Lektion 1
The Basic Skills of Listening: Julia's story
Effective listening is the foundation of intentional and transformative practice, whether listening to yourself or others. How often do you feel full, and attentively listened to, and what gets in the way of you sometimes affording this luxury to others?
In this session, using the story of Julia as an example, we will explore the ethos and impact of attentive careful listening. We will hone up on the importance of listening with the intention to the meaning behind the words, and the emotions behind the experience. The session will end with a guided reflective practice.
Lektion 2
Finding the Leverage
When great listening has taken place, it helps us to knit together the connections between thought, feeling, and action. In this session, you will continue the process by exploring how to choose the best point of leverage to begin to move forward, by identifying key values, and you will begin to map the direction of change. The session will begin with a short talk woven around the story of Roger and will move to an interactive exercise for you to identify your priorities. It will end with a short affirmation to calm and soothe overwhelm.
Lektion 3
Cause and Effects: Challenging Assumptions
Cause and Effect: Challenging assumptions
Often when we are not feeling at our best, when there are problems to be moved through, we fall into unhelpful traps. We may forget to see where our agency lies, or we might be blinkered by the problems so that we cannot access our strengths and resources.
In this session, you will learn ways to step into the ownership of your issues, access your strengths and resources, and develop a more deeply empathic understanding of the self. You will learn through tutor input and the story of James, and the session will end with an affirming reflection on your strengths and talents.
Lektion 4
Waving the Magic Wand
In this session, you will explore ways of visioning your future wants, aligned to your values and matching to the ecology of your life. One of the key secrets of mindfully creating a successful future is to distinguish between what is a valued outcome, and what is a means of getting there – a strategy. When you are able to move fluently between these two, you will open a treasure trove of means to get you to where you want to be.
This session will begin with tutor input and will finish with a guided reflection to access your valued goals.
Lektion 5
'Values and Priorities'.
Our intrinsic values form the very essence of our being, and we tweak our external values along the way. They are often influenced by our lived experience and perspectives. In this session, through tutor input and invitation to actively participate, you will learn how to be very clear about your values, and relate them to experiential rehearsal. The session will be illustrated through a series of questions which reveal our deeper values. and will end with guided reflection at different levels of your thought processors.
Lektion 6
Behavioural Goals and Rich Pictures
In this lesson we will explore more explicit descriptions of your future. Putting flesh on the bones of the abstract ideas for your future. In this lesson, using prompts, Frank has to think carefully about a more realistic description of his future if it was to be both realistic and ideal.
What specifically do you want to be doing, thinking, feeling. Who do you want to be with and without. Explore your preferred future in detail, without the constraint of having to find strategies to fulfill it.
Lektion 7
Being Careful what you Wish For
Many people jump ahead with plans before fully assessing the possible costs and consequences not only to themselves, also to valued others. In this session, you will learn a short and focused method on how to be really thorough in your forward planning, to create a truly valued outcome.
The principles will be illustrated through the story of Angela's quest for freedom.
We will finish with a guided practice to help you set a truly valued and well considered outcome that is important for you.
Lektion 8
How Many Ways? Lateral Thinking for Moving Forward
Have you ever noticed how sometimes you create a way forward and for some reason, it just doesn't get completed. In this session, you will explore how to identify multiple routes which can lead to your outcome so that there is room for flexibility and you are ready if you find that there are limits to the 'only one way' mode of thinking
You will learn here about the need for plurality, and ways of discovering and rediscovering hidden resources. The session will be illustrated through Margaret's story of how she creatively found unexpected ways to fulfill her dreams. Your take away will be a set of prompts and questions which will prove invaluable when you are working through your personal issues and opportunities.
Lektion 9
Detailed Planning
Over the last sessions, you will have identified the issues and themes that are important to you and explored a means of working with them that leads you to valued outcomes, and to have discovered multiple resources which will help you to reach them.
In this session, having identified so many resources, now is the time to organise them, through tutor input about the steps to follow and a sequence to lay them out in. The session will be illustrated through Roger and Charlie's story, noticing the plan that she first had became much more robust and set to succeed using the suggested method.
The session will end with a guided reflection to explore the method in your own life.
Lektion 10
Reviewing The Whole Model
You have now followed a model and a set of processes that will be effective for self-counsel at any time. In this final session, we will review the learnings and they will be mapped out in terms of three easy stages, and three easy questions. You will jog your memory on the key principles to remember, and the session will end with some final affirmations.
You will then be taking with you a simple yet invaluable means to be your own counselor for life.
