The Next Level of the Solution Focused Approach

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The Solution Focused Approach is simple but not easy. This can lead learners of this approach to feel as if the training is also basic, and sometimes repetitive. In this video, I discuss how to get to the “next level” of this approach. 

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I’m on my way from Auckland, New Zealand to Washington DC where I’m going to be lecturing at a conference and I sat on the plane thinking about a piece of feedback, which turns out to be really common question or at least a really common thought that people learning solution focused brief therapy share with me and my colleagues and what they always ask is it seems like solution focused brief therapy is very basic and they want to learn more to go to the next level or to go a bit deeper. And one of the challenges that I have as a lecturer, an educator and solution focus brief therapy is how to attend to that, that request because the simple truth is solution focused. Brief therapy is a very simple, a very basic idea that requires mastery and not necessarily dev or next level thinking. So to kind of exemplify this, let me tell you a quick story.

One of the best solution focused brief therapy thinkers on the planet is a woman named Rayya. And several years ago Rayya Ghul was introduced to solution focus thinking by attending a lecture being done by Evan. George. Now, Ryan was in the audience. She had never heard of the solution focused thinking before. And she sees this guy Evan asking these really simple, basic question, and the client responded in a way that was clearly impacting the client and changing the client’s life. So after the lecture, Rayya approaches, Evan George person she never met before, and she says, what were you doing with that client? How was it working? And Evan said, I was just asking questions. And Rayaa was really upset by that. Rayaa was really bothered by that because as she says, it has to be more. It had to be more, it had to be more. She went back to the second day of that training, got even more frustrated.

It’s gotta be more, there’s gotta be more to it, there’s gotta be more to it on the way home, I’m really good friends with one of these days. So she’s told me this story personally on the way home, she was riding on the bus, she thinks what if that’s it? And then it hit her that maybe all it is is about these questions. Now it’s really important that you master this skill because then you get good at the subtleties and the nuances. But if you just do the skill with repetition, repetition, repetition, that’s actually how you gain mastery. It’s not so much about going deeper, we’re going to the next level. It’s about doing it with repetition. So you master the subtleties and the nuances of solution focused brief therapy. So I hope that that kind of makes sense because you really can master this simple and basic way of working and create profound changes in people’s lives because it really is about the next question, which is always why I always say you’re always one question away from making a difference in someone’s life. So I hope you liked this video. I got to go catch my flight. So please like share subscribe to my youtube channel, and help me share this message, man. I’ll see you guys on the other side.