Good morning, I am Kim Harris and you’re listening to Yarra Valley FM 99.1. Welcome to the show.

I’ve got a very full show. I’m going to talk about some interesting and useful processes around how to actually go about change. Really looking forward to getting stuck into that.

Also, hopefully some funny stories in there about my own processes of change for your entertainment.

I’m going to play a song now just to get you in the mood for what we’re going to be talking about.

We’re going to be talking about a lot of these special types of ways that you can support yourself through change and I’m making the point here, that change really is the path to freedom.

Change really is about freedom. It’s about social liberation, liberating yourself, liberating each other from the things that we no longer really want to be part of our life or experience.

Kim Harris

It’s about social liberation, liberating yourself, liberating each other from the things that we no longer really want to be part of our life or experience. With that in mind I’m going to play John Farnham, “That’s Freedom”, a great song. I hope you sing it loudly. Enjoy.

Unveiling the Essence of Change: A Journey Towards Liberation

I am talking about Stories of Change, things to inspire you to get out there and make some changes in your life and give you a little bit of clarity on just the process of doing that because some changes are more complex than others, some are harder than others, and I want to make it easier for you.

In our last show, I explained the stages of change in a bit more depth.

There are six stages of change that we go through, and we progress from one to the next in a very systematic, organic way quite often.

We’re not even aware that we’re going through these stages quite frequently.

Within each of those six stages we’ve also got these little processes that help us to go from one stage to the next.

We talked about this idea of having a recipe to follow in our last show and it’s kind of like the steps that we can follow, the equipment that we might need, the instructions that we might need to follow to actually progress from one stage to the next.

Today I’m going to be talking about those nine major significant processes that really help us throughout the stages of the overall change process.

Because there are nine of them, they’re kind of meaty and they’re really important so I’m going to take my time to explain each one of them and give you some really good examples.

Hopefully you can listen along, and I’ll get through as many as I can this week and that’ll give you something to listen into next week so that’ll be really cool.

Consciousness Raising: Elevating Awareness for Informed Decisions

Let’s start with the first one. The first most significant process that we can talk about is called “consciousness raising”. Obviously my company is called the Conscious Thinking Company so I’m really into this idea of being “in-conscious” I call it. It means that we’re not just being mindful, we’re actually being in the process of understanding the feedback that we are getting from our day-to-day experiences. We’re understanding our thoughts, we’re understanding our feelings, we’re understanding our behaviour, and by increasing our consciousness and being “in-conscious” when we’re making decisions and choosing next steps.  It can be powerful.

Consciousness raising, pretty simply is just raising our awareness of something. Increasing our knowledge about something. It enables our decision-making process, and it helps us to adjust based on the results we’re getting. When we’re very “in-conscious” we start to really say “Oh… well, when I did that, this happened, and when I did that I felt this way, or I experienced this as a result of this”, and we can start to practice this kind of awareness raising technique, to help us throughout our change process.

It’s a helpful and important process of helping move through these stages of change.  I think it’s really going back to when we want to make a change in our life there are some simple rules that we can kind of just make to ourselves. When it comes to consciousness raising one of the simple rules that will change your life even if you just do this really small thing and that is to read, write, and wait. I call it read, write, and wait because in consciousness raising of course we’re talking about increasing our knowledge of something.

Consciousness + Read, Write, and Wait for Transformation

When we’ve sort of cottoned on to maybe I need to change something about my life, let’s say it’s something simple like you just want to exercise more, or you want to lose a lose a few kilos, let’s say something like that because it’s a really common one, so in this change example, to lose some weight we really want to read, write, and wait for some results.

Because what can happen with dieting, for example, if you do modify your diet your body does adjust to the less intake of food, your metabolism can change, and so what might work in the first few weeks to help you lose a few kilos won’t necessarily work until you complete and release all of the weight that you want to release.

When it comes to consciousness raising, one of the simple rules that will change your life is to read, write, and wait.

Kim Harris

So, it’s really important to read about the effects of your food intake and your nutritional intake on your metabolism, for example, because when you’re going through a change process like losing some weight you might need some more information to sort of alert you to “Oh, okay… well this worked, reducing my intake of food in the first few weeks, now it’s not working. Reading, and writing about what helps to shift, to release a few kilograms, is going to help you work out what will work for the long haul.

So that’s an example of a little rule around consciousness raising, that can complement this process. Read, write, and wait. Learn about, and document what you learn through application and noting the results.

