April 6, 2011

4 Questions to Help You Change When You’re Stuck

By Tim Lochhead

Our last blog looked at some key elements required for change motivation to exist.

OK, so what are some ways to elicit change motivation if someone is stuck at something? 

This can be a complex topic, so I will provide some simple questions that can help open up the change process.

In their book Motivational Interviewing Authors Miller and Rollnick offer 4 valuable types of open questions to facilitate the change process:

1. Advantages of Change: some examples

How might your life be better if you made this change?
What good things would happen if you lost excess fat?

2. Disadvantages of No Change: some examples

What difficulties have you had in your current situation?
What concerns you about staying on your current path?

3. Optimism for Change: some examples 

What strengths do you have that will help you succeed here?
Who could offer you help with this?

4. Intention to Change: some examples

What are you thinking about your with respect to your weight right now?
How important is losing excess fat to you?

You can modify the above specifics to suit your particular case.

Hopefully asking these types of questions can help someone stuck! Change is hard; after all, we are only human 🙂