Mindful Progress: Navigating Overwhelm & Cultivating Sustainable Change (Tiffani Domokos)

Welcome to Part 2 of this bonus series, where we explore "Mindful Progress: Navigating Overwhelm & Cultivating Sustainable Change." Join us for an enlightening discussion with our guest speaker, Tiffani Domokos, a Therapist & Change Management Coach.

In this episode, Tiffani continues the conversation where we left off, expanding on the ADKAR model and empowers us to navigate overwhelm and anxiety while fostering lasting change. Learn practical techniques to train your brain, cope with information overload, and regulate your nervous system.

Discover strategies for caring for your body, mind, and spirit as you embark on this path of sustainable change. Learn how to tune into yourself, listen to your needs, and create balance amidst the chaos of transformation.

Hosted by Katie Kurpanek, an Eco-Living Coach & Podcast Host, this thought-provoking mini-series invites you to embrace mindful progress and cultivate sustainable (long-lasting) change in your life.

If you're ready to navigate overwhelm, care for your mental health, and apply the principles of positive reinforcement, this episode is for you! 

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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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro to Episode, continuing from Part 1
• 1:53 Awareness and Desire are usually the biggest hurdles in the ADKAR model
• 5:21 Training our brains to build new habits, and adding positive reinforcement to support
• 12:51 Navigating overwhelming and anxiety-inducing information, caring for our whole selves (body, mind, spirit)
• 24:15 What our brains need to stay motivated
• 27:45 Pausing for Part 3-- what's coming up next?

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. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the All Things Sustainable podcast. I am thrilled to be here with you as we navigate this wild life together. And I'm so proud of you, of both of us really, for making mental health and self care a priority in the next half hour here. If you missed part one of this bonus three part series on cultivating sustainable or long lasting change, you will want to go back and listen to that part. Now as Tiffani Domokos, a therapist and change management coach outlines the ADKAR model and talks about living in alignment with your values. So today in part two, we will pick up right where we left off and dive even deeper into this ADKAR model with specific examples and strategies for cultivating this sustainable change in our lives, as well as how we can navigate and manage feelings of overwhelm and anxiety in the process. I know this is something I am personally working on. And I know it's relevant to so many people in my community as well, especially with all the anxiety we have been globally experiencing the past few years, my hope is that you find some sense of connection here. And you feel empowered and supported after listening to today's episode. So without wasting any time, let's dive back into this conversation with Tiffani Domokos... 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. So what are some, you know, examples, maybe we could walk through a few more examples of what this looks like for other people, we kind of covered that first step of what awareness might look like for some. So let's dig into that a bit. And then maybe share some tangible like steps and strategies for people who want to embrace that change and create these new habits that aligned with their values and beliefs.

Tiffani Domokos: 2:28

Yeah, so awareness and desire are usually the two biggest hurdles. So once someone is aware, and they have the desire to change, most people will take that action, we talked a little bit about that kind of freeze response, the the paralysis, but just the way that humans are made, right, we want to respond to our internal voices and desires. So once the desire is there, it's really just training and then that reinforcement or time. So my advice is always to start really small. So if I'm talking about change in my own life, right, we have been going through a process of trying to cut down on the plastic that we buy, right? Whether that's our food that we buy things in or, you know, containers or toys for my daughter, or whatever that might be, I probably could have like, you know, tornado through our house and thrown all of the plastic out. I probably wouldn't have been able to sustain that, right? Because my brain is not conditioned to to do that yet. And so we decided to pick, like, Hey, we're just going to look at our groceries and what we're buying the quality that we're buying it in, you know, what is the food source? Where is this coming from? And really looking at just that one, that one thing, right? And we do that for several weeks, like like three to six weeks or a couple of months? And then we're ready. Okay, we're in a habit now of paying attention to this and buying different things. And so now we can add something on top of that. And right, so then we start looking at Toys. Okay, gosh, we're we have been so blessed to be gifted so many things. What of this actually makes sense? And what of it is like clutter and what can we give away to people that don't have what we have and how can we how can we be simple in our gifting to our daughter and ask our family to be simple in our gifting to our daughter and be really strategic about what we allow kind of to come into our home. So I don't know if that's if that's kind of what you're looking for, but But essentially, right, we want to start small, pick one thing, like literally one thing, I know that it's, it's easy to be like, I'm going to start with five things, or even, I'm going to start with three things, it just our brains get really overwhelmed, because the rest of our life is happening on top of this change. And so unless you have the luxury of really like pausing your whole life, to do this, which maybe someone does, I did not have that luxury, I don't have that luxury. And so, so breaking it into those bite sized pieces, where you pick one thing, you do that consistently for a while, three to six weeks, six to nine weeks, right? Then it becomes a habit, your brain just gets trained, you're creating, our brains are... sorry, I'm kinda like, I'm just gonna go with it.

