An introduction to the Six Stages of Change and how you can use them to help yourself effectively navigate any change in your life.
An interview between Cora Zon and Kim Harris which was aired live on Yarra Valley FM. Listen or read the transcript below to learn a brief overview of the change process and how understanding it can empower you take control of your life.
Key Takeaways
- Change is inevitable in life, and it can either be a natural part of growth or thrust upon us unexpectedly.
- Understanding the process of change can help individuals navigate it with less resistance and gain more momentum towards their goals.
- Creativity involves stages of conception, preparation, and action, which can be applied to the change process.
- Mindfulness and awareness play crucial roles in observing and interpreting the signals of emotions and feelings during the change process.
What are the Six Stages of Change?
Cora Zon asks Kim Harris to give an overview
Host (Cora Zon): You’re listening to Yarra Valley FM 99.1. This is Art Journal. My name is Cora Zon. My very special guest today is Kim Harris. Good morning Kim.
Guest (Kim Harris): Good morning Cora.
Cora: Kim is the CEO and founder of the Conscious Thinking Company. And we’re talking about change. That’s what we’re talking about today. So today is the first session. Now you have a change process that you like to step people through. Perhaps give us a little bit of an overview of the change process and the kind of reasons that people might want to engage with it.
Kim: Yeah I guess if we really think about it change is inevitable in life. We are always going through, well from time to time we go through these transitionary times just as a natural course of life for example like going from primary school into high school, high school into university, university into the workforce or we get to age, and it might be a career change or we go from being a non-parent to a parent. You know change is just a natural part of life and so in that there is a natural change process that we can be in harmony with and be quite unconscious about and so sometimes we’re able to affect really great changes in our lives and go through that process in a really natural organic kind of way.
Change is a natural part of life… sometimes we have change kind thrust upon us… it can be very discomforting naturally for us to go through that from an emotional point of view.
Kim Harris
And then sometimes we have change kind of thrust upon us, it could be from an unexpected (example) loss of job, a bad health report, loss of somebody that we love. There can be lots of reasons, even more recently like a storm or a flood or these types of events are very unexpected, and they thrust us into this change process and it can be very discomforting naturally for us to go through that from an emotional point of view. So when we have more conscious awareness of a change process and when we understand it as a process we’re much more able to get back in harmony with that natural process and so that’s what I love to teach people about and what I’ve chosen to study because it assists people to go through it with a lot less resistance so you gain a lot more energy and momentum that you can put towards helping yourself.
As a result of understanding the change process you’re also able to learn how to ask for support in much more actually supportive ways so it can identify helping partners (which is what they can be called) in your life and these are often people that really care about you and really love you and really want the best for you and we can help them to help us go through a change process which is actually a really necessary component of the whole process in entirety.
Cora: I think it’s really exciting to have a structure around change like you were saying before we often just go organically through change and we stumble and fall through the process.
Kim: Yeah and we’ve all had changes that we’ve wanted to make that are positive and we know they’re positive and we really want them and then for some reason we can’t make it happen and it’s like what is that? What is going on when we logically want something and then find ourselves behaving in ways that that aren’t supporting that bigger aim and yeah so there’s definitely pitfalls in the process when we’re not aware of it and when we we’re not educated in it.
Cora: So that structure also perhaps forms a form of a map.
Kim: Yes it does very much it’s very much a proven framework or a proven step-by-step kind of formula and you can have a good bird’s-eye view and you can see where you’re at in the process overall and then that way you can match up what you actually need for where you’re at in a much more personalized way.
It’s important to recognize that change is a personal journey, and individuals may need different approaches and support systems tailored to their unique circumstances.
Kim Harris
I think that’s the other wonderful thing about this that it’s recognising that we’re all unique and we’re all individuals and we need the personal approach way more sometimes than we think. We need to match up our own psychology and our own biology and our own dreams and our own visions for our life with the right process at the right time because that’s what helps us ultimately be successful.
Cora: It’s a little bit like cooking as well.
Kim: Yeah absolutely everyone likes their own flavours. Everyone likes their own types of food. We all have preferences, and we all have different learning styles. We’ve all had unique experiences not one person is the same.
Cora: Well, we’ll talk a little bit more about the change process that’s suitable for creatives and go through that process.