I love to read. Not everyone likes to read and that’s really understandable too. That in itself can be another change project, and we are very spoilt for choice these days. We can listen to books, we can listen to podcasts, like my show, we can listen to I mean there’s millions of podcasts out there, so if reading is not your thing, or perhaps sitting down and reading a book, which I consider a huge luxury, just to be able to sit and read a book. I have eight kids so things are really busy, things are really hectic, and I tend to listen to a book while I’m doing something else, some other mundane things like doing the dishes, or driving a car (provided I’m not in conversation), I can just listen to a book. Audible books have become a new feature in my life the last couple of years. I always love to hold a real book, and read a real book, and feel the pages turning. I’m a bit of a reader, but I do appreciate not everyone is.

You can also jump on YouTube which is a fantastic resource if you’re more of a visual learner. If you like to watch and do, or listen, watch, and do. If you like the combination of perhaps musical elements, and visuals to help you really immerse in the knowledge that you’re taking in. There’s plenty of options, so don’t feel like you’ve got to necessarily sit down and read a book.

You can take in lots of knowledge in other ways. I really do recommend reading intentionally, which really helps with the process of consciousness raising.

The wait part is important too, as you would have heard I said read/listen, write, and wait.

Not everyone’s a writer either but sometimes it can be helpful to jot down a few thoughts. I have experienced personally first-hand the value of writing every day.

I write in a journal and I’m always writing something down, notes to myself, and then that third part just wait. Just see what happens.

This is a really cool part of the consciousness raising process.

When we read, we read intentionally, and we write down what we’re thinking, it helps us to start to just start getting awareness of what’s actually ticking over in our mind. Then the cool thing is if you just wait to see what happens, it’s amazing the types of deductions you start to make. The types of connections you start to make.

So, I really like that little rule around practicing consciousness raising.

Now in what I’m explaining to you, consciousness raising, is a process in and of itself.

And read, write, and wait is a little rule that can help. What I’m talking about with regard to having a rule around reading, writing, and waiting, for example, that’s more of a technique.

As you can hear, we’ve got lots going on when we’re going through a change process. Phases. Processes. And techniques.

I’m explaining this in detail because this is what consciousness raising is all about. It’s understanding something more completely.

It’s raising your consciousness around how you’re feeling about it to begin with. My idea is obviously not to overwhelm anybody, but if you are feeling a little bit overwhelmed that’s absolutely normal too.

I’m giving you lots of information lots of things to think about and just be patient with yourself. Be patient. Take in the information. Take it in think about it, write some notes about it if you like and then wait.

Just wait and see what happens next.

While we are on this subject of waiting and seeing what happens next I would like to remind you that we are all in this together.

This initiative has been brought about; this program has been brought about by the Community Enterprise Foundation^TM. We are all in this together, and this is a togetherness project.

I’m going to play a song now from Ben Lee which is “We’re all in this Together”.

Social Liberation: Advocating for Change and Collective Empowerment

We’re talking about the nine processes this morning of how to transition through the stages of change.

There are six stages of change, at each stage of the change process, there are little processes that you can employ to help you to complete a change, and for that change to become a permanent fixture or feature of your life.

The second process of change is called social liberation.

Now social liberation is all about seeking out new alternatives in your external situation or environment.

Your perception of our social liberation options will vary depending on which stage of the change process you’re in.

Some people can/will actually feel quite resentful of social liberation structures.

When they’re in pre-contemplation or contemplation, as an example, it might be a non-smoking area. If you’re wanting to give up smoking and then you see a no smoking sign, or a no smoking area, you might feel a bit frustrated because it reminds you of wanting to have a ciggy.

With different kinds of resistance, it can be useful to use the first one we talked about, consciousness raising, to just be aware of where you feel any kind of resistance coming up to the thing that you’re really wanting to change.

Social liberation is there to help us.

Social liberation is about being an advocate for your own rights and affecting social change on a larger scale.

Kim Harris

Social liberation is about being an advocate for your own rights and it’s not just necessarily looking at a change that you want to make just for yourself alone, sometimes it’s being an advocate for other people’s rights, and affecting social change on a larger scale.

When we affect change on a larger scale sometimes that can be really helpful at helping us personally at an individual level. A no smoking area is a great example of that because it’s where people have gotten together, and they’ve realized that smoking is a significant health risk, so we want to have these areas where people don’t have to be exposed to cigarette smoke. People have gotten together and they’re kind of advocating for the rights of all people to be in a smoke-free environment.

Other people have organised and have done the work like the “Quit” organization. All these wonderful little things that are around to help us and support us to change.

The people that start these social movements eventually increase their self-esteem as well, because they’re actually doing something for the greater good.

