UIOK 34: Delivering the message of change with Marianne Elliott

Hello and welcome to the Uncomfortable is OK podcast I’m your host Chris Desmond. This is the show where we chat to interesting people about getting out of their comfort zones. We see cool people doing cool things and think wow that’s cool, but we don’t talk as much about the challenges these people faced to get there, or the times that they had to push out of their comfort zones to get this good stuff done. These people inspire me to keep pushing out of my comfort zone and to try and be OK with challenges and hard stuff that is inevitable on the journey. Hopefully you guys listening get something out of these chats too, whether this is your first one, or your 34th one.

Today we’ve got a bit of a treat for you. I’m having a chat with Marianne Elliott. Marianne is a whole lot of things, she is a writer, a human rights advocate and consultant, a yoga teacher, a teacher of living life, and a collector, crafter and teller of stories.

Marianne started out her career as a lawyer who developed a passion for human rights law. She worked in human rights for many years, within New Zealand, in Timor-Leste, in the Gaza strip, and in Afghanistan. If you want more of an insight into her time in Afghanistan doing good and being well then you should check out a copy of the book she wrote about it “Zen Under Fire”, I’ll throw a link in the show notes. Today we touch on these subjects but they aren’t the bulk of the conversation, we had a relatively short time to chat and trying to cover all about Marianne in the time we had available would have been an injustice.

It would be fair to say that Marianne is a change maker, and today we get stuck in to talking about change. We talk about her 4 areas to create change in the world, how we change and evolve as people through time. We talk about a couple of areas that align perfectly with the podcast, about changing our relationship with the discomfort, and finding the right level of discomfort to create change in society.

Again this is a conversation where I have heaps of notes from it so get in touch with me if you want a copy of my thoughts on this chat.

This will be the last podcast before Christmas, but don’t worry there will be an awesome one coming out next week too. I just want to take a second to wish everyone a Merry Christmas wherever you are in the world, even if you don’t celebrate Christmas. Hope you have a great time with your loved ones. We’re off to Hong Kong to spend a few days with my parents there before shooting over to Japan for a quick look around as well.

Thanks for taking the time to listen today and if you enjoy the chat then make sure to share it out as a Christmas present for everyone else out there.

Thanks for getting uncomfortable with me and Marianne today.

Guest: Marianne Elliott

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Host: Chris Desmond

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Music: Jeremy Desmond Music