The suggestion to be creative, much like the command, “Be spontaneous,” just kills the process. A sidebar in this week’s Newsweek, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman point out Mark Runco’s research that a general instruction to “be creative” dries up the creative juices. Instead, a more specific challenge generates twice as many creative responses.
This is so much like the therapy I conduct. I ask questions, not to get facts in response, but to generate new ideas. Clients and I have a pretty good sense of what the problems are. What we don’t yet have a sense of (and are striving to clarify) is what life might be like if the problem were diminished, taken care of, put aside, etc.
We find this new vision through questions. For example: How might you life be different if you didn’t listen to Depression in first thing in the morning? If you were to stand with yourself and not against yourself, what might be the first difference you notice? The first effect is to nurture hope, the second is to move to change, and the third is to start living those new visions.
I ask questions instead of make statements because questions allow clients more freedom to go where they want to go than a declaration from me does. I tend to ask questions in the subjunctive mood (might, could be, if…were, etc) to add in a sense of speculation and to undermine the sensation of realism that problems cloak themselves in.