When it comes to social liberation a little a couple of little rules I think really support or a couple of little techniques to help you to liberate yourself socially…

Number one, it’s not about just putting a smile on your face.

When we’re dealing with society, when we’re dealing with other people, when we’re dealing with people in the community, we might be feeling a little bit frustrated at times as we work through the stages of change, right? So, it’s not about just grinning and bearing it.

Social Liberation in Action: Kindness and Connection as Catalysts for Change

Some excellent advice – if we’re just having one of those cranky days. When we’re just not happy for no particular reason. We’re just a bit “meh”.  So, we need some middle ground here. We don’t want to paint a happy picture on it and think about avoiding what we’re feeling, but we can do some little things with each other to socially liberate each other.

When it comes to how we’re feeling something really simple is just smile at somebody.

Just give them a smile. You might not be feeling the best, and that’s okay. It can be just as simple as opening a door for someone when it’s obviously needed. When someone else needs a little bit of help and you might be feeling grumpy, but you can still hold open a door for somebody. This is how we can socially liberate ourselves.

Other examples… just saying hello to someone when you pass them on the street. These seem really simple, right? And that’s the cool thing. They are simple things. Not that hard. It can feel hard to muster the gumption when you’re feeling a bit cranky, but I guarantee it’s not about putting that smile on your face, it’s about in spite of feeling a little bit cranky, you have the power to liberate yourself from that mood, socially.

Doing some common kind things for others, and that’s how we socially liberate ourselves when we’re feeling a little bit down. That’s an example of a technique that you can use to socially liberate yourself.

Another few simple rules which I think is really sort of summed up in this quote that I really like by Harper Lee which is:

“As you grow up always tell the truth. Do no harm to others. And don’t think you’re the most important thing on the planet.”

I think these little simple ideas are really good for social liberation.

It’s thinking as we grow up, tell the truth to people, when we’re engaging with people, if we’re just transparent and honest that can be really great for us socially.

Obviously we don’t want to do any harm to others. We want to be aware of our actions or behaviours and how they are affecting other people in a negative way.

And ending with, don’t think that you’re the most important being on the earth.

Just because you’re feeling a little bit cranky one day, it won’t last.

If you can see what happened to me yesterday.  I was parked and I was waiting for my daughter. I was a bit worried because I had gone to meet her, and she was about an hour late. So, I was sitting there, fretting. I pulled over on the side of the road to give her a call and this gentleman walked up, and he was really put out because he had to walk around the back of my car. He abused me, shaking his head and fist, he had a few cranky words to say to me.

I thought this is a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

He didn’t understand what I was going through at that time, and he made it all about him.

He was inconvenienced by having to walk one extra metre.

He had no clue I was parked there because I was worried about my daughter.

I believe, had he known, he would not have been so rude.

So, this is an example of how in society, we don’t always know what’s going on for somebody else. We don’t always know what’s happening in somebody else’s world. And we need to make these processes, like social liberation, something more well known.

So, we can work on these things together.

Collective Impact: Uniting for Change and Growth

I’m all about togetherness and going through the change process together.

I’m going to continue to be talking about these ideas and Togetherness FX, over the next few seasons.

Social liberation. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about seeking out alternatives in our external situations, when we when we find ourselves feeling a particular way but we’re outside and we’re in an external environment.

What can we do to start to liberate ourselves from some of our problems and some of the things we want to change and start to connect with people in a supportive way wherever we’re at. Hopefully there’s a few good ideas there for you, and a couple of good rules that you might like to live by.

I’ve got a song here by Rob Thomas, I actually don’t know if I know this song, but I got caught by the title “Lonely No More”. We’ve all experienced some loneliness at some point in our lives, and over the last couple of years we’ve definitely had some disconnection.

I don’t want people to be “lonely no more”. I don’t want you to be lonely anymore and this song hopefully have something to say about that.

Emotional Arousal: Harnessing Emotions as Motivation for Change

There are nine processes that can help you when you are undergoing any kind of change in your life and we’re up to the third one today.

We are not going to get through all nine this morning so I will continue explaining these next week.

I’m up to the third one which is called emotional arousal.

This one is a biggie.

We’re going through life, we’re having experiences, where thinking about things, and we’re also feeling things.

It’s not hard to understand, as we go through life, it’s common to experience some kind of tragedy that can spark quite an emotional upheaval.

Emotional arousal, for this reason, is a really important thing to sort of get your head wrapped around when you’re starting to go through change.

To really support yourself, if you want to start to level up your game, is around understanding the purpose of emotions.

How they work.

How they are there actually pretty much as an alert system.

