need to ask any more questions. In some way beyond words, I understand exactly what she means.
Argue for Limitations and They’re Mine
I was barely nineteen when I first met the pioneering hypnotherapist Milton Erickson. I was still a graduate student in New York City, and he had been invited by the school’s clinical supervisors to give us a lecture on medical hypnosis. I discovered, reading whatever I could about him, that he’d had polio twice and, as a result, had to use canes to get around. He was also completely tone-deaf and color-blind (with the exception of purple). Nonetheless, he considered every constraint to be an opportunity within which he could create a new possibility. When he went to a concert, for example, he rolled his wheelchair to the front of the theater, then turned it to face the audience and watched them throughout the performance. After the applause settled down, he told his wife Betty which instruments were off-key. He discovered simply by observing the reactions of the people.
Before the lecture, the clinical supervisors had written down a random number on a piece of paper. Each seat in the amphitheater had a small brass plate on it with an etched number. Their challenge to Dr. Erickson was to hypnotize whoever sat down in the seat with that number while simultaneously delivering his lecture on hypnosis. Up until that moment, I’d never won any kind of a contest in my life.
When Dr. Erickson had finished speaking, I noticed that everyone else stood up to leave, but I just sat there, my right arm floating in front of my face, my legs completely uninterested in moving. He approached me slowly, red rubber cane tips squeaking on the dark oak floor. Leaning over me, he said in a gravelly whisper, “There is a part of your mind, the unconscious mind, that knows everything you most need to know, even when you don’t know that you know it…and you can trust that part of your mind, trust it deeply.” After I left the amphitheater, I felt free in the same way I used to when leaving Grandma’s apartment.
I studied Milton’s work for decades after that day, not because I wanted to learn hypnosis, but because I wanted to understand how I could widen my attention and notice where I was already free. I learned more from him than from all the clinical supervisors in graduate school combined, who kept insisting I should constantly notice and classify everything that was wrong with every person I worked with, label it, and record the pathology on a standardized form. Dr. Erickson taught me one thing that was more important than anything else I learned in graduate school: he taught me that my role was to help as many powerful minds as I could to grow by focusing on what was right about what appeared to be wrong with someone. With him, I discovered that having an asset-focus—exploring a person’s history of health and sanity—was an important step to living a life I could love.
Milton’s teachings did more for me than I ever can say. My only regret was that I never hugged him. Hugging wasn’t “the thing” back then that it is now. Besides, I had no idea how you hug someone who uses canes or is in a wheelchair. Nonetheless, I always wanted to hug him. One day, decades after that first lecture, I was visiting his home office in Phoenix for what turned out to be the last time I would ever see him. More than anything, I wanted to tell him how much I appreciated what his teachings had done for me. More than anything, I wanted to hug him just once. At the end of our time together, I gathered up my belongings and haltingly walked past his desk. My fingers reached out to briefly touch the purple telephone sitting on it as I moved toward the sliding glass door where I was to exit. I hesitated while turning to face him, knowing it was the last time I’d have a chance to hug him. But all I could allow myself to do was mumble, “Thank you very much, Dr. Erickson.” I walked out slowly and slid the door closed behind me.
As I took a step away from the house, I noticed he had wheeled over to that door. Sliding it open, he called me in that gravelly one-of-a-kind voice of his and said, “Dawna…” I stopped in my tracks, sure he was going to reach out and hug me. Instead, slowly, oh so slowly, he slid the door closed and as he did so, said, “Never create limitations…where…there are no limitations given!”
I heard a click as he locked the door and wheeled away.
In Pursuit of the Dangerously Possible
Each time I think I have learned to open my mind and widen my attention, Life gives me another opportunity to practice thinking beyond the habitual limitations I create for myself. On the day of this story, I was standing next to two people who I assumed were father and daughter. Antonio’s hair was silver, his olive skin tanned and weathered with creases in the corners of his amber eyes. The word “elegant” came to mind immediately, though I can’t say why. Carolina was almost impossibly beautiful, with high cheekbones, flawless skin, and gleaming chestnut hair. As she moved across the veranda, her hands gestured toward the leather couch, inviting me to sit. She was lithe, sleek, as green-eyed as a jungle cat.
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