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The Chief Psychology Officer
Exploring the topics of workplace psychology and conscious leadership. Amanda is an award-winning Chartered Psychologist, with vast amounts of experience in talent strategy, resilience, facilitation, development and executive coaching. A Fellow of the Association for Business Psychology and an Associate Fellow of the Division of Occupational Psychology within the British Psychological Society (BPS), Amanda is also a Chartered Scientist. Amanda is a founder CEO of Zircon and is an expert in leadership in crisis, resilience and has led a number of research papers on the subject; most recently Psychological Safety in 2022 and Resilience and Decision-making in 2020. With over 20 years’ experience on aligning businesses’ talent strategy with their organizational strategy and objectives, Amanda has had a significant impact on the talent and HR strategies of many global organizations, and on the lives of many significant and prominent leaders in industry. Dr Amanda Potter can be contacted on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandapotterzircon www.theCPO.co.uk
The Chief Psychology Officer
Ep70 From Habit to Happiness: The One Change Approach
What if one small change could transform not only your life but also contribute positively to the world? Join us as Lou Kiwanuka shares her inspiring journey of embracing sustainable change, one step at a time. Starting with a personal commitment to make one change per month since January 2020, Lou's approach has led to profound personal growth and a shift from simply reducing negative impacts to actively pursuing positive contributions. Through her experiences, Lou illustrates how these incremental adjustments can create a ripple effect, ultimately fostering a more connected and meaningful existence.
Explore the power of the One Change strategy as it transcends personal boundaries and ignites innovation within the professional realm. Originating from a need to transform the events industry, this strategy encourages both individuals and organizations to adopt a single change each month, promoting values like accessibility, kindness, and mindful living.
With insights from Angela Malik and Dr. Amanda Potter, we delve into the psychological aspects that make small, sustainable habits effective, and how they can shift focus from material wants to meaningful connections and experiences.
From the art of embracing simplicity to the science of habit formation, this episode is packed with practical tools and strategies. Learn about the "99 things" list and the "wheel of privilege" as methods to prioritize goals and broaden the concept of sustainability to include societal elements. As we gear up for 2025 with renewed energy and commitment to change, we invite you to consider how these transformative ideas can enhance your own life and the world around you. Engage with us and share your experiences as we collectively embark on this journey of resilience and positive impact.
Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
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It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. Just one small positive change has the potential to alter the entire course of our lives, break down established patterns and systems and ultimately change the world in which we live and work for the better. So if you were to change just one thing today, what would it be? Welcome to the Chief Psychology Officer with Dr Amanda Potter, chartered Psychologist and CEO of Zircon. I'm Angela Malik and today we are exploring how we can simplify our lives and have a happier, more connected existence with the world, one small change at a time. Joining us is our guest, lou Kiwanuka, who has been practicing this approach for some time and will be sharing some of her insights. Hello Lou, hello and, of course, hello Amanda, hi Angela. So, with us turning to the new year, I think it's really fitting that we're talking about sustainable change today. Why don't you start, lou, by introducing yourself? Thanks, angela.
Speaker 2:I am Lou Kwanuka. I am a founder of a community designed to enable brilliance in people, in events more specifically. So I work predominantly in the event industry. I guess I'm here because in my personal life that purpose kind of also stands, and that's to enable brilliance in myself. Wonderful.
Speaker 3:Amanda, how do you know Lou? So, actually, from a social perspective, lou and I go back about 20 years, I think. Sarah and Lou are busy mates, really good friends from uni. So Lou and I have hung out at many a party over many a year and more recently we live near each other so we get the great joy of dog walks on a Friday and social times together. But I'm very much inspired by Lou personally and professionally. She's an entrepreneur. She's someone I really admire. She takes on incredible challenges and she also takes on these challenges in her personal life. She's incredibly visionary and she holds herself accountable for the impact she has, both in society and on the world. It's for that reason I asked Lou if she would be a guest.
Speaker 1:We should all be held in such high esteem. Welcome Lou, what a great write-up.
Speaker 3:Very happy to do that anytime.
Speaker 1:I, for one, am really excited about this episode. I'm fascinated by the idea that one small change can potentially make a huge difference. A bit of chaos theory for a Monday morning. Amanda, why did you select this topic for the podcast?