They’re an action-taking signal.

There for a good reason.

Lots of people have mixed feelings about our emotions because emotions as we all know can be quite discomforting or uncomfortable.

Sometimes we want to move on from them quickly.

We have this language around positive emotions and negative emotions.

In my work and over the course of my life, I’ve practiced and devoted a lot of time to learning about emotions and understanding that there is no such thing as a good or bad emotion. They are signals for me to take some sort of corresponding action, to support myself.

Towards Resilience: Embracing Challenges and Embracing Growth

Emotional arousal, understanding this, is very important obviously if you’re going through some kind of real-life tragedy right now. Feeling your feelings is so important, and such an important thing to allow yourself to go through.

If there is no tragedy going on in your life, or any kind of emotional upheaval, even just going through a change process, can bring up all sorts of feelings.

Feelings can alert us to what defences we’ve deployed.

If you really think about it anytime you know you should be doing something and you’re not doing it for whatever reason, often it is a feeling that is getting in the way.

Often it is an experience of uncomfortableness or discomfort that sort of puts you off taking that very next step.

This is why it’s so important to understand emotional arousal and its part in the process of change.

Interestingly, our emotions can be really sudden as well.

We don’t always know where they come from.

They can hit us out of the blue, like a storm.

They can be really powerful.

One of the things that I’ve learned by practice, and as I have my own consciousness raising experiences, as I seek to be more aware and more self-aware of what’s actually happening to me in any given moment, what I’ve learned is that I’ve really got to decide upfront and talk myself through it in a particular way. I’ll be saying to myself “Okay. I’m about to feel. I’m feeling this feeling now, I’m going to go through it”

Emotions are there for us to help us process those times in our life that are a little bit difficult.

Kim Harris

It’s like a commitment to myself to sort of hold on to something.

A “hold onto something moment”.

Moments where you accept “Okay. I’m going to go through this. I’m going to go through it to the other side. No matter what it is.”

It can be quite a dramatic release and cathartic release when we allow ourselves to do go through our feeling storms.

I’ve got eight kids, so I’ve seen it many many many times where my kids especially as young-ins. We’re really good at this, processing and metabolizing, and going through our emotional experiences when we’re kids. So, my kids might have, when they’re really little, and you might have grandkids or kids, or other people’s kids that you know, or even have a remembrance of your own self as a little kid, and you might have had a big cry.

You might have felt really sad.

You might have had a nice big cry.

When you’ve seen this, you’ll see, it’s a full dramatic release.

It’s very cathartic for the body. At the end of the crying session, you get to this point where, and you’ll see this in kids, where they’ll kind of make this kind of noise where they’re taking an air, and they are getting through the experience. They’ve just released everything that they needed to release and then moments later they’ll either be sound asleep, or they’ll be like picking themselves up dusting themselves off and ready for the next adventure.

You might have seen this kind of full completion of an emotional cycle.

You might have a remembrance of yourself doing this.

The depth of our feelings, and how deep we’re willing to go with our feelings can really move us to action.

It’s often not until we have one of those kinds of cataclysmic emotional experiences, that our brain takes enough notice to go alright!

That’s it!

I’ve got to change this.

I must change this now!

I cannot go on another day like this.

An example of this is a story I heard about a gentleman whose wife was diagnosed with cancer, and he was a smoker.

She said, “I would prefer it if you if you stop smoking. I don’t want you end up with cancer as well.”

He was just so moved by his love for her and her request, and it was the nudge he needed address his smoking and he was able to successfully complete the change process and become a non-smoker.

If not for the emotional experience if not for him being emotionally aroused and in love with his wife, and you know he might not have had the oomph to get over the line.

To allow ourselves to be emotionally aroused is like emotionally buying into to the change. An important part of finding motivation and energy for the change work to be done.

On that note I’ve got another song that I don’t know about. The reason I’m choosing some songs I don’t know, if you if you haven’t listened to previous shows, I like to address my own fears and arouse this emotion on purpose to practice working with it.

Right now, I don’t want to look bad, which drives a lot of human behaviour, so even in playing a song, where I don’t know the name of it, and I don’t know that the artist, induces a little bit of fear in me.

So just as a bit of an experiment I’m putting this out there to you guys so that you can learn by my example, fear has its place, but it doesn’t have to stop you.

We can tend to think about putting things off through fear because when we’re afraid of something we just don’t really “feel” like doing it.

Fear is supposed to work in the way that it protects us, right? So, we’ve evolved to feel it, we avoid scary things if there’s any kind of danger to us. So, it’s really normal and we’re hardwired this way for our survival, which I’m grateful for. And sometimes our fear instinct kicks in and it actually stops us from doing things that aren’t really life-threatening at all.

