Living in Alignment: Cultivating Sustainable Change w/ the ADKAR Model (Tiffani Domokos)

Are you looking to make changes in your life that align with your values, but finding it hard to get started? Feeling overwhelmed and unsure of where to begin, or how to keep going?

Join us for Part 1 of this special series as we explore the topic of "Living in Alignment: Creating Lasting Change with the ADKAR Model."  Our guest, Tiffani Domokos, a Therapist & Change Management Coach, will provide valuable strategies and insights to help you overcome obstacles and achieve sustainable change using the powerful "ADKAR" model, a framework that can help you understand and implement change in your life. Whether you're interested in adopting sustainable habits, navigating through information overload, or managing anxiety during times of transition, Tiffani's expertise will guide you on your journey.

Join your host, Katie Kurpanek, an Eco-Living Coach & Podcast Host, as we discover how to align your actions with your core values and cultivate a meaningful life.

If you're eager to unlock your potential for sustainable change while nurturing your body, mind, and spirit, this episode is a must-listen!

About Tiffani:
"Tiffani Domokos is a mama, wife, friend, Enneagram 4, therapist and change strategist who has coached and supported hundreds of individuals, families and couples through changing patterns in their thinking, in their emotions and in their behavior around work, marriage and parenting relationships. She helps them move from despair and isolation to joy and connection using trauma informed and body-based practices for healing and self compassion. She teaches her clients to build sustainable skills for navigating all of life’s messy places of change, no matter the circumstances. Helping people make small changes for big impact." 

Contact Info for Tiffani Domokos:

• Email: tiffani.whollylivingcc@gmail.com
• IG: @tifwhollyliving
• Twitter: @DomokosTiffani
• Website: www.tiffanidomokos.com

Additional Resources:

• Tiffani's Soothe Freebie
• The Enneagram Institute

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To learn more with your host & Eco-Living Coach, Katie Kurpanek, visit www.thatminimallife.com for video courses, coaching, blogs, a book club, and more!
Instagram: @that.minimal.life
Email: katie.thatminimallife@gmail.com

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Transcript

Katie Kurpanek: 0:06

You're listening to all things sustainable, where we unpack topics related to sustainable living, as well as how to apply specific actions to your own life. I'm your eco living coach and podcast host Katie Kurpanek. Let's jump in. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the All Things Sustainable podcast. It has been a hot minute since our last episode about six months roughly at the time of this recording, and I needed to take a long break for my own well being as much as I love this podcast. I am also balancing running the coaching side of my business with That Minimal Life, helping people to live sustainably in their individual lives through video courses, and Lunch and Learn type workshops. And then also being a full time mama to a very busy toddler. So I I needed to take a break. But I have really missed holding space with you all with these podcast episodes, and I am so ready to dive back in. We have so many exciting episodes in store for you coming soon this year. And we're beginning here with this mini three part series A bonus series on cultivating sustainable change. So working toward living in alignment with our values, navigating feelings of overwhelm and anxiety and amplifying our impact through the power of community. Here on this podcast. We typically cover sustainable topics related to eco friendly lifestyles. But I do say this all the time to my clients and friends and any listeners that living sustainably isn't actually sustainable for you if this lifestyle cannot be maintained, or sustained long term if it can't that just leads to burnout and frustration. So before we officially launch season four and all the other exciting episodes planned for you this year focusing on all the different factors of living sustainably, we are going to devote some time right now to our mental health. We're going to be doing this in this little three part series with the lovely Tiffani Domokos. She has been a therapist for about 15 years and is a change management coach with wholly living, wholly spelled w h o l l y so focused on living as your whole self, your body, your mind, your soul, the whole being. Tiffani is a good friend who has personally been with me through my own highs and lows. She is a wealth of knowledge and has such a calming warm presence. I hope that you feel this too and that you feel cared for in the next three episodes. As we dive into what it looks like to cultivate sustainable, long lasting, highly impactful change in our daily lives. Without further ado, let's dive into the part one of this bonus mini series, focusing on living in alignment, cultivating sustainable change with the ADKAR model that Tiffani is going to walk us through. And then be sure to join us again next week for part two, focusing on mindful progress, navigating overwhelm and cultivating sustainable change through the feelings of overwhelm and anxiety. And then the final week we will have Part Three focusing on amplifying our impact empowering communities for collective sustainable change. Thank you so much for being with me here. Let's go ahead and dive in. Tiffani, welcome to the All Things Sustainable podcast, I am so excited to have you on the show. I have been talking to you about this for a couple of months and just like preparing this for everyone. But you are one of my dear friends and also just an incredible person to learn from. And so as we're talking about all things sustainable on this podcast, we are also going to include sustainable, you know, like long term long lasting change into the mix. And then of course, we're also going to tie that into the environment by talking about, you know, cultivating sustainable change and managing feelings of overwhelm and anxiety within that change. Especially when it comes to like handling eco anxiety. So I'm very excited to have you here. And I've told my listeners a little bit about you in the introduction. But I would love for you to share from your own perspective, like a little bit about who you are, what do you do, who are the beloved people in your life and so on?