Katie Kurpanek: 5:54

No, I love it, please keep going.

Tiffani Domokos: 5:57

Our our brains are are right there. They're just like an organ of connections. And so when you have not been paying attention to these things for 25, 35, 45 years, right, then your, your brain doesn't know how to pay attention to that, we have to train it to do that. And so by paying attention to just that one thing we can do that we can train, we train our brain to pay attention to it, to respond to even some of the like, overwhelming anxiety that comes up with some positive messages of this is the thing that I'm doing to meet this end goal. And this is just the first thing that I'm doing right, this isn't the last thing, it's not the only thing that I'll do. This is the first thing, because our lives that the time passes, it's what we're doing the small things that we're doing in that in our lives, that that lead up to and build up to the big things mattering in the end.

Katie Kurpanek: 7:09

So you're setting a solid foundation with a few weeks at a time, in order to create habits that just become second nature to somebody so that they don't have to put in so much effort as times go on. Like, if our brains like you're talking about, if you are kind of blazing a new path of connections within your brain, eventually that's going to become a well worn path. And it's not as challenging to keep it going.

Tiffani Domokos: 7:38

Yep, that's exactly right. It just makes those, it makes it easier to continue that reinforcement. And especially if there's positive reinforcement in that process, right? So. So if you're, if you're saying, Gosh, I'm doing this, because I'm helping the planet, I'm doing this to help the planet right in there. And that is part of that kind of conditioning that you're doing that's attached to this particular action that you're taking. We are we see in change management, more positive results, right. So if we're connecting these small actions, to the bigger goal, the bigger outcome, then we it's more sustainable, because people are, we naturally want to be connected to something positive on a larger scale. And so we are naturally connecting ourselves to that end outcome. Even if it's just one small thing for six weeks that we're starting right with

Katie Kurpanek: 8:37

Mhmm. And so many people feel like that couldn't that one small thing couldn't possibly make a big difference. First of all, right, like so many people feel like their actions don't matter in the grand scheme of things. You know, is it really worth my time to even focus on this one small thing for so many weeks, but like we've seen, time and time again, on a global level, it takes all of these individuals, billions of individuals who are making small choices in their life, but then collectively, that is what you know, that's what's created the state of the planet that we're in today. So, you know, who are we to think that we can't take control of that and, and change the state of the planet that we're in today through all of these collective small actions. And something else that I love to tell my clients is that if, if sustainable living isn't actually sustainable for you, meaning it can't be maintained, it's not like we were just talking about it's not something that you can continue doing habitually, and becomes second nature then you are just going to be burned out or frustrated or what have you. So living sustainably is not like a one size fits all type of model. It's going to look different from person to person. so that it can become sustainable long term for you. And like that's okay if we all look different from one another, the bigger picture is that we're all trying our best and doing what we can.

Tiffani Domokos: 10:13

That's exactly right. Yes.

Katie Kurpanek: 10:15

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Tiffani Domokos: 13:34

Yeah, that's a really tough one, Katie. I think it's obviously it's different for everyone. But I'm a big believer that if we are caring for ourselves, if we are showing compassion to ourselves that it's much easier to do that for and with other people. So I would be curious, you know, what do you do when you are overwhelmed? What are some of the things that you do? Like just in daily life, whether it's about this or about something else? What is what is something that helps with the overwhelm?

