EVERYONE Has Life-Changing Resources

Believe it or not, every single one of us has Resources we can pull from, even when it seems like we might not, and as therapists it’s our job to believe that our clients possess the resources to achieve their best hopes. Here’s how I learned this lesson for myself, and how it changed my life forever.

Sixteen years ago, from this day, I came to London for the very first time. I had no money, no nothing. And I thought I had no resources. I was wrong. I’m going to tell you why that’s such an important story in learning Solution Focused Brief Therapy.

So let me bring you back all the way to the beginning of my career in Solution Focused Brief Therapy. I had just attended my very first conference and I loved it. I met guys that would ultimately become my mentors and closest friends. Chris Ivesen, Harvey Ratner and Evan George. And they invited me to London to attend a training they were doing.

And I had no resources or ability to get to London, or so I thought. I was so disappointed because as badly as I wanted to learn from them, get to know them, and get to know their work, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to take this trip.

Flights to London at that time might as well have been a million dollars. A hotel stay might as well have been a million dollars a night. It just wasn’t possible.

And I was complaining to one of my aunts, my aunt named Lynnie, and I was telling her how badly I wanted to do this, but how much it hurt that I won’t be able to do it.

Lynnie starts calling everybody in the family, and this amazing thing happened. My aunts who had been traveling for years, going to visit one another, they had all accrued these points with Hilton, and they donated points to me so that I could afford nine days here in London, for no money. I did it on just points. My aunt traveled with me. We shared a hotel room, right there in that building.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it had changed my life.

Number one is it put me on a path where I could ultimately become what I became in the field of psychotherapy.

But number two, it helped remind me that even when people can’t see them, the resources are always there in their lives. One of the questions people ask me all the time is, Elliott, what do you do with clients who don’t have any resources? And my answer is always the same. I look harder, because everyone has resources, even if they can’t see them.

Everyone has talent, skills, abilities, people in their life, people that would help them, even if they can’t see them. And those resources can be used to manifest change in their life. But if you are the professional and you don’t believe the resources are there, then the client has no hope for change. The client has no opportunity to change.

I often think about that story, not just because I ended up having a few family members that could donate points and miles and things to me to get me to London. My Aunt Francis, my grandmother, my Aunt Lynnie. I didn’t know that they had these things, and were able to give them.

How many things do people in their lives not know are there. Their own internal talents, their own internal strengths, their own internal abilities, their own loved ones around them that would support them? But if you lose sight of it, if you lose hope, if you don’t see it, then the clients have no way to see it either.

Literally, I’m just here in London doing some work, on my way to Poland, where I’m going to give a lecture later this week. And I walked by this hotel remembering that 16 years ago, my life changed right here. Had I not gone on that trip, so many other things would have never happened.

So be that in your client’s life. Be that thing that’s a reminder to them that there’s talent, resources, skills, and abilities surrounding them that could change their lives. Because once clients see it, they can’t unsee it, and it changes their life immediately.