What Can Go Right?

As part of my intake process on my Lifestyle profile sheets, after I ask a client about all of their problems, symptoms etc., I ask "what is going right?" 

I would say about half of them fill it in. 

What if we looked at every situation in terms of how it could go right? 

I once worked with a client who was a Safety Manager at a Mill and after many years of no accidents there were suddenly a string of people getting hurt. This person blamed themselves, asking me what I thought was wrong with her. 

I asked her to explain the situation to me and as I heard her blame herself, I asked her "how it felt that she thought this of herself". I kept repeating this question until we got to the core of what she really thought about herself and why. It wasn't fun but we got to the core and she was able to accept that this is how she thought of herself and how this is who she became because of her own thinking and then I congratulated her for letting us go there and allowing it to bubble up to the surface, this time without any judgement, just acceptance. Then I asked the key questions "Is this true?" "Is this who you really who you are?" "Is this what people say about you?" and she said "No!". 

Then I asked her to write out the situation (including her safety talk) about how she would have rather seen it go. I said, "write it in the most positive way you can think of and be creative. Like you are telling a story" Well what happened next was most surprising to her. She still used words like danger, crisis, trouble, fear, and hazardous. Once she was finished I asked her if this was the ideal situation and she said "absolutely." I then asked her to go through and circle all of the words that were negative or caused fear. I could see the lightbulb turning on as she went through and circled quite a few scary words. I then asked if she thought her staff felt safe or more afraid by her safety talks. I just saw this look of astonishment on her face and she was speechless. I then said now go through and change all of those words into a positive and really take a moment to choose high power and positive words (using a thesaurus). 

We both agreed that this would be life changing for her career and that, of course, she had to follow regulations and protocols but that she did, in fact, have an opportunity to end her safety talks with a vision of true safety. 

Would it be fair to say that we all have an opportunity to tell a new story? 

Of course I went on to apply more  of the deeper more integrative techniques of NLP, Hypnosis and Timeline Therapy™