Written by Eugene Morgan

A good friend of mine from work passed away on Saturday, January 29, 2011 almost exactly a year after my father died on Saturday, January 9, 2010.  I wanted to dedicate this blog post to my colleague, Ernie, and my father.

A student was spreading rumors about Milton Erickson dying.   Erickson heard about the rumor and in his classic response said, “I think that is entirely premature. I have no intention of dying. In fact, that will be the last thing I do.”

That statement is so powerful because it implies that there are many things Erickson is planning on doing in the future and that death only represents the final act he will do.   It’s like he’s taking charge of his life. Why should we wait for death to come? Instead, we should do things in our lives that are meaningful and stop wasting time.  Death is only one of life’s roughages.

“Part of the Roughage of Life”

Erickson’s above quote is his description of illnesses, deaths and some tragedies as roughages of life.  He believes that these things are only roughages or rough spots.   He accepts the roughages as just a part of life.   The difficulties of life help put things in perspective; thus we have an opportunity to value life more.

Should We Grieve

Throughout our lives we have and will continue to experience losses.  Grief is defined in the dictionary as “1: an emotional distress caused by or as if by bereavement. ”

However, Milton Erickson would go so far to say “There is a lot of hogwash going around about assisting families in grieving.”  I was shocked when I first read this but I don’t believe Erickson is saying not to grieve.  Consistently with Ericksonian principles, every individual is unique; therefore, everyone grieves differently. We each have our own way of grieving a loss.

There are two ways we can approach a loss of a loved one.  Either we can dwell on the loss of that person, or we can recall the good memories that we have stored up about that person.  I prefer to recall the good memories.  I believe there is a place and time to grieve a loss.

But I don’t think Erickson is saying not to grieve a loss, as any emotions like anger, guilt, shame, and sadness are natural emotions we have all experienced.  I believe Erickson is trying to relay a message that we need to put losses into certain perspective and not dwell on them.   Chronically dwelling on a loss puts us in the past, not in the future.

Orient to the Future

Orienting toward the future is a constant theme in Milton Erickson’s work.  Before Milton Erickson’s death at the age of 78, he was looking forward to his lectures at the university.   He was not waiting to die, because life is for the living, and he chose to live.

Written by Eugene Morgan

We all have expectations.  We expect the sun will come out each day.  We expect our car to start each morning.  We expect the school bus will arrive on time.  We expect our favorite show will come on every Wednesday night.  Milton Erickson expects his subjects will do something.

“Deeds are the offspring of hope and expectancy”

I like this quote because it tells us in a nutshell one of the reasons Erickson uses this attitude of expectancy is to facilitate change.  Erickson understands that we have tremendous potentials as human beings at our disposal.  When Erickson prescribes a task to his patients, he expects them to do the task because he knows what humanity is capable of.  Erickson’s attitude of expectancy evokes an internal motivation to move the patient into action.  Just like the sun will rise each day of our lives, Erickson expects that his subject will do something.   No matter how insignificant the subject might think it is, as long as it is going toward the direction of change it is good.   To Erickson it’s like a beginning of a small snowball rolling down a hill getting bigger and bigger.

From my last post, I wrote about the learning set getting the subject into the learning mode.   To make a change, learning is required.    Since learning can be difficult, Erickson creates an expectation for the subject to work through.  Erickson expects the subject to deliver or at least to make an attempt to deliver.

“Expect” is defined in the dictionary as “to look forward to: anticipate.”  Erickson always orients his patient to the future, and having an expectancy attitude, presupposes the future. I think it is a good idea to have an expectancy attitude towards personal growth.

For example, my goal for each week is to write a blog post.  I think that is reasonable goal for me since I have a 9-5 job.  So while I’m working my 9-5 job, I can look forward to working on an article for publication.  I think anticipation psychologically can be rewarding in itself and a good way of establishing a new routine.

Developing a Routine

Getting into a routine increases our expectation of getting our goals realized, thus it’s important to develop a routine.  To develop a useful routine we have to repeat the same task daily.  As this happens, our brains will begin to develop new pathways and establish new connections, which in turn develops new habits in our routine. When we develop a new and useful routine, our old and out-of-date routine will diminish.  If we want to master a new routine to get us to our goals, lets consider dividing them into smaller goals.  Conquering smaller goals increases our expectation thus enforces the notion that we will succeed and not give up.

Divide and Conquer Goals

We have no expectation of meeting our goals, if we feel so overwhelmed by looking at the whole scope of the goal.  We see how much we got to get done.  It can be overwhelming for anyone who can see the beginning, middle and the end of a goal.  But if we break the goal down into smaller and manageable projects it looks possible to complete each project on time.

