What do Field of Dreams and MI Have in Common? Motivational Interviewing Spirit!

The movie Field of Dreams is a classic. (Can I call a 1989 film a classic? I think I just dated myself). 

Kevin Costner. Ray Leotta. James Earl Jones. 

Even if you aren’t a baseball fan, it’s a fantastic movie. Kevin Costner is a corn farmer in Iowa, and hears a voice telling him to plow his corn and build a baseball field. It sounds crazy, but magic happens. 

But what does Field of Dreams have to do with Motivational Interviewing? 

It turns out, a lot. Let me explain.

When I left my agency job to launch my own business 6 years ago, I watched Field of Dreams again. And again. I needed to remember to trust my instincts and have courage. Build it, and they will come.

I needed to remember to believe, even when there wasn’t evidence at first to believe in.

And a decade before that, as a new social worker fresh out of grad school working with veterans experiencing homelessness, I believed in my clients, even when others might not see evidence at first to believe. 

I had many colleagues who thought that my optimism and hope for my clients was fruitless and naive.

But I chose to believe anyway.

My therapist recently reflected to me, “There is horizontal hope, and there is vertical hope.” 

Horizontal hope is hope in a particular outcome. If I hoped my clients would stop drinking or take a particular action, I was on the roller coaster of their success or failure in that action.

But if I tapped into vertical hope, the hope in their inherent ability to grow, change and heal, now that is a deeper hope that isn’t tied to outcomes. 

And crazily enough, it’s evidence-based. 

When we believe in our clients, it impacts their outcomes. When we truly embody the spirit of Motivational Interviewing, we are embodying this vertical hope. It’s a deeply held belief AND practice. It is the belief that our clients have inside of them what they need to grow and change. That they can make it. That they WILL make it.

When Kevin Costner hears the voice, “If you build it, they will come,” he responds, “I can’t think of one good reason why I should,” he says. Then he does.

He plows up his cash crop to build a baseball field in the middle of nowhere. He hops in his VW van and drives across the country to follow an instinct. And where it all leads him is a deeper, more real place than he has ever been before. 

Kevin Costner wondered if he was crazy, but he also knew he had to do it. 

I must also say that it just took one person to believe in him. His wife was facing their land foreclosure too, and the scorn of their community, yet they chose to believe together.

You do the same with your clients.

Embodying the spirit of Motivational Interviewing, we keep choosing to believe, to choose vertical hope. 

What does it cost to believe in someone? 

What does it cost to believe in yourself? 

Sometimes you have to go on an adventure to figure out where you are being led.

I invite you to choose to believe. 

Motivational Interviewing Tip of the Week: Keep choosing hope, for yourself and for your clients. Our clients feel it. The spirit of Motivational Interviewing coaches us to lean into hope with our clients. Sometimes we have to lend hope for a while until they pick it up again. Build it and they will come. Believe in them, and they will change.

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