations, and limits. Knowing more techniques does not automatically make any of that easier.

What we have found helps is having an intentional way to organize how we approach the work, so the practitioner has a clearer path into the client's map of their experience, and the client has a clearer path through their own work.

The Aligned Practitioner Series expresses and applies the various aspects of the Self Directed Change Method to the realities of being a practitioner and running a practice. SDC provides the underlying structure for asking useful questions, clarifying present and desired states, checking motivation and resources, developing workable outcomes, recognizing options, and practicing the skills that support change over time.

Just as important, practitioners can use these same models to evaluate their client work, their practices, and themselves. That matters to me because our job is to become increasingly skillful at helping people notice, learn, choose, and develop their own capacity to work with what life puts in front of them.

That makes the work more collaborative, gives the client more agency, and gives the practitioner greater clarity and confidence about where they stand and what may be useful next.

Why I Am Doing This Now

ChangeWorks Institute began in 2009, but an important turning point came for me in 2011.

That was the year I sat down to record what I thought would be a straightforward training about tools I already knew how to use. Instead, I found myself facing a much larger question about what people actually need when life changes underneath them.

Since then, I have spent my years studying, coaching, teaching, experimenting, revising, and organizing what I was learning.

Most of the early ideas stayed. Others morphed into their current form, while still others changed substantially or were eventually folded into the larger context of the Self Directed Change and Aligned Practice ecosystem.

I've made every effort to take the parts that have proven most useful and craft them into teachable frameworks and practices. I've researched, practiced, and tested this material, in many cases for years, before I finally understood where a particular piece belonged in the larger picture.

As with any developmental process carefully tended over time, both the models and the work have become more coherent. What started as a collection of useful change tools soon became a distinct method for thinking about change itself, and then a larger framework for helping practitioners bring that thinking into their work, their practices, and their own lives.

Today we have a body of work that can be taught, practiced, tested in everyday life, and passed along to other practitioners and their clients. That's why I'm doing more of this work now.

I want coaches, counselors, therapists, and other helping professionals to have access to the kinds of frameworks I wished I had when I was trying to make sense of my own transitions, become a better person, and become a better practitioner at the same time.

We do not need to make change more dramatic than it already is. We can make it clearer and more workable, and when possible we can make the process easier and more pleasant too, helping life feel safer so we can feel more okay being ourselves in it.

Our longtime motto still holds true today: “If everything were easier and more fun, would that be okay?”

We think so. In the last 20+ years I've put my whole self and every available resource into this work. Because I believe in the propositions of Self Directed Change, I'm determined to offer them with all the skill and precision I can muster.

A Simple Look at Aligned Practice

The Aligned Practitioner Series is informed throughout by the Self Directed Change® Method, our underlying framework for understanding and working with change. Aligned Practice brings that thinking into the everyday realities of being a practitioner, working with clients, and building a practice that fits the person running it.

We organize the work into three parts: Foundation, Pathway, and Practice. Together they provide a practical map for becoming more aligned in yourself, helping your clients get better results, and creating an aligned practice that feels lighter and easier to run.

Foundation: Aligned Self

We begin with you.

Before trying to improve your practice, it helps to understand how you manage yourself within it. Safe Place, Stress Cycle, and Trained Mind help us explore safety, stress, state, attention, thinking, and the conditions that support clearer choices.

The aim isn’t to eliminate stress or become perfectly calm. It is to become more aware of what is happening, learn what helps you become more settled and resourceful, and develop practices you can return to when you need them.

That foundation matters because you are part of every helping relationship you enter.

Pathway: Better Results

From there, we turn toward how you work with people.

Alliance, Big Picture, and Self Directed Change help us step back and orient before immediately trying to solve something. We look at what is happening, what matters, where someone would like to go, and what may help them move in that direction.

This gives the practitioner a clearer path into the client’s map of their experience, while helping the client develop a clearer path through their own work.

Along the way, we keep checking agency. What is under our direct control? What can we influence? What resources and options are available? As that becomes more clear, we can become more confident about our choices and better able to discern what to do next.

Practice: Aligned Practice

Then we bring the work into the practice itself.

Ideal Client Results, Transitions & Focus, and Practice Playbook help you clarify who you’re best equipped to help, the results you help people achieve, and how to organize what you’re learning into a practical way of working that you can rely on and continue to refine.

This is where alignment becomes increasingly visible. The practitioner, the clients, the work you do together, and the way you run your practice begin to fit together more coherently.

The goal is not a perfect practice. It is an aligned practice, one that feels lighter and easier to run, with greater peace of mind, a more organized and orderly way of working, and more confidence about what to do next.

Right Step, Right Time, Right Support

Throughout Aligned Practice, we return to a simple idea: right step, right time, right support.

Sometimes the next reasonable step is taking action. Sometimes it is learning something, getting more information, asking for help, finding a resource, changing the timing, or reconsidering what you thought you wanted.

And sometimes the right step is simply to get more settled, take another look, and begin again.

This is part of what makes the work self directed. We are not trying to force ourselves or our clients through a predetermined sequence. We are learning to orient, inquire, notice what is happening, and make increasingly useful choices about what comes next.

Where to Begin: Aligned Practice: 90 Day Reset

Aligned Practice: 90 Day Reset is our Level One introduction to this work.

The guided experience begins with Alignment Assessment & Orientation. We start with Client Calibration and Personal Review, introduce Safe Place and the Stress Cycle, and then bring what you’ve learned together in a Personal Roadmap.

In other words, before we start trying to change things, we orient.

From there, the 90 Day Reset moves through the Aligned Practice map in order: Foundation, Pathway, and Practice. Each step introduces another part of the framework and gives you an opportunity to apply it to yourself, your work with clients, and the practice you’re creating.

You don’t have to learn everything at once, and you don’t have to have everything figured out before you begin.

We start where you are, get a clearer sense of where you’d like to go, and find the right step, at the right time, with the right support.

And when things change, as they certainly will, you can always return to begin again.

OUR STORY

ChangeWorks Institute's mission empowers coaches, counselors, therapists, and leaders to do more effective work with greater ease.

* Created 2009 by Jim Kelley, CWI & the Self-Directed Change® Frameworks offer innovative coaching options, including courses, one-on-one session work, and masterminds.

* CWI Programs focus on enhancing self-knowledge, state management, and decision-making skills, fostering a deep sense of empowerment.

* Join us now to elevate your skills, become more effective, and grow your practice.

OUR MISSION

"If everything were easier and more fun would that be okay?"

* This question emphasizes our cutting edge approach to working with the stress that accompanies transitions and change.

* This question energizes a humanistic educational approach to professional growth and personal change work.

* Our Mission empowers coaches, counselors, therapists, and leaders to elevate their skills, become more effective with clients, and develop a reliable practice playbook for better results.

* We believe this formula works:

Thinking Skills + Motivation Factors = Easier More Fun

As these 3 factors increase or decrease, so do your results.

Judy Sugg, PhD

Licensed Professional Counselor

Jim is amazing -- he has so many skills, and so much insight. Change requires less work with Jim -- highly recommend.

Jack Canfield

Author & Speaker, CEO Canfield Training Group

I want people to walk away from this interview not just knowing about you, but saying, "I would like to work with that guy. He could help me. Because I think you're that good.

Jane Cowan

Entrepreneur & Client

This new outlook and awareness blows my mind! Thanks to Jim Kelley of ChangeWorks Institute for this new awareness. I'm truly grateful for your teaching and training.