the first place – even if only briefly.
If we look at this phenomenon in terms of the three examples I mentioned earlier of outcomes that weren’t stated in the positive, we can reasonably assume that someone would be creating vivid mental pictures of:
1) looking in the mirror and seeing an overweight reflection staring back,
2) realistic images of the girlfriend’s face during an argument, and
3) scenes of rushing late and disheveled into the office.
This isn’t exactly helpful. If we want to stop doing or experiencing something, do we want to keep reminding ourselves what that thing is and what it looks like? Can our unconscious mind be expected to understand that this is not what you want?
The psychologist, Dr Michael Yapko, has commented that the most important first rule in learning clinical hypnosis is that whatever we give our attention to we magnify in our awareness. This is a modern statement of the old Chinese wisdom that ‘Qi flows where attention goes’.
If we effectively magnify, energise and call into existence, so to speak, whatever it is that we think about, it doesn’t really make much sense to think about what it is that you don’t want!
The solution to this dilemma should be pretty apparent really. Create and focus upon representations of what you do want, whatever it is that you want to be present in your life in place of whatever was there before. By doing that you are giving your unconscious mind a clear message and vision of what it is that you want it to help you achieve. For some people this is actually pretty straightforward and they can get the hang of this readily. For others it is a little bit more complicated.
Some people have experienced the situation that they are seeking to change for so long that they have quite simply never thought what things would be like if the situation changed. Because they have only thought of their outcome as being the absence of one thing, they cannot conceive of what could be present in its place.
Fortunately, there is an interesting technique that can help and it is called ‘The Miracle Question’.
This method was devised by a famous solution-focused therapist, the late Steve de Shazer and his colleagues at the Brief Family Therapy Centre in Milwaukee. This same method is now a key component of both solution-focused coaching and solution-focused consulting in the world of business – and has become widely regarded as an essential tool in the kit bag of any effective change agent.
The Miracle Question is designed to elicit a perception of a world without an existing problem. It was expressed by de Shazer as follows in his book Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy:
“Suppose that one night, while you were asleep, there was a miracle and this problem was solved. How would you know? What would be different?”
This simple and elegant question focuses attention on a future where the problem does not exist, where other things are occurring that have taken the place of the problem. To answer it properly, you have to create Internal Representations that exclude the current situation and replace it with something different. So, if you’ve been struggling to phrase your goal in a positive manner – to describe what you do want rather than what you don’t - take a moment or two now to ask yourself the Miracle Question. Let me rephrase it for you and ask it in a way that perhaps even more exactly suits what we are doing here:
“Suppose that one night, while you were asleep, a miracle happened and your goal was achieved. When you woke up in the morning how would you know? What specifically would you notice that would let you know this miracle had happened?”
Take a moment or two to reflect upon and answer that question. Write down what you discover.
Hopefully, you now have the ability to phrase your outcome in a positive manner and you understand why it is important for you to do so. Just to really integrate the point with examples, let’s look at how we could positively phrase the three poorly formed outcomes we were using as examples earlier.
1)“I don’t want to be overweight any more” could instead be expressed as:
“I wish to achieve a healthy and comfortable bodyweight.”
2)“I want to stop arguing with my girlfriend” would be better expressed as:
“I wish to have a warm and harmonious relationship with my girlfriend.”
3)“I want to stop being late for work” could be more usefully phrased as:
“My goal is to arrive for work in good time each morning.”
There we are – stating outcomes in the positive – the first part of our Well-formed Outcomes process.
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