Narrative therapy guru David Epston observes that we know what we intend to do, and we try to know what we do. But, he asks, how do we know what what-we-do does? An interesting question that. How do we know what what-we-do does? How can we find out.
Every so often you find out by accident what something you did did. If it’s a really good day, a truly spectacular day, a so-far-beyond-great-that-you-can-hardly-stand-it day, then what you had intended to do might actually be what you did do. Only thing is, it might take a long time to find it out.
I am standing in a coffee line when I am approached by a woman who attended a hope workshop a long time ago, maybe ten years or so. “I just wanted to tell you,” she says, “that you predicted something accurately in my life. You said you believed I would run a marathon. Since then I’ve run four marathons.”
She appears to be very happy about it, so I catch up her happiness and stand there smiling with pleasure. I don’t remember the day or the story exactly, but I do recognize the probable truth of the story, since it contains ‘the language of I believe’. The ‘language of I believe’ is one of my favourite tools for conveying, or offering, or instilling hope. I often teach ‘the language of I believe at hope workshops for professional helpers. So it is reasonable to believe that we had a conversation about her hope, which was to run a marathon, and I likely asked her a few hope-focussed questions, and then I probably said I believed she could run a marathon. It’s a sequence repeated hundreds of times, a hope-focussed sequence that once required discipline, something that now happens automatically.
Then she says, “I was wondering how you knew it was a reasonable hope.”
A reasonable hope, hmmmm! That’s a toughy. Reasonable hopes are so hard to distinguish from unreasonable hopes when you look at the facts, or what you believe to be the facts. You can really get hung up on the facts.
Still, I no doubt decided it was a reasonable hope, reasonable enough to believe in. And though I don’t remember the story itself, I have to say that I would have thought it a reasonable hope because she had told me she was hoping to run a marathon. That’s enough to make it a reasonable hope, the fact that she was hoping it. And if she was hoping it, then, given the contagious nature of this thing called hope, I probably started hoping it also, hoping it strongly enough that I could say I believed she could run a marathon. Conversation will do that, spread hope and fan it up until you can honestly say you believe something.
The funny thing about this kind of conversation is that it serves to fan the flame of hope in the person who brought the hope forward in the first place, and that feeling of hope leads to thinking it through, and that feeling and thinking together alongside relating to someone who believes you can is just enough to change your actions. Next thing you know, you are running a marathon, or four marathons, if that is what you had hoped to do.
And isn’t it funny how the person who fanned up your hope hot and bright enough so as to change the way you were acting—isn’t it funny how that person can walk away without remembering the story, though it stays with you?
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