Applying the Spirit of Motivational Interviewing to Change

Y’all, join us this Thursday for a FREE webinar with Dr. Michelle Drapkin on Motivational Interviewing as a Path to Personal Change, and earn a FREE 1 hr of CE! MI Center for Change is a NBCC approved CE provider #7223. Can’t attend live? Sign up for access to the recording, or check out her new book!

The spirit of Motivational Interviewing is the confluence of these four elements: Compassion, Acceptance, Partnership & Empowerment

Let’s consider the four elements of the spirit of Motivational Interviewing to both client change and personal change.

Compassion:

When I embody the spirit of Compassion with clients, I’m always taking into consideration what is in their best interest. If I’m toying around with this concept of using Motivational Interviewing with myself, I consider self-compassion. Am I making choices that are in my best interest? Am I taking care of myself? Am I being kind and gentle with myself? We seem to have an instinct to motivate ourselves with criticism (the old carrot & stick metaphor), but research has shown that self-compassion is an essential ingredient to motivation and change.

Self-compassion is fuel for change. I have really enjoyed learning more about the work of Dr. Kristin Neff, who has done loads of research on the topic. You can check out her famous TED talk here.

I invite you to take a moment, a breath, and invite in some gentleness with yourself.

Acceptance:

When I bring the spirit of Acceptance to clients, this includes the concepts of absolute worth (each person has value AND the potential to become more), autonomy (people get to make their own decisions about their life and direction), accurate empathy (understanding the world from their perspective) and affirmation (connecting to underlying strengths and resources to believe change is possible). So let’s consider self-acceptance. Can I connect to where I am right now, with all of the context that surrounds me, and acknowledge that perhaps I am doing the best I can right now?

I invite you to take a moment, a breath, and invite acceptance of where you are right now.

Partnership:

The attitude of Partnership means that although as a helping professional, I can recognize that I have expertise and wisdom, but it is the client who knows themselves best. They are the experts in their lives. So together, as partners, we can explore change. So what about self-partnership? I think of this as two things: finding good partners in change to support ourselves, and acknowledging our inner wisdom & resources.

I invite you to take a moment, a breath, and acknowledge your inner wisdom, and who are the people that are the best partners to support you?

Empowerment:
And finally, the Motivational Interviewing spirit element of Empowerment. When I am helping others, I value deeply their reasons for change and their ideas about how best to change. I remain curious about these things, and explore ways to draw these out (while withholding my reflex to fix!). Self-evocation? Perhaps taking a moment to tune in and connect more deeply to my Why. To my How. (I created this cool free motivational interviewing change plan you can use with clients or yourself if you want!)

I invite you to take a moment, a breath, and connect to your amazing strengths and abilities.

Join us this Thursday for a FREE webinar with Dr. Michelle Drapkin on Motivational Interviewing as a Path to Personal Change, and earn a FREE 1 hr of CE! Share with friends and colleagues! MI Center for Change is a NBCC approved CE provider #7223. Can’t attend live? Sign up for access to the recording.

Motivational Interviewing Tip of the Week: You are doing good work. You are doing important work. You do A LOT. We can apply the four domains of the spirit of Motivational Interviewing to supporting our clients through the change process, and we can use it for our own personal change too! Compassion, Acceptance, Partnership and Empowerment are helpful attitudes to have toward our clients and ourselves as we support change!

Watch my full video here!