Yes. Absolutely people can really change. And they need your help because no-one changes alone.
In this episode of Stories of Change with Kim Harris live on Yarra Valley FM we answer the question, can people really change. Acceptance, courage, and wisdom are essential elements in the process of change as well as support from other people. Listen or read the transcript below to learn how essential it is for people to help people change.
Key Takeaways
- People can change, and it’s easier with motivation and support from others.
- Acceptance, courage, and wisdom are essential elements in the process of change.
- Change is a process that consists of different phases, and understanding these phases can make the journey easier.
- Support from others and other additional resources can significantly aid navigating the change process.
We Answer the Question: Can people really change.
The Opposite of the Effects of Isolation and Loneliness are Togetherness FX.
Welcome to Yarra Valley FM. My name is Kim Harris and you’re listening to Stories of Change. Over the next few weeks and months I’m going to be unpacking this concept of change and hopefully bringing some people on board to talk about their own stories of change.
The Yarra Valley FM studio is undergoing a lot of change. We’re moving to a new complex in Healesville, which is so exciting. A shout out to Matt Shore, Bruce Argyle and David Oaten. We’ve been the painting crew over there at the new station. Things are really shaping up and coming together really well over there. So very exciting things happening.
Something for the diary is to mark in our opening party. The whole community is invited and that will be on the 3rd of the 3rd 2023 and it’s actually going to be at 3 o’clock. So come down if you enjoy a bit of a barbecue and want to watch history happen right before your eyes. Lots of exciting things, but let’s get back to the topic at hand.
Change. Okay, well, we don’t really know sometimes why change can be so hard and we all know the recent changes that we’ve all undergone. We’ve had this real change in society. We’ve had lockdowns that we’ve come through and we’ve felt the negative consequence of the isolation effect of that. Really significant changes that we’ve been witnessing for all of us, for our relationships, for the way that we relate to each other. And it’s been really hard for some people.
Even though we all know this and it’s easy to point out, what’s been really driving me is what are we going to do in response to it? And so that’s what I’m going to be talking about. The response to the isolation effect of lockdown is the togetherness effect. This is what we want to start to promote. The effect of togetherness on our wellbeing.
And this station, Yarra Valley FM, is all about bringing people together. And that’s what we really stand for. So stay tuned I’m going to play a couple of songs and answer the question, can people really change?
I just love that song, “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World. I love the lyrics in it, particularly one of the lines in there is, “Little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride, so everything’s going to be just fine. Just kind of hold on.” And that’s what I’m kind of talking about today.
What I’m talking about is change and answering the question, “Can people really change?” I know there’s that kind of popular saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” There’s this idea out there that it’s really hard to make someone change if they don’t want to.
And absolutely, there is an element of truth to that because we don’t actually do anything until we really want to. We can all relate to that idea that, we know there’s lots of things that we need to do and we also know lots of things that we should be doing that we’re not doing. So we’ve all had that definite situation where we might not really want to do something. But I think one of the unknown things about change is that actually quite often we want other people to change, or we want other things to change. A good example of that might be we want our government to change a few things, or our neighbour or a friend. They might just have a really annoying habit or something like that. It could be someone much closer to us, our partner, or our kids. This kind of concept is out there that we can’t actually change anyone that doesn’t want to change.
And there is this other element of truth, I guess, an untruth in that it actually is an essential requirement that we help each other to change.
And that’s what I’m going to be talking about through the Togetherness FX. It’s a project that is being sponsored by the Community Enterprise FoundationTM, which is wonderful. I received a grant to run this project. And so you’re going to be hearing all about that over the over the coming months and weeks.
Hopefully I’ll get out into the community and get to chat to people about promoting togetherness in general. I’m doing this for the purposes of helping one another create important changes because people can really change. But it’s even easier if we’ve got motivation and the support of people around us.
A prayer that’s been popularized through Alcoholics Anonymous, is, the Serenity Prayer. You might know the one, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
I’m going to be unpacking some of these ideas around acceptance and courage and wisdom today. But before I go into that, I’m going to play another song. Enjoy this one.
Motivation and Support are Key Factors in Change
What do these words really mean?
Have you ever heard the saying, “A leopard never changes its spots?” Well, what people are talking about, of course, is this idea of change and that some people may never change. Have you ever sighed and thought, “Some people will never change,” and rolled your eyes perhaps, or scoffed out loud as you think this type of thought?
This morning, we’re talking about and answering the question, “Can people really change?” And the answer is absolutely yes. And not only absolutely yes, can people really change. Interestingly, it’s inevitable that you will change.
Just think about it.