Tiffani Domokos: 4:43

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I also am really excited for this conversation. So my name is Tiffani Domokos and I'm a therapist and a change strategist. I am really passionate about helping people get unstuck and creating lasting change. And really that brings more joy, more love more peace to their lives. I have a, I currently have a coaching business. I've been a therapist for almost 15 years now. And I'm kind of melding those two and my coaching to support people. I live in Centennial, Colorado, and I am married to a very, very kind and generous man, who is also a teacher. And we have a three and a half year old daughter, who we love to go on adventures with and teach about the world.

Katie Kurpanek: 5:37

I love that, your daughter is so sweet. She's a year older than my son. And it's amazing to always see the difference even just one year can make like, her level of independence and personality coming through is just so fun.

Tiffani Domokos: 5:52

Yeah, she is pretty fun.

Katie Kurpanek: 5:54

Oh, that's great. Um, tell us a little bit about what got you interested in change coaching, in particular, because like you mentioned, you were a therapist for so many years. But what about this realm of change drew you in?

Tiffani Domokos: 6:10

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I really, I wanted to expand my influence. So therapy is wonderful. And I love it. And I love all my friends who do therapy and who continue to do therapy, I was finding a lot of trends in the ways that I was supporting people as a therapist, and I really just wanted to expand that outside of therapy to be able to do more, you know, online coaching, online courses. So I got my certification in change management in Gosh, that was February 2021. And I really loved the structure of it. So change management, there is a very specific process that people kind of go through to experience change. And it really resonated with me, as a therapist, that I get that like, Yes, I have seen that I had seen that structure, in just kind of the natural order of how people change and how people grow. And so I just was really excited to marry that with my therapy experience. And yeah, like I said, just kind of help more people tackle those spaces where they're really stuck and feeling like they can't get out of what if it's a mindset or a habit or, you know, maybe a consistent trigger that comes up for them. That there, there are some specific tools that we can put in place that that kind of get at the root of what's going on, and then can can move them through that process of change.

Katie Kurpanek: 7:56

It's so unique, because it is very connected to therapy, but it's its own. It's its own beast to tackle. And I know you had put on like a you know, six or eight week parenting workshop a while back. And I was able to take part in that. And it was so amazing to, to go through the sessions with you in the group of people because it definitely felt like therapy sessions in a way, the way you had structured it. But we were so focused on like change within our own parenting styles. So much of that inner child work that has to be done that, you know, if you are parenting, like so much of what you're doing is just parenting yourself and then reaching your child's needs where they are. And I really loved that. But so much of what we're going to talk about today could be applied to any part of our lives. Yeah, so listeners, I'm excited because so much of what Tiffani has to share is applicable not just in, you know, the realm of like, environmental focus. But in this little three part mini-series, we are going to specifically connect sustainable change to an eco friendly lifestyle as well. So first, let's talk about how true change long lasting change happens. And when we were planning this video series, Tiffani, you had written to me something that I thought was so beautifully worded. So I wanted to read that if that's okay with you.

Tiffani Domokos: 9:26

Yeah, sure.

Katie Kurpanek: 9:27

Awesome. You had said once you learn about the state of our planet, you have to take action that aligns with your beliefs about the state of the planet or choose to go into denial. This creates a disconnect within yourself. But when we can take actions that feel empowering and align with our values and beliefs, we are living with integrity. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about how awareness action disconnect, integrity, alignment, all of those things that you named, what does all that have to do with cultivating sustainable change?