Fear has its place, but it doesn’t have to stop you.

Kim Harris

I can play any kind of random song here, and yes I might feel a little bit afraid, I might feel a little uncomfortable and worried. I might play a song that I think “Oh that was really a bad choice”.

This is part of the experiment for me. I don’t want to let fear stop me. Since I’m not in any real threat, I’m going to call out my fear for what it is, irrational. And I’m going to play a song here by Josh Kelly which is called “Amazing”.

I chose it again pretty much because of the title of the song and the word “Amazing” I think you are amazing and even the fact that we’re talking about consciousness raising this morning and our social liberation and our emotional experience of living life. You are amazing and you’ve got this, and this is a song that hopefully will encapsulate some of those ideas so enjoy this one.

Taking Control of Change: Empowerment Through Conscious Action

I’m going to be wrapping up the show now, I can’t believe an hour has gone!

As I said at the beginning, I’ve got lots of stuff to share.

If you’ve missed anything so far what last week we talked about the six stages of change so that is available as a podcast you can listen to it from my website, or from the Yarra Valley FM website.

What I’m talking about today, is I’m starting to go a little bit deeper into the processes that actually help you go from one stage to the next stage, to the next stage, because we want to successfully help ourselves to go through some of these change processes.

Depending on the complexity of the change, there will be different processes you might need to help you.

This morning, wrapping up we’ve talked about the first three of nine processes that can help you transition from one stage to the next.

Consciousness raising, which is all about just raising your awareness, increasing your knowledge, and helping you to make better decisions, and helping you to adjust based on the results you’re getting.

Consciousness raising helps you say “Oh, okay, I’m aware that what I’m doing is not getting me where I really want to go. I might need to make some adjustments there”. That’s the first one we talked about this morning.

We also talked about social liberation.

Social liberation is all about seeking out alternatives in your external situation or your external environment. It’s where we change on a personal level by using things around us as a structure for change.

I mentioned our perception of those sorts of structures can vary depending on the stage of change but it’s all about advocating for your rights and really freeing yourself from the behaviour that you really would like to change.

Change through social liberation can affect change on a much larger scale to not only support our own personal change but to support other people who are going through a change process. As a result of helping other people change too, we can receive increases to our own self-esteem, because we know we’ve done some good on the planet.

While we’re here we might as well do some good.

The third one we just touched on was emotional arousal. When it comes to our emotions they alert us to what is going on in our experience.

We talked about how they can be quite sudden. They can be quite powerful. We can definitely have emotional arousal as a result of any kind of real-life tragedy, sparking some pretty deep dramatic deep feelings, a normal part of life.

Emotions are there for us to help us process these times in our life that are a little bit difficult. Taking time to feel is really important and how we go about feeling deciphering and understanding our feelings and listening to them like an alert signal, can be really powerful.

Join the Journey: Continuing the Conversation on Change and Empowerment

We’ve talked about lots today and you can recap anything that we’ve talked about today on the podcast because I know I’m laying it on pretty thick for you this morning.

Listen to this again if helpful for you to help you start to raise your conscious awareness about these things. These things are here to support you through a change process.

All of our shows are podcast by Greg and the team so make sure you catch up and re-listen there if you need to.

I’d also like to extend an invitation to reach out to me anytime.

You can find me on social media, via my website, and call the station.

Together Towards Tomorrow: Supporting Each Other in the Pursuit of Change

You can find out all about Togetherness FX here and the Community Enterprise FoundationTM who funded this show here.

Listen along and you’ll come to understand why I’m even talking about change to begin with, and how I’m going to hopefully equip you with the skills you need, and a new skill set to empower you through change.

If there is something you want to change about your life, that you’re just not happy with, this is the place to be.

Thank you so much for joining me today. One more song which is I think is just a really pleasant song it’s called “Happy Together” by The Turtles. I look forward to your company next week, until then take care of yourselves and each other. Have a fantastic week.

Conclusion: Embracing Change for a Brighter Tomorrow

In conclusion, change is inevitable, but how we navigate through it is within our control.

By raising our consciousness, seeking social liberation, and embracing emotional arousal, we can empower ourselves to overcome challenges and embrace growth.

Remember, each step forward, no matter how small, is a step towards a better future.

If you’re seeking change in your life, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Together, we can support each other on this journey of transformation.

Thank you for joining me today, and I look forward to our continued exploration of change and empowerment. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Stay resilient and keep striving for a brighter tomorrow.