Listening as an Art Form
Often in our workshops, we have avowed that motivational interviewing just as accurately might have been called motivational listening. Recently, we came across a superb and succinct video entitled The Art of Listening by author...
What is MI and how can it assist health care professionals
This is a very brief overview, in interview format re what constitutes Motivational Interviewing and how using MI can benefit health care professionals. It was done with Nelly Faghani, owner of Pelvic Health Solutions, 5 clinics in the Greater Toronto area whose...
Advice
Advice, we heard recently, is criticism given in a cashmere sweater. And we give advice so casually in everyday conversation. The intent is admirable; seemingly, we want to help people who are struggling with a decision, an action, a goal or desire etc. Novelist Erica...
What’s important? What’s important!
Motivational interviewing is, by definition, arranging conversations so that people talk themselves into change based on their own values and beliefs. The key words in this MI description are "arranging conversations." As interviewers, we arrange conversations by...
satisfied striving
Everything in life is constantly evolving, changing, transforming, moving toward something new. And we are tempted so often, lured to status quo or to the notion that success or even being content is a destination. In working with clients and patients regarding...
What and how people practice
There is an adage that says, practice makes perfect. And that saying is both overstated and over-simplified. Renowned American football coach, Vince Lombardi refined this platitude to, "perfect practice makes perfect." In terms of human behaviour and human beings in...
The Evidence Basket
Very likely, most health care professionals support the concept, observation, and use of evidence-based practice (EBP). Technically, EBP means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research....
Listening, really listening
In a previous blog (click here), we have addressed the importance of empathy when adopting a Motivational Interviewing (MI) spirit or attitude. More and more we have become convinced that using MI is less about doing, and more about being. That is, MI has conventions,...
Self-Care: Awareness and Practice
There is an adage that suggests, "your life does not get better by chance...it gets better by change." In the health-caring professions, practitioners are very likely drawn to their professions by their care for humanity and health. Often, that caring component might...
Michelangelo, magnificence, and the attitude of being ‘in’ Motivational Interviewing
In one School of professional coaching training, the Coaches Training Institute, one of the cornerstones of their co-active model of coaching is cogently phrased; the model holds that every person or client or person being coached/interviewed is Naturally Creative,...