Katie Kurpanek: 14:14

Oh, boy, this is something that I feel like I've only just started to pay attention to in the past year. And a lot of it has has been connected to what I've learned about myself through the Enneagram. And you and some other friends have been so influential in that actually. So I've been so thankful for it. And connecting that to something you shared at the very beginning of our time together about our body, mind and soul. So all that to say I've been trying really hard for the past year to actively tune into my body because I think it's easy for me easier being the Enneagram type that I am to tune into my mind. My mind is always running I have so many thoughts in my head all the time, and I'm very aware of that. And tuning into my, you know, soul or spirit or heart like, that comes pretty naturally for me. But being in tune with my body is much harder. And so I've been trying to teach myself, like coping mechanisms or skills to notice, where do I feel something in my body when I'm overwhelmed, like, recognizing does that you know, feel like tight across my shoulders like is my back hurting, is my stomach hurting, like there's all the different ways that it can manifest. So becoming aware of that for one and my body has been a big deal, and then doing something that meets that need of my body. So if I'm feeling incredibly tense, and overwhelmed, and I feel that in my back, then you know, going and stretching for a little bit, taking the time to do that is super helpful. Sometimes I just need to, like remind myself to breathe. And if I'm in a space where I can do it, I will go and purposefully sit and breathe deeply. And you know, different breathing strategies that I've learned over the past year will help. You know, I've learned more about tapping, and some of that was in your parenting workshop that you offered, like tapping certain points of my body. But that's for me how I've been trying to handle feelings of overwhelm recently.

Tiffani Domokos: 16:27

Yeah, I think, I love all of that I, you hit on all the points that I was going to make. I'm just going to use that as a as an as a jumping off point. So yeah, I think the ways that we manage overwhelm in our regular lives, like all of this is integrated, right? All all of this work that we're talking about whether it's, you know, working on climate change, or whether it's having a more sustainable lifestyle, or it's just like, managing how to be a parent, or how to be a partner, or how to be a good friend, or a neighbor, or daughter, or sister, right, all of those, all of those areas of our lives are integrated. And we tried to like section them out, right, like feeling this way about this thing over here. But our bodies don't know how to do that our bodies are very integrated. And our bodies take that and hold it until we're ready to release it or until we choose to release it. And so that's what I do in in my work, too, is starting with the body, right? Like what is the body telling us? Are there are there you know, autoimmune issues? Are their immune issues where you're getting sick a lot? That's those are all signs of getting burnt out getting rundown, right? Are you not sleeping? Some of those like, basic? Are you not eating? Well? Do you not have an appetite, right? Those are like, basic human body functions that are not happening are an indicator to us that, hey, something something's going on, whether it's a body thing, something in our mind, something in our emotions. And we need to address that. And so I love that you are in a practice of remembering your body Because I think it really does, it starts there. It starts with what is our body telling us. And I'm also more of the Enneagram heart type, right? So paying attention to my feelings is much easier for me than it is to get into my body or to even like, listen to my logical mind. And what my mind is, is saying that the body has a really great base, like home base of where to come back to when we're feeling overwhelmed. And so I would ask, you know, people, how how do you manage overwhelm in other parts of your life? Maybe you're not managing it, right? And if that's the case, then are there people that you know, who do manage it really well, that you can kind of emulate or learn from or ask questions to? I think any change requires some sort of connection and community. I don't think that we can do this work or really any work of change by ourselves. It's, it's, it's not impossible. It's just really hard. You were we were made for community humans were made for connection. You know, in my class, we talked about co-regulation and that idea of kind of borrowing someone else's nervous system to calm our own nervous system. And that that need does not go away when we become adults. It's it's Why we look for partnerships. That's why we create families like that, that need for connection and comfort and camaraderie does not go away when we're no longer a child, even though it's mostly spoken about in reference to parents, with their children. And so, so I encourage people, you know, get a coach, Find a buddy, who's who's doing the same things that you're doing, who believes the same things that you're believing, I just, yeah, community is just so so so important. When we're walking through change. I think also going the slow route can help with that overwhelm it, it can take the, the need to do everything off the table can help with that, that overwhelm feeling, I think it was you that that put a quote in, maybe put it in all of your emails, but in at least one of your emails where you said, you know, just because you can't do everything doesn't mean that you can't do something, right. So what is the something and then be really confident about that, be really confident about that something, that that something is, is contributing to the everything that is happening, we can't change the world all at once. It does take time, and it takes a lot of time. And so we need the skills, we need the connection, we need the community, to sustain ourselves over the course of our lifetime, if that's, you know, what, what we're working towards. And then I think lastly, you know, really recognizing when you are stuck, and not, and not letting yourself kind of stay there. So finding the help that you need. Whether that is through a coach or a community of some kind. Maybe you need to take a break. For me managing overwhelm, often means like, getting off my phone, getting away from information, I'm giving, getting away from any kind of comparison that that I might, that my brain might do. And getting with my people and getting into nature, nature is such a natural, like anti anxiety and antidepressant. I think it is very underrated. So, you know, getting into into a natural environment, getting away from screens, taking a break from doing the research and hearing the reports. And you know, that is okay, that is all part of the sustainable thing that we're trying to build here. Right?