Speaker 3:I very much like the idea of creating new habits and sustainable change. I very much live by the motto tidy house, tidy mind. Every day, I feel like I need to make some sort of change or make some sort of difference, either in my own life or in the life of the people I'm near to or my clients' lives, in order to make sure. Every day seems and it's quite hard sometimes to think creatively about how can I make a difference, and Lou has thought of many things that I'd never have even considered, particularly in terms of that sustainable change and how to make a difference. So that's really why I think this is really important to me.
Speaker 1:So Lou tell us about your one change strategy.
Speaker 2:Well, it started five years ago, so January 2020 was the first time that I thought around that New Year's resolution kind of time I just don't want to make a New Year's resolution. That isn't sustainable. So my New Year's resolution that year was to make one change a month to reduce my negative impact on the world, and I just thought I'd see where that went. So I just picked a straightforward, simple change and made it, and it wasn't until about the end of the first year that the real changes really started to kick in and I started noticing that I was behaving differently as a result of making the changes. Actually, the strategy is whatever the change is, it actually doesn't really matter. It could be tiny, it could be the smallest of things. Is that? Bringing that into your awareness? Understanding which changes don't work is incredible in terms of your own development, but also how it informs what changes you then make. You just become, over a period of time and I'm five years down the road now it becomes a superpower. You become quite effective, agile, effective in making change.
Speaker 1:And does your one change strategy have applications beyond personal life?
Speaker 2:Well, funnily you should ask that I work in I've mentioned at the beginning in the events industry and about halfway through the process so far, I was looking at my industry and because of what I do in I've mentioned at the beginning in the events industry and about halfway through the process so far, I was looking at my industry and because of what I do in it, we're talking a lot about things that we want to make better, but what we were increasingly noticing was it was a lot of talk and not much action.
Speaker 2:The way we were running events on the show floor were very much the same way as we had done 20 years ago. On the show floor were very much the same way as we had done 20 years ago. So, yes, it absolutely has had applications into business in that now we challenge our community to make one change a month to reduce the negative impact of their events on the world, and that has been really, really incredible to start to see actual changes on the show floor. I think our biggest one this last year has been the huge increase in how accessibility has started to be ingrained in the events industry where it maybe wasn't before.
Speaker 3:What I love about that is very much that we're trying to encourage people to be better, not just about performance in the job and to create profitability or to create the greatest EBITDA for an organisation. What we're doing is trying to encourage organisations to think about how they could make a difference beyond the numbers and beyond the shareholder need. And from a personal perspective, my favourite TV show that I completely binged when I moved house, moved out of Surrey towards Essex was the Stacey Solomon. Sort your life out, and I was shocked by how much people have in their homes. And do you know what? I've found that back to that tidy house, tidy mind point.
Speaker 3:I have my greatest clarity when I feel like I've got things clear, because my mind can be clear.
Speaker 3:And every time that I do something that's good, whether it's a new habit because it's healthy, or whether it's about creating a sense of order and clarity or it's making a difference, even just being kind and saying hello to somebody in the street who might be lonely, or helping somebody in the street Anytime I do a gift of kindness or I show gratitude of some kind, it helps me because it helps me with my mindset. It helps me feel strong and good, but it also helps with my thinking and my clarity too. So I think this is really important from a number of perspectives. I think it's really good to reprioritize and not focus on the numbers all the time. It's hard as a small business. We're always trying to make sure that we've got enough to pay salaries and keep the business afloat, but actually it's really good to make sure that we've got enough to pay salaries and keep the business afloat, but actually it's really good to make us think about something else. So your last example there, lou, about accessibility, is a really, really good one.
Speaker 1:So, amanda, what do you love about the One Change strategy?
Speaker 3:So, as a coach, one of the things I know is really tricky is trying to encourage people to face up to and commit to change, because it's incredibly painful to change If we think about status quo bias or if we think about cognitive dissonance. Whenever we're faced with two options do I stick with what I know and I'm comfortable with, or do I put myself in a position of discomfort and try something new? We will always go to the position of stick with a comfortable stick with what you know because our brains lie to us. So if we can encourage everybody to make a small, single change per month and embed that change, it works beautifully with the tiny habits research, because actually it takes 21 days to an embed change and to embed a new way of thinking and working and behaving. So therefore, the month idea is a brilliant idea from Lou because it fits with the psychology of embedding tiny habits and actually, once you start to see the change each month, you start to build the confidence that the change can be sustainable for the long term.