If you think about the person you were last week, then you’ve learned and you’ve grown and you’ve taken on new ideas and you’re absolutely not the same person you were even yesterday, even half an hour ago, quite commonly. So change is inevitable. It’s a part of life.
Obviously, some changes are really easy. Like this morning, you might have thought you were tired of coffee and be there making yourself a cup of tea rather than a cup of coffee right now. Who knows? Some changes are super simple. But of course, there are other changes that are not so easy. They’re the bigger ones. And sometimes they were not the kind of change we were looking for.
It happened to us by happenstance or a situation or just something that we could never have planned for or have foreseen in any way. Just like what’s happening in Turkey right now. There’s just these things that happen and they’re tragic and we can’t always make sense of them. But change is inevitable. And yes, absolutely, we can change. And as I mentioned earlier, the best way to change is with support.
Actually, people are not able to change without the input and guidance and support and motivation from others. So I’m going to be unpacking over the next few weeks just how you can help people change because there might be somebody that you love, that you know, who could really benefit from making a few changes. And sometimes we feel like we well, if a leopard never changes its spots, or you can’t lead a horse to water and make it drink – we can’t help people change. Like if people don’t want to change, they’re never going to change.
There’s actually a lot you can do to facilitate change in others. And I think it’s something really important to start to understand and learn about in this Togetherness FX movement.
So I’m looking forward to teaching a lot of little tips and tricks on how you can help other people to change and in the same way you can help yourself change.
So firstly, some definitions. I want to talk about motivation, this idea of motivation and support because this is a key factor in the change process.
The first word, the definition of the word motivation is actually state and condition dependent. It’s having a strong reason to act or a strong reason to accomplish something.
The point is, change is absolutely state and condition dependent.
As I mentioned earlier, we don’t want to do anything until we want to do it. So it’s a very, very big factor that we want to be in that state or that condition where we’re actually, you know, we’ve contemplated change and we’ve made that decision I want to change something.
And as I’m going to be unpacking, there is a clear process for change. And if everybody knew this, the change process would be much, much easier for everybody involved.
So that’s the first word, motivation, a very, very important word to define when we’re thinking about and contemplating change.
The second word is support. The meaning of the word support is to hold up, to position or to take sides with. So basically, what this means is if you would like someone to change, or if you would like to change something about yourself, you’ve got to be on your side! You’ve got to be by someone’s side, you’ve got to be holding them up when they need support, and you’ve got to hold yourself up when you need support.
So you can see how essential it is to have other people, and other it’s not just people, it can be the way that you organize your day, it can be the way that you schedule your time, all of these are supportive structures that can hold you up, position you and be on your side in terms of helping you change.
The point is change cannot be achieved in isolation, we do need the comfort, the encouragement, sometimes we need financial aid or financial support, and we definitely, definitely need people to listen to us.
So that’s unpacking a little bit about what is actually needed to help people change and answering this question, can people really change? Absolutely, yes.
Let’s play some more songs. I’ve got an Australian idol song here called “Rise Up”. Hopefully this will be a nice inspirational one to make you contemplate how you might support yourself or someone else to create some change in their life.
Why are some changes easy, and others so hard?
Being Open to the Change Process and When Other People Want Us to Change
Can people really change? Absolutely, yes they can. That’s what we’ve been talking about this morning, and I hope you’re enjoying the show so far.
Of course, I’m also sharing some lovely, lovely music. I love the lyrics from some of these songs, I’ve chosen for you this morning, but we’re talking about change, and I think it’s really, really important to understand that change is a process.
A lot of people just jump into trying to change, when actually there are six stages of change, and over the course of the next few months I’m going to be unpacking each of these phases so that you can start to understand where you fit in the phases, and then you can start to ease up on yourself and be much more compassionate as you start to go on this journey of change, because as I’ve talked about some changes are really easy, and we don’t really have to go through a big, you know, long process of change to change them, but other changes can be much, much harder, and so having this understanding of the process can be so, so, so, so helpful.
It can also be really helpful in the way that we can also help other people to change and support other people to change, and of course that’s what Togetherness FX is all about. We want to affect change on a real personal level, but also as we start to, move out through those other circles of friendships, partners, children, parents, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunties, you name it, keep going out, and then we go into our community, we go into our state, the state of Victoria, the country that we live in Australia, and then, you know, upwards and onwards from there to the whole world and universe that’s out there and beyond.
