From Stuck to Empowered: How Coaching Helps You Navigate the Human Change Cycle
Discover how understanding the Human Change Cycle—and working with a coach—can help you manage life’s ups and downs with clarity and confidence.
What Is the Human Change Cycle?
Change is a constant in life, but navigating it well is a skill. The Human Change Cycle is a psychological model that outlines how people respond to change emotionally and behaviourally.
Understanding this cycle helps individuals move through transitions with greater awareness and resilience.
The cycle is typically broken down into four phases:
Square One: Death and Rebirth
This phase begins with a catalytic event—a major life shift that disrupts your current reality. You may feel lost, disorientated, or emotionally overwhelmed.
Martha Beck calls this the “bug soup” stage, likening it to the caterpillar dissolving inside its cocoon.
“You’re experiencing the demise of the person you’ve been. Dissolving is HARD.”
— Martha Beck [marthabeck.com]
Coaching Support: Coaches help coachees sit with discomfort, process emotions, and avoid rushing into premature decisions. They encourage presence, mindfulness, and self-compassion—tools that help clients stabilise during emotional upheaval while in this phase.
Square Two: Dreaming and Scheming
As the fog lifts, coachees begin to imagine new possibilities. This phase is about visioning, daydreaming, and exploring what could be. It’s a creative and hopeful time, but still fragile.
“Let yourself daydream! Try out imaginary scenarios until you have a clear picture of your goals and desires.”
— Martha Beck [marthabeck.com]
Coaching Support: Coaches use visualisation, values clarification, and exploratory exercises to help clients articulate their emerging identity and goals. This phase is about planting seeds—not rushing into action.
Square Three: The Hero’s Saga
This is the implementation phase. Coachees begin taking real-world steps towards their new life. It’s exciting—but also full of setbacks, failures, and unexpected challenges.
“Expect things to go wrong. It’s not a sign that your dream wasn’t meant to be—it’s a setback you can learn from.”
— Martha Beck [marthabeck.com]
Coaching Support: Coaches help clients stay resilient, refine strategies, and learn from failure. They provide accountability, encouragement, and tools for navigating obstacles with grit and grace.
Square Four: The Promised Land
This is the integration phase. Coachees begin to live in alignment with their new identity. Life feels more stable, joyful, and purpose-driven. But this phase is temporary—change is cyclical, and new challenges will eventually arise.
“Enjoy and keep tweaking! You’ve just negotiated a scary and dramatic transformation, and you deserve to savour your new identity.”
— Martha Beck [marthabeck.com]
Coaching Support: Coaches help clients reflect, celebrate, and prepare for future cycles of change. They reinforce sustainable habits and help clients stay flexible and growth-oriented.
How Coaching Supports Each Phase of Change
Coaching is a powerful tool that helps coachees navigate each phase of the Human Change Cycle with intention and clarity.
Phase 1: Shock & Denial
Coaching Benefit: Coaches provide a safe, non-judgemental space for clients to process emotions and accept their current reality.
“Coaches cannot support a client who has not accepted their current state of being. That’s the first objective.”
— Sam Tsima, Forbes
Phase 2: Exploration
Coaching Benefit: Coaches use powerful questioning to help clients identify options, challenge limiting beliefs, and explore new paths.
“Transformational coaching is focused on deep, sustained personal change—change that requires a new way of thinking or a shift in core behaviour.”
— Joe Frodsham, Coaching Expert
Phase 3: Commitment
Coaching Benefit: Coaches help clients set SMART goals, build accountability systems, and reinforce new habits.
“Commit to new behaviours—one at a time—and celebrate progress.”
— Joe Frodsham
Phase 4: Integration
Coaching Benefit: Coaches support reflection, consolidation of learning, and preparation for future challenges. This builds long-term resilience and adaptability.
Why Coaching Is Growing Globally
The coaching industry is booming, and for good reason. According to the International Coaching Federation (ICF):
- 73% of organisations report enhanced leadership development
- 72% see increased employee engagement
- 66% experience stronger workforce commitment
Coaching helps individuals:
- Reframe challenges as opportunities
- Build emotional intelligence
- Develop a growth mindset
- Strengthen resilience
- Align actions with values
“Coaching becomes the infrastructure for the methodical execution of a clear strategy. It’s transformational.”
— Ozlem Sarioglu, Coaching Thought Leader
Why Understanding the Change Cycle Matters
When coachees understand the Human Change Cycle, they gain:
- Clarity: Knowing where they are in the process
- Compassion: Reducing self-judgement
- Confidence: Knowing what actions to take
- Control: Leading their change journey instead of reacting to it
This awareness is especially powerful during times of uncertainty. Coaching empowers individuals to develop the mindsets, emotional intelligence, and communication skills needed to thrive amid change.
Final Thoughts: Coaching as a Compass for Change
Change is hard—but it doesn’t have to be disorientating, and it certainly does not need to feel like suffering.
The Human Change Cycle offers a map. Coaching provides the compass.
Whether you’re a leader navigating organisational transformation or an individual seeking personal growth, coaching helps you move through change with clarity, courage, and purpose.
In a world where disruption is the norm, coaching isn’t a luxury—it’s a lifeline.