Speaker 1:Lou, I know you said that after a while, near the end of that first year, you saw some differences in how you were behaving. What do you think was the biggest difference that this one change approach has made for your life?
Speaker 2:I think, coming back to what Amanda was just saying in terms of what happens with the accumulative effect, I think the real light bulb moment and it was organic. You know, these changes ensure that your mindset shifts organically. It's not a hard to do kind of thing. You're not going out and making a big change and so actually these big changes, they just kind of creep up on you just very gently, they don't smack you around the face at all.
Speaker 2:And the biggest fundamental shift that happened probably around the kind of two and a half year mark, which was where I just kind of switched from making one change a month to reduce my negative impact on the world to actually know the intention needs to be to make one change a month to increase my positive impact on the world. But that would never have come without the two and a half odd years preceding that of making these small changes. So I think that's got to be what the major shift is. It really fundamentally changes how you feel about the world, how you think about the world and how you think about yourself within the world and your power to make a difference do you know?
Speaker 3:I was challenged by monica, one of our previous employees so shout out to monica if you're still listening to the pod. She encouraged me to remove one thing a day from my home in order to simplify life, and I did this diligently for about the two years before moving, albeit I would cheat every now and then, put eight coasters in the recycling bag and think that's eight days done. I don't need to think about it for another eight days. So for me, it was about how can I do something that both simplifies my life but also give something that's good to charity or do something that's good in the world. And so I found Olio. I give away as much as I possibly can in terms of food or furniture or items that I don't need, so I try to do things every day. But to your point, lou, I found doing something daily tough, and I found I cheated eight coasters. So one thing a month, I think I can handle.
Speaker 1:Clutter really does add up. In my case it's just a whole lot of nothing in my house just taking up space physically and mentally, but I know I'm not the only one who's got clutter chaos.
Speaker 3:So, lou, do you have clutter chaos?
Speaker 2:No, not at all. I don't know if this is the right time to bring this in, but one of the big results of doing this not to frighten everyone, but for me one of the results has been that I actually ended up getting rid of the majority of things that I owned and almost hitting a big reset button the journey that's about four years. So, no, I don't have clutter at all and I'm really conscious when clutter starts to build up. A lot of my friends find me quite annoying when I kind of recoil in horror at the thought that they might have bought me a present because I'd be like no, the social challenge of having somebody buy something that they think they'll really like. But you look at it immediately as a kind of another thing that needs to come into the house and need to find a place, and that wasn't in my plan. It's not a minimalist home, it's just a well thought out home. I have what I need. If I need more plates, I'll ask my friends to bring them. For example, I have just enough.
Speaker 3:I think that's such a good point, because I know we're not just talking about clutter in this podcast. We're talking about sustainability and we will get bigger and the impact that you've made, lou, but I think one of those things is about making sure that we're not a throwaway culture and we don't just buy things for the sake of it. And we have got Christmas around the corner of the time recording this podcast and we're going to be airing this in the new year, and many of us myself 100% included have been prone to buying things in order to make sure that family have something to unwrap and have something special on the day that isn't necessarily really wanted by them, and so I'm being much, much more thoughtful this Christmas and making sure that everybody that I buy for as I do celebrate Christmas they're getting something they truly want rather than something I want to buy them. And it makes me think about the statistic that every household has about 300,000 items in it Not yours, by the way, lou, but most have about 300,000 items in it.
Speaker 3:So me removing approximately 700 items over two years seems inconsequential. Actually, the reality is, I got rid of a lot more because I've downsized, but it took moving to really focus my attention on how much stuff I had collected and collated over the years just in case I needed it, and I think each of those items has an impact on our environment. I'm also the random person who goes onto a beach with a bag and picks up litter, so I do try to do my bit. But let's go back to the point, lou. What would you say is being the most impactful for you?