So yes, we do want to understand it’s a process, and it’s really, really important, like I touched on, to be really compassionate towards yourself, because it’s actually human behaviour to choose something that we know as opposed to something we don’t know, and it’s for a really good reason that we have these biological mechanisms in place to actually help us to focus on what is known and to move towards the things that are known, because our brain, one of the prime directives of the brain is to keep us safe, to keep us alive. So we actually have these biological instinctive drivers to stick with what we know as opposed to what we don’t know. This is one of the factors to know, that sometimes makes it a bit tricky to change.
So good to know about that, and it’s also really, really, really important to know that change cannot be forced. So as you know, if you know someone’s trying to force you to do something, it’s a manipulation, and the correct response when someone is trying to manipulate you will be anger, and it’ll be anger every single time, even if it’s just subtle, like you might be a little bit ticked off or just a little bit annoyed if someone, if you feel that force or that manipulation.
So it’s really a fair and justifiable anger if somebody is trying to manipulate you or force you into change. That’s actually what we call as in my line of work, violating a person’s boundaries. So it’s very, very important to understand that aspect of change as well, that there are boundaries, and we do have boundaries around our own change process, and it is a process, and we sometimes need support.
And if you are trying to force or manipulate someone to change, you’re actually violating their boundaries. But there are ways that you can help and support and facilitate a change that’s really super cool and really super easy and doesn’t involve manipulating them or forcing them.
And that’s what I really, really would love to start to teach people because I think, given that change and the change process, it’s so essential to have that motivation and support. Therefore, we really, really do need to be aware of how we can help people change in a really super cool way.
So there’s quite a few things to understand about change, and I wish we all learnt this because as we’ve talked about, change is inevitable in life.
So how do we change? Well, the first things first, we do need to be open to change.
Like I just mentioned, if we’re feeling forced to change or manipulated to change, that is not going to go well, and rightly so.
But we do need to be open to feedback from people. So someone that you love maybe expresses they really wish you wouldn’t drink as much or that you should quit smoking, or maybe you could lose a couple of kilos or do a little bit more exercise.
Really, when someone says something like that, it really is coming out of concern for you. They really do want you to have more available energy, resources, time, money, in the example of smoking – it costs a lot of money to smoke. I don’t know how anyone affords it. Really, if this is happening to you, and someone is expressing to you some external input into your life, someone’s expressing that you might need to change a few things, just be open and ask yourself, I wonder what it is that’s got this person so concerned about this behaviour?
We want to be open and start to get the change-ball rolling with the first phase of change. So if you’re in the first phase of change, it’s called pre-contemplation.
And so this is where some people just are, and it’s okay to be there.
It’s where you actually maybe don’t even realize that there is something that you would like to change. Sometimes there can be denial, like you can be denying, and perhaps even lying to yourself that you might need to make some changes. And that’s where you are. It’s a really valid and necessary phase of the entire process.
So if you are there, the first trick is just being open, just starting to go, I wonder…
I wonder what has this person concerned that they would bring this up to me, or I wonder what I myself am concerned about. So, I guess from my own change process, and a fairly recent one is I’ve noticed, I do sit around a lot, I have been working really long hours at my desk and don’t tend to get out and about and yeah, I know I need to change it. But I’m kind of in that pre-contemplative phase where I deny it a little bit. I’m not at the phase where I’ve decided what I’m going to do about it or taking any action. I’m just sort of starting to think about if I want to change this really and exploring that.
The idea is just to be open.
Ask yourself the question “Is there something that maybe perhaps I could devote a little bit of change work?”
That’s the very, very first stage of the process.
Can people really change? Yes. And it’s even easier with motivation and support from people that you love.
It just takes some time, little girl, you’re in the middle of the ride, everything, everything’ll be just fine. Everything, everything’ll be alright.
The Middle – Jimmy Eat World
The Serenity Prayer
What it does acceptance, courage and wisdom really mean?
The quote or the prayer I mentioned earlier is grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
So let’s unpack some of that a little bit further. Except let’s think about that word, the serenity to accept. Now, first things first, we need to accept that changing anything is a process. And when we know the process, we can ease off and feel a lot less pressure to change because it’s actually a really, supportive way that our brains operate, that our biology operates, and that our relational, social capital can act to help us and support us in the change process.
That’s some of the things I’m going to be talking about, ongoingly.
But first things first, we’ve got to accept that it is a process and understand that it is a process.
Another thing is that it’s actually not up to you sometimes to help someone else change. It is up to the person and it is up to ourselves when we want to change. So we need to embrace this idea that ultimately all change is the result of a person choosing to change something. And anytime we try to force or manipulate someone to change, that’s just a no-no, and it never, never goes well for anybody involved.