Tiffani Domokos: 10:00

Yeah, I think they all for me though hand in hand. So specifically integrity and alignment, I really see us as humans with these three main parts. So body, mind and spirit. And the things that we do in each of those areas influenced the others. So the body is, you know, the physical realm kind of like things that we can like touch and feel and see and smell, the mind is our thoughts and feelings, and the spirit or soul, it whatever you believe, for me is really our connection to something bigger than ourselves. You can call it God or the universe or the Earth, but it's really our human need, and desire to be connected to each other, to leave a legacy behind, and really to bring more like goodness and healing to the world. So when we think about those things, and we keep those in mind, when we look at our beliefs, and, and essentially what we think about ourselves, what we think about the world about the future, our ability to impact the world, our ability to impact our future, right, all of those just kind of meld on top of each other. And once we become aware of our impact on the planet, on our relationships on other people, right, then we have some power to do something, to take action, and change it or let it be the same. When we come into the awareness that we have the ability to change the future of our planet, I think it goes, it should go without saying maybe it doesn't, that we need to take some action that we need to do something with that information, or we kind of have to live disconnected from ourselves. And from that part of us that is really compelled to bring that goodness to bring that healing into the world, and to be connected to that legacy that we're leaving behind. And then when we don't there is this disconnect, right? We, we we kind of become stagnant. We might I mean, I think I see a lot of people who don't take action when they know they can, that brings up a lot of, you know, continued anxiety and stagnation. And if I'm not taking action in this one area, it's really hard to do that in other areas, right. But when we take that action, it aligns us with our beliefs, our actions are in line with who we want to be. And that alignment automatically brings about more, more joy, more peace, right? We know we're contributing something positive, and and that will have a kind of impact back on us and our experience of ourselves and the world.

Katie Kurpanek: 13:07

That definitely resonates with me, I think I have been living that out so much in the past handful of years or more. Just kind of, you know, growing into myself and finding out more about, you know, who I am at my core and what matters to me and trying to align my life with all of those things. But, you know, it makes me think of the saying that ignorance is bliss. But I feel like there's something missing. And I don't know what the words are. But it's something like ignorance is bliss. And there's a much deeper sense of fulfillment, maybe within life beyond bliss, like that comes with the awareness. Because, yeah, I may have been blissfully ignorant. All of the things that I just didn't know before, and I was living my life and not realizing maybe what kind of impact I was having on the planet through all of my, you know, choices as a consumer or whatever it is. And it was blissful to a degree because I didn't really have to think about much. But then as soon as these light bulbs started turning on, and I did have the awareness piece that you're talking about. I couldn't unlearn what I had learned, and I couldn't unsee the things I had seen or heard through all my research. And I think that like I, you know, yeah, maybe the blissful ignorance was gone. But the more I aligned my life with what was really important to me, based on what I had learned, I felt a much deeper sense of fulfillment. And then I think my life since then has felt much more like authentic and meaningful, at least to me. Does that make sense?

Tiffani Domokos: 14:49

Yeah, that really makes sense. I also think that there is this mentality, especially in kind of our older generation, Isn't that they're not going to be around to feel the effects. So why bother? And and I think you and I both agree that's pretty short sighted, right? That the the responsibility that we are impacting future generations, not just our children, but our children's children and our children's grandchildren, and great grandchildren, right? Like all of this starts with, with us. And it started with our grandparents and our great parents, grandparents, who maybe a lot of them didn't have the resources that we have, they didn't have the access to the information, or they didn't understand, you know, there wasn't research about how we were impacting the planet. And so now that we are in this generation, where we have that information, we have the access to that information. And I think the question is, what are we going to do with it? And, and how do we not, you know, take the whole world on, but really look at our, our piece of the world? And how do we? How do we bring more healing? How do we make more sustainable change in our corner of the world? And knowing that that has that even that that little tiny grain of sand that we might be offering to to the planet? It is actually meaningful? Hmm.

