Really clear goal setting is extremely important when you truly want to achieve something. Having vague goals – or even definite goals propped up with only the vaguest notion of how you’re actually going to reach those goals – is a recipe for disappointment. To make real progress, we need to be precise in our thinking, using the strategic part of our brains (the prefrontal cortex) effectively, so as to determine what direction we want to take in life.

But there is another powerful way to use the mind…

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Remember Yossarian, the US Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier, the main character in the book and movie Catch 22?

In that story you could be grounded for being crazy and so not have to fly dangerous missions. All you had to do was ask. But if you asked not to fly dangerous missions, this meant you were sane, and not crazy, so you’d have to fly them!

Being sane enough not to want to fly these missions meant you weren’t insane enough not to have to fly them.

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“… and the subject takes credit for it. You’re not telling the subject to ‘do this, do that’. So many therapists tell their patients how to think and how to feel. That is awfully wrong.”
Milton Erickson

And here’s Erickson again (I really must curb this habit):

“You ought to have your techniques so worded that there are escape routes for all resistance – intellectual, emotional, situational.”

We generally don’t like bossy people.

Sure, we may respect them, know they are ‘right’, that they get things done, but they tend to rob us of something that we human beings prize, perhaps above anything: a sense of freedom…

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If someone pushes you, should you push back?

How about if you pull them? Then you’ll be directing their energy rather than being made a victim of it. But you won’t be conflicting with it.

If your antagonist pulls you, do you pull back and get into a battle of wills? How about if you ‘encourage’ their pulling and help them do it by… pushing?

I wouldn’t want to equate therapy with martial arts, but sometimes we need to be artful when dealing with client ‘resistance’.

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Like it or not, we are not just the sum of our parts. We are also the sum of our pasts.

We learn emotionally as well as in other ways. The ‘emotional brain’ is amazingly clever in some ways – think of that common experience where a song you haven’t heard for decades prompts a very specific emotional feeling in you, which then in it’s own turn suddenly wakes a memory you hadn’t thought about for years.

But in spite of this astoundingly precise capacity, in other respects our emotions are more like blunt instruments – primeval and over-simplified responses that were …

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Human beings have a unique ability to observe and react to their own behaviour as if it were the actions of someone else – to engage the ‘observing self’. This allows people to ‘step out’ of problematic, trance states and gain a fresh perspective.

We can remove someone’s behaviour from the centre of his or her identity by encouraging the operation of the ‘observing self’.

“You are not your anorexia (migraine) (depression) (anxiety).”

This is true. We are not our anger …

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“Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

People say that there are different stages to grief, from numbness and disbelief and denial, shock and intense sadness, through anger, guilt and acceptance. Of course, different people deal with grief in different ways and no one has to respond in all these ways or experience them in any particular set order.

We live in a society where ageing, sickness and even simple bad luck are somewhat taboo. Just when the grieving client may need support and understanding and listening ears, they may find people avoiding them out of embarrassment and …

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“The easiest way is to not understand and call it a fake. That’s an avoidance of understanding.”
Milton H Erickson, Psychiatrist and Hypnotherapist

People often take pride in their scepticism, as if being sceptical itself conferred some kind of badge of achievement. But, of course, it’s nothing to be particularly proud of unless it’s informed by knowledge, research and experience.

Without those things, scepticism may be no more than a cover for fear of the new, the unknown, or the poorly understood.

At one time or another, highly intelligent people have been ‘sceptical’ that …

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This article focuses on the importance of developing the skill of super observation when looking directly at the people in your life and also when thinking about them and their behaviour.

Of course, I’m not recommending that you travel through life as a Mr Spock from Star Trek type character, coolly observing other people from a distance at the expense of spontaneous relaxed fun and warm interaction with them. Most of the time we don’t need to be analysing other people, but just enjoy being with them.

But it’s also true that other people can be baffling sometimes and getting better at observing others and reading their intentions can improve your …

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Each and every one of us has a number of primal emotional and physical needs. When these needs are not adequately met, we fall prey to every kind of emotional disorder, from depression to addiction, in an often unconscious attempt to satisfy them somehow. When they are well met we feel fulfilled and contented and also have ‘spare capacity’ to focus on long term goals of our choice.

The basic needs

We all need:

• to give and receive attention

• to feel safe and secure

• a sense of control

• … …

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