Katie Kurpanek: 22:50

Hmm, exactly. And this brings us full circle back to what we were talking about in the beginning that, you know, the the more you know, you know, you cannot be blissfully ignorant anymore, okay, so you have the awareness piece, with all the information that you brought into your life, or that you've been given and all the research done, and it does serve its purpose for that season. But if you were to only stay there, if you were to get, like he said stuck in the awareness section of the change model, like the ack-, or the ADKAR. If you get stuck in awareness, then you can actually really overwhelm yourself with too much information and make yourself feel like you can't handle all of this. So it serves its purpose. But yeah, you need to be in tune with your body to recognize like, when, when has that season changed. And you can continue taking new steps, taking new actions to live a life that is aligned with what you value and what you've learned. And needing to take a break needing to rest. Or, you know, not even take a break from the actions that you are building into new habits. But just like you don't need so much information about those actions anymore. Like you know what you need to know. So turn off the news for a little bit.

Tiffani Domokos: 24:15

Yep, yeah, and let yourself do the things that you've committed to, without that overwhelm. Because it does get really demotivating when the actions that you're doing to try to change are sort of coupled with this overwhelm, like, our brain doesn't want to be in that space. It wants to feel good, and it wants us to feel good. And so that can help to with, again, going back to the you know, coupling, that one action with kind of a bigger picture perspective. And so for some people, you know, it is it's like going to a rally or, you know, finding some inspiration of how maybe how like small things leading up to a big change, have have actually made an impact. And that that is inspiring to them to keep doing this little thing, you know, but everybody's different. Everybody's body brain network is different. Everybody is has a desire for change for a different reason. Even sometimes, like, I know, in my family, sometimes the motivation is cost, right? We want to lower the costs of things, and actually sustainable living is very cost effective. Yes, in a lot of ways, not everything, but in a lot of ways. And so, you know, appealing to, to, to that in ourselves, that those little pieces too, can be, can be motivating to us, when we're seeing all of the benefits, not just looking for, like, is this changing the planet? But like, how is this changing my world? How is this making my family healthier? How is this making me more aligned with my values and the things that I care about?

Katie Kurpanek: 26:14

Yep. And there's that reinforcement piece of your change model like that is what the the the end of the acronym stands for. And I can see why that's something that you have to come back to and hit that point over and over. Because, you know, you do get satisfaction, or at least many of us do, by you know, you have something on your to do list and you cross it off like that alone could give you a great hit of dopamine, motivate you to continue to work on your to do list like That's great. And you could have other reinforcing factors, like you said, there's the health of your family and your community and the planet. There's the cost savings, there's, you know, healthier living maybe for you, if you are lowering your carbon footprint footprint by walking or biking more often than you drive or you're eating differently, like, there's so many reinforcing factors that can continue to help you drive sustainable change forward while you're navigating, burnout and overwhelming information. So there's so much that can benefit our individual lives, working towards sustainable change. Let's talk about the other piece that you shared, though, the fact that we can't really do this alone, at least not in a way that is sustainable, long term, it's going to be way harder to try and go it alone. So we need community, we need even just one other person in our you know, in our court... We're going to pause here once more. And when we come back with our final part three of this mini series, we'll be focusing on the aspect of community and how we can amplify our impact on this world through the power of living in support of each other. Tiffani will walk us through how to foster connection points within our communities, even if we have differing beliefs and perspectives on the world. And she'll tie everything we've learned together by bringing our focus back to living as our whole selves, body, mind and soul both at an individual level and as a collective group of people. If you haven't already subscribed to this show, be sure to do that now so you don't miss any of the following episodes. And when you hit subscribe, be sure to also check out the show notes or that episode description, where you will find helpful resources from Tiffani, myself and more. If you're interested in supporting this podcast, your support is so appreciated, you can easily become a patron for as low as $3 a month by clicking the Patreon link in the show notes or just visit patreon.com/all Things sustainable. Not only will you be supporting the creation of this show, but you will also enjoy a bunch of perks like early access to all the episodes, invitations to join exclusive q&a with our expert speakers access to an incredible discounts bundle with coupon codes for over 20 Sustainable shops and services. Who doesn't want to save money and more. I'm so glad that you're here. I'm so proud of you for taking each small step to care for yourself and cultivate this sustainable change in your life. And I'm looking forward to being here with you again next week as we deepen our sense of community. Thanks for being here.