Katie Kurpanek: 16:31

Yep, it is so hard to not feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, sometimes, especially when it comes with such big topics, like climate change, you know, and the feeling of like needing to save the Earth. I don't even really like that phrase very much, even though I use it all the time, because it's familiar to people. But I don't really like it, because it does seem to put the responsibility all on one person's shoulders or one group of people shoulders. I think that it can either make people feel very overwhelmed and shut down and do nothing. Or it could make people feel like, well, that's just impossible. So now they're going to be defensive of the choices that they've been making, and really like dig their heels in further, I think it just brings up a bunch of negative emotions within people. So I am trying to be more considerate of the language that I'm using too, and trying to meet people where they're at. But I know that you've talked about how change is hard for people. And there are tangible steps that you can take to change your own habits, and even to get your loved ones on board. Because with you making specific changes. It's kind of like a model of what change can look like for them. So could you share some examples of what that might look like?

Tiffani Domokos: 17:58

Yeah, so I'm hearing you talk, I think about that, that overwhelm, leading to kind of a paralysis, right? We're so overwhelmed that we just can't do anything. And so we just keep doing the things that we're doing, even though we know it's not in alignment with what we want to be doing or being. And, and so this is where, for me, the change model that I was trained on, it was really helpful, because it gives some specific sort of phases of the change process to identify both for myself, but also the people I'm working with, or loved ones that I'm trying to kind of help along in the process. So I use the model, the prosci model called ADKAR. So it's an acronym for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. And so at any point in the process of change, we or you know, a loved one, or someone we're working with might get stuck in one of those phases of change, and need to address that particular area. So for example, if someone, you know, doesn't even know about what climate change is, or how their current actions are impacting climate change, they might lack some awareness. And so the way to address that is to provide education that is compelling to them, right. And that last part is really, really key because that leads into their desire. And we really want to tap into people's desires for change. So what is compelling to me what is going to be really different than what might be compelling to you, or to my husband or my neighbor, or, you know, my family members? And so it's addressing the specific sort of stage that they're in and that we're in and identifying what is the thing that sort of keeping them stuck in that stage, and how can we sort of partner and come alongside them to help them move into the next phase of the change towards eventually, you know, having the knowledge and the ability and the follow through to enact that change...

Katie Kurpanek: 20:24

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Tiffani Domokos: 22:56

Yes. So it's awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. So awareness is really you know, do they do they know that a change needs to happen? Desire is do they have any interest in changing knowledge is do they have the information about how to change ability is do they have the skills to take action on the awareness, desire knowledge they have? And then the reinforcement that is just, you know, doing the things to maintain that change over time?

Katie Kurpanek: 23:36

And that's probably the key to keeping burnout at bay, don't you think? Yeah,

Tiffani Domokos: 23:44

yeah, for sure. And, and we can talk about this too. But you know, taking on not taking on too much, is is a big thing with change process and change management. We want to make each of these steps really manageable for people so that it's a really easy bar to jump over. It's not hard, it's right, like low bar. But I think for any habits that that you're changing, or adding that like low bar puts like a dopamine hit every time you do it, like, did it right. Even though it may seem something really small and simple. It's it's really, it's really important for like our bodies and brains to get that feedback loop that is positive. Especially when we're talking about big systemic change because our little actions build up and make an ocean of action. But we have to believe it and we have to keep doing it in order to be part of the ocean.

Katie Kurpanek: 24:54

Hmm. I love that. Okay, there's so much here that I want to unpack with you and I know we're going to spend a little bit on like the individual side of things and the systemic side of things. So let's talk about individual levels of change first kind of using this ADKAR change model that you've outlined for us... We're going to pause here and when we come back next week with part two, we'll be diving even deeper into the ADKAR model, as Tiffani walks us through the process of making mindful progress, as well as how to navigate feelings of overwhelm and anxiety as we work to cultivate this sustainable change in our lives. If you haven't already subscribed to the show, be sure to do that now so you don't miss any of the exciting following episodes. And when you hit subscribe, be sure to also check out the show notes or the episode description, where you will find helpful resources from Tiffani and more. If you're interested in supporting this podcast. You can easily become a patron for as low as $3 a month by clicking the Patreon link in the show notes or visiting patreon.com/all Things sustainable, not only will you be supporting the creation of this show, but you'll also enjoy a bunch of perks like early access to all the episodes. Invitations to join exclusive q&a is with our expert speakers access to an incredible discounts bundle with coupon codes for over 20 Sustainable shops and services and more. Thank you so much for being here and doing your best to care for yourself, your loved ones and this shared planet we call home. I'll catch you next time!