Kim: Lovely.
A Description of the Six Stages of Change and an Everyday Example of Change
Cora: You’re listening to Yarra Valley FM 99.1 this is Art Journal. My very special guest is Kim Harris and we’re talking about the process of change, and you’ve mapped this out, you’ve organised the processes in a way that makes it easier for people to change. Tell us more about it.
Kim: Yeah, being a creative type we understand that when we want to create something there’s sort of stages that we go through and we have a thought of something in our mind or a picture in our mind of something that we want to create and then we get the things that we need and then we go out and we start to get into action and to create whatever it is.
It’s a real essential ingredient which is that mindfulness kind of approach it’s actually stopping and pausing and doing things in a much more conscious way in a much more aware way and so in plotting this out and putting a little framework around it just makes people see more clearly it as a process which means they can now consciously choose it whenever they want to with the intention of creating something and moving from where they’re at to where they would might prefer to be.
Cora: So you’re saying there’s six stages of change?
Kim: Yeah I like presenting on the six stages as a basic framework. It’s from the book, titled “Changing for Good”.
The first stage is pre-contemplation, the second stage is contemplation, the third stage is preparation, the fourth stage is action, the fifth stage is maintenance and the sixth stage is called termination which sounds quite cutting off but that is that’s essentially where you’ve successfully made the change and when you’re in a situation where you might be tempted to do the old way or the thing that you used to do or the thing that you used to do from the embedded pattern that you wanted to break in the change process you might be tempted to go back to it but you get to this point where it’s no longer a temptation and it’s just it’s completely integrated now that the change that you wanted is done.
Cora: It makes me wonder if integration might be a better word than termination.
Kim: Yes. It might be. I use the word termination in my own work. I love words, and I guess from the science of it, that’s what they refer to the last stage, yeah so yeah we’ve got these we’ve got these six stages but there’s also within that nine processes that we can learn that facilitate each one of those stages so if we’re in pre-contemplation which is the first stage there’s eight processes that we can select from that will help us move from pre-contemplation into contemplation and we’re only looking for these little adjustments because obviously the purpose is that we want a long lasting permanent change and a positive one so to go through this process very mindfully understanding that you don’t need to achieve a change overnight or yesterday – it can take a while to get to the termination stage. It takes anywhere from three months to two years to actually create change across all the systems that you need to change.
Cora: I’m starting to imagine a control panel. If you have the six stages of change and within each change having some knobs that you can dial up or down to kind of adjust the way you want it. So you’re saying in stage one for example there are eight possible dials there that you could adjust. What are some of those dials? Oh some of them are really good what’s an example of one of them?
Kim: Oh I’m trying to think now there’s one that that is like setting up your environmental conditions, for example. This is a really big one so environmentally we can do a lot to support a change. A really simple example and a real practical example. Let’s say I need to get my washing done and so I put the washing in the washing machine and I turn it on and let it run its cycle now I’ve got wet washing. So this is now an opening for me for further action, it’s an environmental condition where I go “Oh I’ve got to hang that washing out!” so now I step into I’m going to hang the washing out mode – if that makes sense. So it’s like that it’s like we want to set up our environment to call us into action.
Cora: It might go before that like with the washing basket in your room you know for the dirty laundry…
Kim: That’s right! You’ve got the washing basket there’s the opening to put washing in there… I mean it’s a pretty practical example
Cora: But is that what you’re saying, the change is we want to change the dirty clothes, we’ve got dirty clothes and we want clean clothes…
Kim: Yeah the change is that, and we can start with looking at the eight complimentary processes, to help us move from one stage to the next. One of the examples of a process, is looking at your environment. Now the clothes are collected in one spot. That is one mini-process. So it’s exactly what I meant how this can relate to change. You can think of it like this simple example but it works the same with any type of change. We need to be mindful of how the environment calls us to be.
I’m starting to imagine a control panel… you have the six stages of change and within each change having some knobs that you can dial up or down to adjust the way you want it.
Cora Zon
Cora: Okay let’s talk about another one of those dials that we can can adjust after this song.
The Role of Mindfulness in Change Work Explained
Cora: Okay we’re talking about the process of change that has been beautifully crafted and structured into a way to follow to make change simpler for all.