Speaker 2:It's really odd. There are some really small changes that have impacted me because they've made me think about why they didn't work. So I would say probably half of the changes that I've made have been inconsequential and not had much impact at all or, even worse, have actually made more harm or more negative impact, and those are the ones that are the things that I'd highlight most. They are really quite ridiculously small changes, but I'll give the example of one of them. And actually going back to what you were saying about cheating, amanda, when you feel a responsibility to do something, the intention is to make one change a month to reduce negative impact or increase your positive impact, but some months it's just life's just hard. So this one month I was like do you know what? I have zero amount of time this month to invest in what that change is going to be. So I just bought a little sticker for my door that said no junk mail absolutely made no difference in the short term, but in the long term it made me really understand, or want to understand, why that wasn't having any impact. So actually it's the ones that don't work that make you change how you think about things or make you question things more. And so, going back to the overall thing, it just brings everything into awareness. So, whether it's the tiniest of change or the biggest of change, whether it works or whether it doesn, so whether it's the tiniest of change or the biggest of change, whether it works or whether it doesn't, whether it's cost any more money or it doesn't cost money, if it costs any time or it doesn't cost it, it's actually totally utterly irrelevant. Just make the change, because you'll learn something from one, and it's the accumulative learnings that make it all make sense. So I'm going to say that one was probably the most ridiculous change that made the biggest impact, I think getting rid of everything.
Speaker 2:So the big change where I kind of tossed in the keys to the house and got rid of the majority of everything I owned, the biggest change that I think led to that was by this brilliant woman who I had a coaching course with under the organisation called the Mixed Bloom Room. Her name is Sarah Lotus and as part of that coaching, she challenged me to write down three things that bring me joy every day, and it's very different to gratitude, because gratitude is almost like transactional you need to feel grateful for something. It's not asking for you to feel anything but pure joy and over a period of time that taught me that the three things that give me the most, or four things sorry, that give me the most, or four things sorry that give me the most joy my son, my dog, plants and art. That helped me figure out in where I ended up going.
Speaker 2:Actually, those are the things that were most important to me the vase, not so much. The other stuff in the house, not so much stuff in the house, not as much, but the art. So paintings mean a lot to me because they kind of capture either a moment or a place or a person, and flowers having things that are living around me and that obviously family and dogs being the others so brilliant isn't it in helping you focus the mind on what is important and what is not important?
Speaker 3:So often, when I'm at my busiest and I'm feeling under pressure, I forget to focus on the things that are important and I start to worry about the superficial things, the silly things. And I think this is a really good reminder that if we could simplify our minds, if we could simplify the world around us, we would help ourselves to really focus on the things that are important. For example, there's a piece of research that says many of us lose things up to nine times a day. So if we've got 3000 things in our homes, then no wonder that we lose just nine things a day. So if you haven't got so much, you don't get this. I'm losing track of things. I definitely lose things because I get distracted, and what's interesting is, the most commonly lost things are people's phones, their keys and their glasses, so they're the things we often want at hand. And that made me think about digital clutter as well. So do you have a really tidy digital system, angela, for your personal photos and all the photos on your phone, for example?
Speaker 1:I'm hardly tidy. Just in general in my life I'm not. I wouldn't consider myself a very tidy person. I have a tolerance for chaos. I think to an extent it's like sort of organized chaos. But I was wondering that about Lou, when she was saying that you'd minimized your house and that you didn't have any clutter. And then I was wondering does that apply to your digital clutter as well?
Speaker 2:To some degree, to others not so much. I am a total geek when it comes to systems and processes. I've always held the attitude that you should, in theory, be able to be ill tomorrow and your world still carry on. Or, in the case of events, there should be a system and a process around you that would enable you to get hit by a bus, not be able to be that person running that event and for that event to still run. So digitally in terms of AI tools to manage my time and my workload and my to-do list and inform other people of where things are at. Yes, totally. Photos are my weak spot and I'd have to say absolutely terrible on that front, and I think actually that's okay, because nobody wants everybody to be good at everything.
