Free Motivational Interviewing as a Path to Personal Change

It’s New Year’s resolution time for many… 

Some people set intentions for the year, decide upon a word for the year, or create specific change plans. 

The statistics for maintaining New Year’s Resolutions are pretty abysmal for many. And we know the challenges of the change cycle- for ourselves and for our clients. I have some free Motivational Interviewing tools for you!

We tell ourselves we are going to do better, eat better, sleep better, drink more water and less caffeine, exercise more, fill in the blank _________. Then, we get frustrated with ourselves for not making or maintaining that change, and it fuels that “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just _____?” That sense of struggle doesn’t actually fuel change, it is a barrier to it.

(If you want to watch a funny clip about how we oversimplify change, check out Bob Newhart’s Stop It clip).

Personal change is HARD folks. There are some ingredients we know help people make real and lasting change, and Motivational Interviewing gives us support in this area! And I have some free Motivational Interviewing resources for you!

For years, I have been toying around with how to apply the spirit and tools of Motivational Interviewing to self change. We can apply the spirit of MI to our own personal change (just as we do with clients): compassion, empowerment, acceptance, & partnership. We can even use some of the tools MI offers to support personal change.

I created some free motivational interviewing handouts around this, then came across this book a fellow MINT member (Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers) wrote in 2015 about it. 

THEN, a friend of mine and fellow MINT member wrote a WORKBOOK about using Motivational Interviewing as a path to personal change. It’s perfect to support change, for you or your clients, using the evidence based practice of Motivational Interviewing.  Check it out!! She and I worked together as MI & MET trainers years ago, and she’s got a great way of approaching change.

Ya’ll, she’s doing a FREE Motivational Interviewing webinar on the topic for us on January 18th! (And if you can’t catch it live, sign up for recording access or catch it in our ‘short course’ library after the course date). If you attend it live, you can earn 1 hour of CE (MI Center for Change is a NBCC approved CE provider #7223). 

Motivational Interviewing Tip of the Week: Consider, as you hold space for clients and yourself this New Year, how the spirit of Motivational Interviewing can be applied for personal change: self-compassion, empowerment, acceptance, and partnership. Then, consider using free Motivational Interviewing tools like this personal change plan! And join us for this free webinar!

Watch my full video here!