How To Make Your Mind Up

“I just really need to make my mind up” is a phrase often heard on our retreats.

A nice phrase often used within motivation counseling is :

“Ambivalence is an okay place to pass through but you wouldn’t want to live their”.

In my travels as a counsellor and therapist I have met people who not only have lived for a long time in ambivalence, they seem to have set up whole residential developments with foundations going deep into the earths crust. The end result of living with such deep rooted and prolonged uncertainty is either a resigned sadness or a blank denial, “no, really I’m okay there isn’t anything wrong”

Counselling Secrets

Once we make our minds up to do something we often do it. This is a fact borne out by common sense as well as numerous research studies. If we are really determined to climb Everest, walk across the Sahara or row the Atlantic we usually succeed. Our determination knows almost no bounds.

I remember talking to a counselling client years ago who had been in the local paper for lifting up the side of a car in order to rescue her 7 year old son from a traffic accident. Unbelievably against all the laws of physics, she managed it and the boy made a full recovery.

We often fail, not because we are lacking in talent, information or insight but usually because we have not really made our minds up. We venture into something “half hearted” and wonder why things don’t work out. Our goal for everybody on our retreats is to feel “full hearted”.

“It wasn’t easy to leave those parts, and it wern’t safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held, for I was determind, and my mind firm made up. At last I done it. Dear boy I done it.” Magwichs’ address to Pip in Thomas Hardys’ Great Expectations.

So, the most important question must be “how do we make our minds up”. This follows a complex path and is an issue that we have been working with for over 20 years. We know a lot about how to make your mind up.

What We Don’t Do!

A useful way to understand how to make our minds up is to look at what does not work.

One thing that is important is to understand the dynamic between what we need and what we often receive. What we often receive from friends, counsellors and therapists is advice, “have you tried….” or “why don’t you……” or “I think that you should…..”. Sometimes experienced counsellors and therapists recognize the futility of advice and say nothing which can be even more infuriating.

What we actually need is somebody to help us make our own minds up, not just tell us what to do or give their opinion or even worse give nothing, but really help (with expert knowledge of recent advances in motivational psychology) work out what it is we do want to do….and this is what we are good at.

There are many useful strategies that we employ. Many of these work very fast, and are not difficult and produce lasting results.

If you are interested to learn more about these strategies or anything more about our Life Change Holiday, Couples Therapy Retreat or Counseling Retreat please just contact me at the bottom of the page. I really will be happy to help.

Hope this has been useful to you.

Talk to you next week.

Alex.