Speaker 2:It's a really interesting part of the process that I've gone through especially now I've kind of got and had that big reset and I'm now rebuilding a home is to allow myself the things that do really bring me joy. So I have utterly failed in two areas. I really like matching cutlery and I went and bought some from a shop. Paid not enough money. There are things that I have brought back into the house that don't conform to all the reasons why things are kicked out of. That is what I'm saying, but you were human like this is the whole point. Um, there are things that bring us joy that actually we have to admit. They cost our planet, they cost money, they cost time, they are wasteful, and I am definitely not nailing it. You're closer than many, though. What I'm nailing is doing something every month and bringing it into awareness, so I know when I've gone off piste and I think that's really important. So, yeah, digitally, some room for improvement, I think.
Speaker 3:So if we're just summarising, then, lou, which are the ones that made the biggest difference for you, or the ones that you appreciate the most out of the changes that you've made?
Speaker 2:So I think not even a change actually. So one month I wrote down my 99 wants and it kind of comes back to what you were saying about your values and figuring out what are you going to change. So the 99 wants were given to me as an idea by Sarah Akwesombe and another lady I can't remember her name over a kind of money kind of workshop, and the idea is you write 33 things that you want for yourself, 33 things that you want for the loved ones and the people around you and 33 things that you want for the world. I would say, if you already don't know really what you really want out of life, then that's a great place to start, because you get to about 12 or 13,. You know, and mine consists of I wanted a Tiffany's necklace and I wanted a Mabui handbag and I wanted new carpet in the lounge, and it was I want, I want.
Speaker 2:You get to 12 or 13,. You're like oh, do you know what I really want? To spend time with my mum. Oh, I really want time in my life that I can read a book. Oh, I really want, you know.
Speaker 2:And the list then starts going off into a more useful direction and with that then you can decide what you're going to do with your change each month, and maybe this is going like slightly off piece, but I would just want to come back to something you were talking about, amanda, in terms of all that stuff. The mental load that every single thing implies into your life is huge, and all the while that it's there and you don't realize how much time that's taking, is all time this meaning you don't read that book or you don't see your mum as much as you'd like to? You know there is a tangible effect, a real effect. I think that's probably the biggest thing about this strategy is you become really, really aware that actually, yes, I could spend the morning cleaning that house full of all the stuff, or I could spend two hours doing it, and then I can spend an hour on the phone to my mum. I know which one I'd rather do do you know what?
Speaker 3:I was super shocked. When you started reading your list of 99 things and you wanted a handbag and you wanted a Tiffany necklace. I was thinking, hang on, who are you? I was so surprised. And carpet even. I was thinking, okay, yeah, I get it, carpet is nice. But I was super, super shocked that, yeah, I get it, carpet is nice. But I was super, super shocked that you started your list of 99 things with I want, because it's not the person I know at all. You have fewer clothes than any person I know literally on this earth, because you literally have one of each item, because you just need one of each item, and you manage incredibly well and still end up lending me things, probably. So I think that's a brilliant story that you kind of reassessed and said wait a minute. And your tone changed, your energy changed. No one can see you other than Angela and I. But your face changed when you started talking about the real things that you're excited about and energized by you then get choices with that bit of time that you might have.
Speaker 2:That's been freed up because you're not dusting everything all the time or you're not constantly putting things away. You're like, oh, that's half an hour in the week, oh, that's, what could I do with that half an hour? Well, there's 99 things that I know that I really want, and I think what's one of the big kind of end results is, most of my wants meant that I wanted time and so I freed up. I tried to rework my business so that instead of working five days a week, I worked three days a week so that I could spend the time doing the other things on my list.
Speaker 2:But the beauty of it and I appreciate I'm coming from a really privileged position here because I run my own business and I manage what we do within that business but magically, as if by magic, we're earning the same amount of money on three days as we were five, because we're only working on the best ideas. Then we're freeing up time. So we're not, as a business, so kind of bringing this back into the business world. What it's enabled us to do is form a business based on no more than three working days for anybody in the business and at the end of the year, the wasteful bits out. I always prefer the word prosperity, because prosperity is so important. This isn't about taking everything away and stripping everything back to bare minimum. This is about supercharging our work, our homes ourselves, so that we enjoy life more.
Speaker 3:That's a brilliant summary. What would you say are the key messages that you would love our listeners to hear?