Milton Erickson told a story about the four-minute-mile run to a high school athlete who was trying to break a high school record in a shot put competition.  Erickson said that the four-minute-mile run was unbreakable for many years because no one had the expectation of breaking it.  Some believed that it was humanly impossible to break the four-minute-mile run.  However, there came a pre-med student who was interesting in breaking the four-minute-mile run.  He knew he had to change his mindset if he wanted to break the four-minute-mile.  So he started thinking about how other sports measured time by seconds.   He realized that 240 seconds were manageable than working with four minutes.  And so he trained himself to think in seconds instead of minutes.  This was how he had broken the four-minute mile.  He divided the minutes into seconds.  All he needed to conquer was one second, which means 239 seconds to break the four-minute-mile.  It is easier to take a second or two off his time than one minute.  His attitude had changed and now he had the expectation to break four-minute-mile run.

Expectancy is an Attitude

Every child and adult knows about the fable, “The rabbit and the tortoise.”  Where the rabbit challenges the tortoise to a race and the slow tortoise ends up beating the speedy rabbit.  And then the moral of story; “Slow and steady wins the race.”  The rabbit took a break, then fell asleep, lost track of time and lost the race.

The rabbit thought that he had enough time to rest but underestimated the tortoise.   The tortoise won the race and was rewarded for his steadiness and his consistency.    Speed doesn’t always get us where we want to go.  Slow is not always a bad thing.  It’s better to do it the right way then trying to find a shortcut way.

“Steady” is defined in my dictionary as “1: direct or sure in movement; also: calm 2: firm, fixed 3: stable 4:constant, resolute 5: regular 6: reliable.”

I like all six meanings because it describes the tortoise’s action and attitude.  I can picture in my mind’s eye the tortoise’s action as firm, constant, regular.  The tortoise’s attitude as very fixed on a goal, reliable and resolute

Written by Eugene Morgan

During a hypnosis session, Milton Erickson often assists  subjects in developing a learning set.   He does this by redirecting the subjects to childhood events when everything was new and fresh.  Childhood was a time of learning countless new things and new situations.   As children we didn’t have preconceived ideas yet.  During that time, our brains were developing, we began learning to first identify every part of our body like our hands, face, eyes, nose, and toes.  These were our initial experiences.

“Experience is the Only Teacher”

The above heading is a quote from Erickson.  It reminds me of a story that Milton Erickson told to a group of students on how therapy should be done.

Here is the paraphrase version of the story.   One day Erickson and his classmates, who were walking home from school, saw a lost horse along the side of the road grazing on grass.  Erickson jumped on the horse’s back and guided it back on the road.  While on the road, the horse got sidetracked and ran off the road and started grazing again. Erickson again stirred the horse back on the road.

For more than two miles, Erickson rode the horse until he reached a farmer’s lawn.  While the farmer approached to ask him how he knew the horse belonged here, Erickson said he didn’t know- the horse led him here. All he did was to keep the horse on the road.

Erickson told this story to make a point about how therapy should be done.   One of his goals is to guide his patients and his subjects to participate in experiencing something.  He also often tells this story to point out that his subjects already has the answers within, they just need to stay on the road and keep moving.

“Experience can be very informative”

As children we test and re-test new things and new situations for a certain period of time.  With the testing and re-testing we began to accumulate experiences in our unconscious mind.  Our brains automatically categorizes these experiences.

For example, as children we learned how to make distinctions with color. The sun is yellow, the sky is blue, the grass is green, the fire trucks are red, etc.  Then as children we began to make associations, for instance, not only do we see that the sun is yellow but also we see that the school bus is yellow, not only do we see that the grass is green but also we see that the house is panted green, not only do we see that the fire trucks is red but also we see that an apple is red, etc.

Learning through trial and error

To master a skill like walking requires trial and error.  As children it was a struggle  for us to put one foot in front of the other while we leaned against something to keep us from falling.  I don’t remember this experience but I know I had this experience because if I didn’t I wouldn’t be walking.   But I do remember watching my baby sister learning first how to walk and how it was a struggle for her.  She would make a couple of steps and she would fall down.   But falling didn’t stop her, she would get back up and try repeatedly until her brain and her muscles were developed enough to walk smoothly.

As adults we develop frames of reference or (shortcuts) to get to where we want to go in life.  We have countless experiences sitting in a chair.   Therefore,  as adults we no longer need to test and re-test; because everything we learned as children has gone into our unconscious minds.

However, not every shortcut is useful in every situation.   This is why Erickson redirects his subjects or bypasses the shortcuts to get the subject into learning mode again to unlearn and relearn other ways in dealing with difficult situations.

Learning From Experiences

The heading sounds like an old cliché.  Whether it’s a cliché or not, it’s a truism.  We all learn from our experience.  Everything we do is an experience.   If I sit here idle, it’s an experience.  Yes doing nothing is an experience.   Depending on the context,  being idle can be a useful experience.  But if my goal is to write a blog post, but all I do is experience idleness for two hours, the result would be a white background and a feeling of disappointment and  self-doubt.   And I know learning from my experiences that being productive creates a feeling of accomplishment and pride in my work.  So as long as we’re alive we’re going to experience something.  Just as I’m writing this sentence, I’m experiencing something.  My mind is focused.  Everything around me is fuzzy except this sentence I am writing now.