Kim: Yeah and to have conscious awareness about how we can do it so we can do it in a way that is faster more efficient and can also make sure that in the process we are fully supported and particularly from an emotional point of view more supported because I think the rise in anxiety the rise in depression just mental health issues in general is part of it too.
We’ve all had changes that we’ve wanted to make that are positive… for some reason we can’t make it happen.
Kim Harris
Cora: Like worry is a form of problem solving without solutions.
Kim: Yeah that’s right so if you have a way to solve your problem by knowing to address certain things it empowers you absolutely. That’s the purpose of worry. And I’m glad that you touch on that because it refers to another one of the processes that we can use in our arsenal for change work and that is the idea of social liberation. So, it’s using social structures to actually support our change. An example of this is if you want to quit smoking and you’ve decided that you’re going to quit smoking and you’ve prepared to quit smoking, you can start to use the non-smoking area as your ally in quitting smoking. It’s a social structure that’s been put into effect to support people in moving toward a healthier behaviour, right, because problem smoking is a major issue in society because of it’s affects on the health system, it does create a lot of social health issues so in someone with a smoking habit they’d like to change, that uses two of the processes.
Cora: It’s the environment and the social liberation
Kim: Yeah because if the ultimate aim is to terminate the process or integrate the change completely and let’s say using smoking as an example the aim then is to never be tempted to smoke ever again you want full freedom from this behaviour that was affecting your health right, so we want this aim, we want full liberation and so going on this idea of social liberation, we want empowerment, we want to liberate ourselves once and for all from anything that is problematic in our life and it could be an emotionally rooted thing like depression for example or it could be smoking, there’s lots of other changes and that’s what’s so wonderful about this process, is that you can personalize it to your unique situation and circumstance whatever the change is, this process helps.
Cora: Yeah so it’s a real universal tool. I really like it so with the first stage being pre-contemplation and you’ve got nine possible dials to adjust yes kind of like adjusting the heating or cooling… to make it you know conducive for whatever you want. Tell us first about that first stage and what dials might you want to look at.
Kim: Yes in the first stage in pre-contemplation this is where we might be avoiding actually dealing with a change that we have an inkling we might need to address but we’re not really ready to address it yet and it can be quite discomforting to even think about changing it. We might be in outright denial about the need to change it and smoking is a great example because I’ve actually heard my my father-in-law say, in regards to smoking “Well you gotta die of something I’m gonna die smoking!” So he’s right in pre-contemplation because he’s actually just completely denying that there’s any need for change – which is fine and that’s me being a helping partner for him identifying where he is understanding where he is and not putting any pressure on him to jump onto him to quit smoking. Like tell him he should stop or take the cigarettes out of his hand or whatever because he’s not anywhere near there yet. He’s not anywhere near ready to take any action around quitting smoking.
Cora: So what dials could that be used in that area?
Kim: So the first dial in the in pre-contemplation stage, one of the dials or one of the processes is called consciousness raising, which obviously is a big one for the Conscious Thinking Company! I love to raise people’s conscious awareness about things and consciousness raising is really just learning to observe yourself. There’s two kinds of perspectives we can take in life when we’re going through an experience so if we’re in the experience as a participant we’re embodying the experience and feeling it and associating into it so that’d be like the analogy is we’re in the car and we can feel the steering wheel in our hands and we are driving and controlling the car we are associating we are in the experience as a participant. We can also take the position or the perspective of being outside of the car and seeing ourself in the car driving the car as an observer so it’s a really useful skill to start to practice consciously that I can be both a participant or I can step out and just observe myself mindfully and when I’m observing mindfully start to categorize what I’m experiencing oh I notice I just had a thought and this was the thought oh I notice I’m feeling this physical sensation oh I notice I just evaluated this situation and I judged that person oh I notice I’ve just made a decision that I’m going to do x y z or I’ve got an urge to do something and I notice I’ve got an urge to say this to somebody.
Cora: I find that so interesting because when we talk about mindfulness we often talk about the more embodied experience of you know you get into your senses and really feel where you are but you’re saying there’s a mindfulness also in that observer mode.