Speaker 2:I think, coming back to that prosperity element, I think when you first start going down this road, you do need to look at cutting things out, because we've got too much stuff, whether it's digital, whether it's physical, whether it's just we're doing too many things. Our society is all about maxing everything out, so we do need to cut things out, but I don't think you need to be a martyr in this regard. Prosperity is really important and actually when you say people, planet and profit, profit feels a bit like a dirty word If you just switch that out and say people, planet and prosperity kind of means the same thing. But prosperity is very positive and I think we're not trying to reduce everything down to bare minimum and all be holier than thou and martyry about how we live our lives. We need to have full lives, full of enjoyment. We just need to make sure we're doing it in a sustainable way and not killing the world that we live in.
Speaker 1:It comes back to that joy piece, doesn't it, lou, that you were talking about, that you wrote down the four things that brought you joy and that became your value system, and that's where you were basing your decisions on what to change and what not to change.
Speaker 3:I've made some small changes. I mean, they're nothing like Lou's. We've talked about Olio, and so I give as much as I can to charity, and also I'll often scan the Olio app to see what people are asking for, either that they want or that they would like to borrow, to see if I can share anything, and so I'm often offering things Christmas trees recently, all sorts of things that I don't need in my house that I'm able to either give people or things I'm able to lend people if that's helpful. But what other things could I do, lou, to kind of keep my journey going in terms of those one change month? I want to go into 2025 with this ethos. Sarah and I were talking about it. She's already identified the two changes for her first two months. I'd love some inspiration about what I could do for some of the months for me in 2025.
Speaker 2:Okay, have you already done the wheel of privilege?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Oh, what's that? So really good example. I'll send you the link for the listeners. If you just do that, it will highlight to you where you have privilege and where you don't. And then I would say a really good change is that, with all the time that you've created by getting rid of so much bits and downsizing, maybe you could spend half an hour and focusing on who doesn't have the same privilege that you have and kind of supercharging what you do there.
Speaker 2:It might be so something that springs to my head. You might not like this, amanda, but you are a very talented businesswoman and there are so many founders of businesses from less privileged environments that would just be able to do so much with your brain for half an hour. So maybe you probably already do mentoring anyway, but you know something like that maybe, or just bringing into your awareness things that aren't currently in your awareness and then seeing what you could then do to help. So I think one of the big shifts that happened is the switch from just pure sustainability to a broader sense of sustainability. The sustainability of our planet is about the planet and the people and the profit, and I think we can all very easily do a lot of planet, sustainability elements, but we have a society that's breaking down. There are parts of our society that's broken and I think if you're a leader of a business or if you're a leader of anything, then you have got some amazing tools that can be used in our world by people that might not have access to them otherwise.
Speaker 3:I think it's a brilliant idea. And you are right, I do mentor a lot of people and we've trained and supported and coached a number of people coming through this business over many years. But, you're right, I could do more. So that's a great one that I'm going to think of. Thank you, it's given me a thought, but I want to do the wheel, so I'd like to see that and think about it, because I think that will show you who doesn't have access to what you've already done.
Speaker 2:So you've been practicing the mentoring and coaching throughout your whole career. You done so. You've been practicing the mentoring and coaching throughout your whole career. You're brilliant at it. So who's not got access to that and who are the people that aren't in your regular sphere that you could go and target the things like the UK Black Business Show like have a look, see what parts of our communities and what parts of our society don't access.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's a great idea. Thank you, and please send the wheel, lou, because I think I definitely want to do it. I'd like to understand where there's potential areas I could help other people. That would be very cool.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the neuroscience and the psychology behind small changes for big impact.
Speaker 3:What happens when we allow ourselves to focus on just one change, amanda, Well, I think it's really good to focus the mind, of course, because if we try to do too many things, then we start to have avoidant approaches, we start to justify and to make excuses, and because our brains naturally are cognitive misers, in the lovely words of Dulcey, what we do is we go for the easiest option, which is to not do anything or just to stick with what we know.
Speaker 3:And so the idea behind the one change is excellent because of the role of dopamine, which is motivation and reward and neurotransmitter.
Speaker 3:And also, if we celebrate success after we have implemented that one change over a period of time, then we're going to attribute success with the change and we will therefore be more likely to release the positive neurotransmitters of dopamine and so on when we think about that change.
