Motivational Interviewing Rewires the Brain. There’s a Motivational Interviewing course for that!

This week, in the US, many of us celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s a holiday with an interesting history that I won’t go address here… but it does have me thinking about gratitude and the power of what we pay attention to. 

Thanksgiving holiday tends to invite us into gratitude, something we struggle with maintaining. It’s hard to stay grateful! It’s hard to stay in tune with our own strengths, and those of our clients. 

You see, we are wired for negative bias.

What does this mean?

It means that evolutionarily, our brains are wired first to notice what is wrong, what is dangerous, what is hard.

It’s what has kept us alive as a species all of these millenia! We need to pay attention to the danger to stay vigilant and alive!

But it’s not such a helpful brain bias to have when we are sitting across from someone trying to help. We notice the problems, the dilemmas, the stuckness, the hard stuff. We tend to ask more about these problems, barriers, and the ‘why we aren’t changing.’ 

(And it’s not such a helpful brain bias to have with ourselves! We tend to be really hard on ourselves. We notice our own errors, lack of capacity, what we are missing or not doing rather than stay in touch with our capacity, strengths and awesomeness!) 

Motivational Interviewing invites us to swap this bias around, and pay more attention to the strengths, abilities, and motivation for change. 

Not only does the spirit of MI invite us to put on the strengths lens, it also provides us the skills of how to do it through selective reflective listening, affirmations and other tools.

Learn more about MI through our Foundations of Motivational Interviewing Course and begin rewiring your brain!

Motivational Interviewing Tip of the Week: So here is my invitation this Thanksgiving week! Notice the good. Notice the okayness. Notice it with yourself, and notice it in those you work with. Put on the Strength Glasses and filter out that negative bias that lures you into focusing on the problems and stuckness… and begin to train yourself to see strength, capacity, resourcefulness, resilience. 

Watch my full video here!