Kim: Absolutely and I think mindfulness is just the beginning. Mindfulness is like pressing the pause button taking a breath and understanding that we can be both the participant and the observer and we need both and we need to bring balance to both I think if you go into the extremes of either, so if you’re always embodied and you’re only ever feeling the feelings then you’re missing out on the intelligence that that feeling is actually bringing to your awareness. So I kind of think of it like inside your body every feeling that you have is almost like a sentient being that’s very wise and it’s saying “Hey, here I am. I’m sadness, and I’m trying to communicate with you right now. I’m trying to give you some wisdom about what’s going on for you.” So you can feel it but if you don’t then step out and observe it and say “Oh I notice you sadness.” You’re not hearing the message and so then the sadness increases.
Cora: So the feelings or emotions are like signals?
They’re definitely signals… they’re trying to bring to your awareness the need for change.
Kim Harris
Kim: They’re definitely signals and we, and as we increase our capacity and our ability to transverse from observer to participant and back and forward not either to any extreme – so you get people who are extreme in observation as well and they’re very dysfunctional in a different way because they’ve numbed out to their experience. They never feel anything and they’re always you know kind of logic-ing everything and reasoning everything so they’re missing out on all of that great intelligence that all of these sentient beings in your bodily experience are actually bringing, trying to bring to your awareness the need for change, and the more we ignore them the louder they get. It’s like anything it’s quite fascinating when you practice this for a while, and you practice mindfully observing your experience in the moment as soon as you listen to it and you acknowledge it and you validate it, you own it, the message is being delivered so the messenger can then go okay good I’ve done my job. Now I can leave.
Cora: It kind of also reminds me of perhaps like (I like metaphors) so here we go with another one, a conductor and an orchestra. So the observer listens to the orchestra and then you’ll get a clear sound from each of the instruments.
Kim: That’s right and I think in all of this, whether we’re in observer mode or we’re in participant mode, we’re mindfully going through it in the moment in the now, in the present. Not really trying to get anywhere. It’s like we don’t take the role of the observer to get rid of sadness, for example, we just accept that sadness is a part of life and when sadness comes sadness is trying to give me intelligence on what I need to do to help myself, support myself, love myself, take care of myself in that present moment experience.
Cora: Yeah it’s not much about getting rid of it, it’s about listening.
Kim: Absolutely!
Cora: So exciting to think about this idea of having a lot more control over the change process and it makes me think of those circles that you can draw about the circle of concern and the circle of control. So the circle of concern is those that area where you’re worried about but you don’t really have any direct control over like what might be happening you know in the political environment for example yeah and but you’ve got a circle of control where you can actually make some of your own changes and you can approach it in a creative way. Yeah so yeah it’s so empowering isn’t it! Like just the idea of it. There are things beyond our control. What I’m so loving about this because we’ve got these processes but the idea of making almost like a little control panel that you can like pilot. If you have your change as from going from one place to another, for example, knowing what your destination is and then using these controls. We’re going to be talking more about this on Yarra Valley FM over a period of time.
Kim: Yes. There’ll be a website that you can have a look at and I’m going to build up a whole lot of resources for people so that they can go through the process with us. Learn along with us, by actually putting it into practice in their own life in some way shape or form.
We do give you a lot of information so it’d be really helpful to be able to read it afterwards. We’ll podcast it as well so you can hear it live and listen to it again. Eventually there’ll be assessments and worksheets and fun activities for people to participate in, so exciting we’re going to do this.
Cora: It’s going to be super fun, yeah thanks Kim.
Kim: You’re welcome.
In Summary
Embarking on the journey of change is both a universal experience and a deeply personal one. As we’ve explored today, whether change comes as a natural progression or is thrust upon us unexpectedly, having a structured approach can empower us to navigate it with grace and resilience.
By understanding the stages of change, acknowledging the signals of our emotions, and embracing mindfulness, we can unlock the potential for profound personal growth. Remember, change isn’t about getting rid of discomfort; it’s about listening, learning, and embracing the wisdom it brings.
I invite you to join us on this transformative journey through “Stories of Change” as we continue to explore the intricacies of the change process, provide resources, and share inspiring stories from interesting people. Together, let’s embrace the power of togetherness and build a brighter, more resilient future.
Thank you for joining in the Togetherness FX Project a social movement dedicated to improving our relationships through sharing more of ourselves, proudly supported by the Community Enterprise FoundationTM. Read more about Togetherness FX here and grow with us:)