Speaker 3:So, actually, if we go now to the habits research, what that habit research says is that if we implement tiny changes, so break down the change as small as you can make it, if you let the change embed for 21 days, if you implement the change in the first half of the day, so of waking, in the first eight hours, we're going to be more likely to embed that change. And finally, if we celebrate the success of that change. If we're doing it well, we're more likely to repeat the change moving forward. So if we could do some of those things, then we're much more likely to have a success in implementing change for the long term. And generally we are very good at telling ourselves, whopping great fibs, because it's easier just to avoid and just to stick with what we know. So we have to force ourselves to actually stand up to the point that actually we all need to make a small change in our lives and it's really good for teaching ourselves to be a bit more agile and a bit more open to new opportunities.
Speaker 1:Lou, what have you learned about yourself whilst following this process?
Speaker 2:I think resilience is talked about a lot, especially in the business world, trying to keep all of our people on their feet, but actually this process has made me more resilient, more able to cope with negative change, change that I wasn't expecting, and I think that every time you make a change, you're learning about change. You're learning about things in a more positive way, but the side benefit is you can get some right hoolies thrown at you and I found over the last year in particular, my life has done a total 360. And yes, it's not been easy, but I do feel strong in change and I have a perspective I think that I wouldn't have had if I hadn't been making consistent change. I think that's going back into the business side of things. That's something that I think has massive potential in the business world is that if you can create a pathway for employees to inherently become more resilient, teach them how to make change and what may go wrong when you do make changes, it opens up a different world.
Speaker 1:Probably should have asked this nearer the beginning, Lou, but how long have you been doing this?
Speaker 2:one change approach but how long have you been doing this? One change approach? So five years. So as January 2020 was my first change and I decided to switch my cling film for beeswax wraps, Amazing, I did that too.
Speaker 3:So you're on the journey already, angela, without even realizing it.
Speaker 1:But then I stopped using them. I need to go back to it, but but they need refreshing. And yeah, I think the point is that they might be one small change, but sometimes that doesn't mean that there's no hassle involved, and you have to kind of embrace the hassle too. So I'll take this as my sign to go refresh them refresh them.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll send you a link of something I now use instead. Um, because beeswax wraps at some point stopped working for me too.
Speaker 1:Um, and I have I don't feel as bad now.
Speaker 2:I have found something else that works. I found works better, so I'll send you the link and you can give those again let's put it in the chat though, angela, because I'm sure listeners will want it too so two things I'm taking away from this podcast.
Speaker 3:One is I'm going to write down my 99 things. So, lou, they were 99 things that I want, things that I want for my family, and then things for the environment and for society. Is that right?
Speaker 2:yeah, what you want for yourself, what you want for not just your family but the loved ones around you, friends or your community closest to you. And then the world. I haven't got around to changing the whole world yet, but as a process I do think it's good. It can help you decide. For example, if you give to charity, it can really help you decide what things you want to give towards. So I know that poverty is something that hits me in my heart, and food particularly hunger, food, hunger. So you know, if I've got five pounds, I know what I'm going to do with it, because I've written what the wants are on my list. So it helps in that regard. I'll let you know when I change the world.
Speaker 3:Do come back, ok, so I'm going to do the 99 things that will help me focus what's important to me. I think that's a really good thing, and I'd really like to do the wheel of privilege as well, so I can see what I've got that can help others and who I could potentially support as well. So I think that's really good. So, lou, thank you for challenging my thinking. Thank you for getting me started. I'm going to turn into 2025 with a new energy for this. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me on the podcast.
Speaker 1:I found it really inspiring as well, lou, and it's got me thinking what am I going to make changes for? There's some big things I want to change, but I need to make them smaller, I think, in order to make it really sustainable. So I'm going to go away and think about all of the things you've said today, and that brings us to the end of the episode. If you want to do your list of nine nine things as well, we'd love to hear about it on LinkedIn in the comments. And also, lou actually has, specifically for the events industry, but for organizations in general, a change change catalog. It's growing and you can visit it at onechangemethodcom. And if you like listening to us talk all things psychology, neuroscience and business then please hit the follow button wherever you're listening so you don't miss out on future episodes.
Speaker 3:Thank you everyone who's listening. Hope you have a wonderful and successful year.
