When someone speaks in absolutes, it’s usually out of frustration rather than reality.
👉 “They always ignore my ideas.”
👉 “I never get things right the first time.”
👉 “This team will never change.”
When I hear statements like these during a coaching session, my first response is something empathetic, such as, “I know it’s hard when things are like that,” or “I’ve had similar experiences in the past, and it sucks when that’s what’s happening.”
From there, I work with them to try to identify a time when the “always” or “never” fell through.
“You said your suggestions are always ignored, but you mentioned that last month’s project was built on your idea. What was different there?”
Usually, there are a few exceptions they can think of, but they might refer to them as flukes or outliers.
👉 As we work through the exceptions to the “always/never” rule, they will begin to realize on their own that their thinking was flawed; there’s no need for me to point it out.
My goal isn’t to prove them wrong; it’s to reverse engineer the successes to see what they can learn from them.
Then we take the lessons learned from our review of the exceptions and develop a strategy to make the exceptions occur more often.
💡 Change rarely starts with massive breakthroughs. It often begins with a single moment that doesn’t fit the rule, and then you work to recreate it over and over again.
References: de Shazer S. What is it about brief therapy that works? In: Brief Therapy: Myths, Methods, and Metaphors. Routledge; 1990:90-99.
Post Title: “Always” and “never” are the lies we tell ourselves to stay stuck.