So we want to accept that it’s not up to you ultimately for someone to change or integrate a change, it’s an inner game, really. And but having said that, yes, if someone is looking down the line at a very important, significant change, they’re absolutely going to need your help.
And, and there are ways that you can really, really, really help and really step into that space for them. So that’s kind of acceptance. And that’s that first part of the prayer, the serenity to accept. Accept it’s a process, accept that it’s not up to you necessarily when someone else is embarking on a change process. It’s up to you if it is a change that you want to make, don’t force or manipulate anyone to change (including yourself) and perhaps learn how you can support people to change much more effectively by listening to the show, over the next few seasons, which will be awesome.
Let’s go into the next part of the prayer, which is the courage to change the things I can. So let’s talk about courage. There’s a saying/quote that I really love “Courage is the doorway to change.” What’s helpful to know about courage is courage is a byproduct of taking action.
It’s one of those things that shows up when you need it. And when you need to step through something that’s a little bit scary, that’s when courage presents itself.
And it really does, it really does take courage to change. And as I just said, courage only shows up in a person when you’re actually afraid.
So change can be a little bit scary.
This is why it’s so helpful and valuable to have people there to encourage you and comfort you through the process.
So that’s the second part of the prayer.
The final part is the wisdom to know the difference.
So let’s talk about wisdom. Now, from the definition of the word wisdom, which is a really fascinating word in and of itself.
Wisdom is the ability to think about and plan using your imagination and hold what you’re imagining, that vision for something better, first and foremost in your mind and not let the imagination of it go. So there’s this element of wisdom that’s actually about holding a vision and using your imagination, which I find really, really fascinating.
Because when we have that vision or that imagination, that ability to imagine something different or something better, that’s actually engaging your own wisdom.
And then once the vision comes then it’s the ability to think about and plan for what you’re imagining, plan for that vision that you’re holding for something better. So wisdom includes within it, even just from the meaning of the word planning and thinking and imagining and visioning, which I think makes it a really, really super cool word.
It’s also understanding again that it’s having the wisdom then the second part, the wisdom to know the difference, like, it’s understanding that, yes, I can change anything.
I’m wise enough to know that, you know, I can imagine or hold a vision for myself that is different, that there is something better out there in the future for me. And I can understand that that might not be easy. And I might need some of that motivation and support from people that love me, as well as when I go through the process and go through that doorway, that I’m going to need some courage to show up to help me face those unknowns that are out there on the other side of change.
Because when we do different things, different things can happen. And it can sometimes be a little bit unpredictable. Definitely really important to think about those three elements, accepting and what acceptance is to you. Courage, you know, when you need it and the wisdom to hold that vision for yourself, that something could be different.
And yeah, let’s do it together. So on that note, some free resources will be available on my website. This is my project, Togetherness FX, that rolls out over the next 12 months, I’m going to be creating a whole lot of free resources for you to help you through the change process. And as I’ve touched on today, just very quickly, the first phase of change is the pre-contemplative phase, you might be further along, you might be in one of the other six phases of change. And when you read about it, and you can see where you are at in the process, then your next step becomes absolutely clear.
And it’s really, really easy to support yourself where you’re at, which is really, really wonderful. I’ll be putting up free downloadable information about the change process, how you can embark upon a change process, how you can reach out to other members of the community for support, if you’re feeling unsupported, and you might like some help.
I’ve also got a free webinar series coming up, starting on the 21st of February, it’s a four part series, where I’m just going to be specifically talking about relationships and how we can use relationships to support all of our life goals. So if you’re open to that, that’s also free, a free four part series. So you can find out more about that on my website as well if you’re interested.
But I guess in summary, we are all changing, change is inevitable.
I’m really looking forward to helping people to overcome some of their own personal barriers to change.
Change sometimes is hard, but it doesn’t have to be hard, it can be really easy with the right support and the right knowledge and the right know-how just like everything.
So I look forward to talking to you this time next week. on Stories of Change.
In Summary
It’s an Absolute Certainty People Can Change and we Should Help Each Other Do So
Change is an inevitable part of life, and it’s something we all experience in various forms. Throughout this episode of Stories of Change, we’ve explored the concepts of the Serenity Prayer in the change process. From understanding the phases of change to the importance of acceptance, courage, and wisdom, we’ve delved into the factors that contribute to successful change.
Remember, change may sometimes be challenging, but with the right support, knowledge, and mindset, it can be a transformative and empowering journey. I invite you to continue exploring the topics discussed today, whether through further episodes of the podcast or by accessing the resources available on the Togetherness FX website.
Together, let’s embrace change and create a brighter future for ourselves and those around us.
