How Do You Know When You Know?

BCC

Copyright © 2016 Ellen Kaufman Quick.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6091-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-6089-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016917783

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 10/31/2016

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 What’s Different about Solution Focused Decision Making?

Chapter 2 Some Ideas from Other Perspectives

Chapter 3 The Interview Process

Chapter 4 Stories from the Interviews

Chapter 5 More Stories from the Interviews

Chapter 6 Examples from Movies and Memoirs

Chapter 7 Examples from Everyday Life

Chapter 8 The Many Ways We Know When We Know

Chapter 9 Guidelines for Solution Focused Decision Making: Tapping into What Works for You

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to acknowledge the many people who supported me throughout the creation of this book. Many colleagues at the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association encouraged me to develop the ideas in my workshop on solution focused decision making, and to you I extend a big thank you.

Many people provided examples that inspired the stories. You responded to multiple questions and shared your wisdom, insights, and vulnerabilities. I deeply appreciate your contributions.

I would like to thank author Justin Kaufman for granting an interview regarding his book.

Many mentors and colleagues have contributed to the flexible solution focused perspective I’ve developed over the years. The ideas and clinical wisdom I learned from Steve de Shazer, Insoo Kim Berg, Milton Erickson, and Richard Fisch have influenced me deeply, and I’m most appreciative.

I also want to thank my coaching mentors. I’m especially appreciative of the pearls I’ve gathered from Pat Hinton Walker.

I appreciate the support, friendship, and clinical wisdom of my colleagues at Psychiatric Centers at San Diego, Kaiser Permanente, and the MentorCoach coaching community.

As a psychotherapist and life coach, I’ve had the privilege of watching people transform indecision to choice, often in incredibly difficult situations. I’ve learned so much from your courage and ability to reach decisions when the time was right.

To my daughter, Melissa, I extend my appreciation for your laughter, love, and support.

And finally, to my husband, Frank, I offer my hugs and thanks and love. Writing about decision making reminds me how happy I am that you chose me and that I chose you!

INTRODUCTION

Consider which of these decision questions you’ve asked:

Should I take the leap? Or should I listen to caution?

Is this the one? Or should I keep searching?

Is it time to downsize? Or should I stay where I am?

Do I need to expand and grow? Or is the time not yet right?

Do I want stability? Or excitement? Can I have both?

Should I follow the dream? Or release the illusion?

Do I hold steady through the rough patch? Or is it time to move on?

Should I work harder? Or is it time to relax?

Do I want the aggressive or conservative approach? To medical treatment? To investment? To life?

Is forgiving the best thing I could do? Or is it the worst?

Do I hold on? Or let go?

Is it time to do something about it? Or just keep an eye on it for now?

Will I regret it in the future if I don’t take this path? Will I regret it if I do?

Am I being selfish if I go this way? Will I resent it if I don’t?

Can I make it good for you and good for me?

Is there another option that I haven’t thought of yet?

The Many Areas Where We Face Decisions

We make decisions, large and small, all the time.

We face dilemmas about all kinds of relationships: romantic, family, friendship, business, online. We ask What do I want to be when I grow up? questions, and not just in childhood and adolescence; those work/career/education questions continue at every stage of life. There are choices involving health, exercise, and diet. We may agonize over how to treat (or not treat) the health issues that face us and the people we care about. We face decisions about money: how to get more of it, how to spend it, how to invest it, and what to do when there isn’t enough of it. There are choices about right and wrong and about what we value: At the end of the day, what matters most? Some dilemmas have to do with lifestyle. Others involve whether to pursue our hopes and dreams. Multiple times a day we make choices, sometimes without fully realizing that we’re doing so.

Decision making takes place not just at the individual level, of course; important choices are also made in business, politics, law, athletics, and many other areas. In this book, the focus is personal decision making. In particular, this book looks at the process of decision making, and it does so in a specific way, from a solution focused perspective. (You will read much more about that approach soon.) We will ask how we decide. When and where is that moment in time when we realize that we know? And how can we use what we learn about solution focused decision making to guide us when we face a new decision in our lives?

How This Book Came to Be

I’m a clinical psychologist who is a psychotherapist and life coach, and I’ve had the privilege of having conversations with many people who have faced difficult choices. I’ve seen amazing courage and strength. I’ve observed multiple styles and rhythms in decision making, and I’ve seen very different choices that felt right for different people. Some people make decisions pretty quickly. For others, choices grow over time. In groups that I’ve facilitated, sometimes there are two people who are struggling to decide whether to end or continue a difficult relationship. During their time in the group, one decides to stay, and one decides to leave. Both people feel solid in their decision; for each, it felt like absolutely the right thing to do.

In the solution focused approach, there’s an assumption that no problem happens all the time. We’ve also discovered that when people pay attention to the times when the problem is absent, those exceptions, whatever they may be, tend to grow. Those exceptions offer clues, and following them often leads to a solution. You look at what’s working in someone’s life, not at what isn’t, and you look at what’s worked in the past.

I thought about how this fits when indecision is the issue. Maybe you can pay attention to what’s different when indecision, for whatever reason, isn’t a problem. What’s happening instead? And maybe you can notice how past indecision turned into choices that felt right. How do people know, and how do they know when they know?

When I started to talk to people about those how do you know? moments, I discovered several things. It was immediately clear that people were fascinated by the topic. Many spontaneously offered examples from their own lives and commented that they enjoyed recalling, thinking, and talking about them. And many people told me something else: Reflecting on how they knew reminded them of some things that worked for them and often helped them to approach new decisions in ways that they found helpful.

These discoveries led me to write this book.

What to Expect in This Book

The rest of this introduction presents an overview of the book, with a few sentences about each chapter. It includes my thoughts about the audience for whom I’m writing and about how to best use the book.

Chapter 1 describes what’s distinct about a flexible solution focused approach. It emphasizes that the client is viewed as the expert. It elaborates the expectation that pieces of the solution are probably already happening. This chapter introduces some ways of applying a solution focused approach to decision making.

A flexible solution focused approach incorporates ideas and methods from other perspectives. Chapter 2 describes some of these, including ideas about stages of change and concepts from behavioral economics. It covers how to include these in solution focused decision making.

In Chapter 3, I describe a project in which people were interviewed about how they knew. It includes the process I used and describes the general reactions received. I developed stories from themes that emerged in the interviews.

Chapter 4 is the first of two chapters containing stories based on the interviews. Lots of people described decisions involving career and personal relationships, and stories about these topics are clustered here. Decisions about where to live and about how to cope with various health challenges are also included in this chapter.

More stories from the interviews are in Chapter 5. Here some of the decisions discussed involve children and parents. There are also examples about pets, music, and athletics/games.

Chapter 6 includes decisions from cinema and memoirs, with emphasis on the process and how the person (fictional or real) knew. Gender-identity and spirituality decisions are also included in this chapter, and there are two perspectives on an individual who made decisions in the realm of American politics.

Examples from everyday life comprise Chapter 7. There are examples involving food, social interaction, driving, and use of devices. The chapter talks about how default positions and habits become decisions and why these decisions matter.

The stories, the decision-making literature, and the examples from everyday life suggest some recurring themes. In Chapter 8, I attempt to summarize these. Combining intuition and reason, tapping strengths, letting decisions ripen, and using appropriate caution are some of the themes that emerged.

Chapter 9 provides some guidelines about how you might use the information in this book when you’re facing a decision in your own life. It invites you to notice what’s worked before and to tailor the process to your personal strengths and style.

For Whom This Book Is Intended

This is a book for a general audience, for anyone interested in personal decision making. In the past, I’ve written books more for psychologists and other helping professionals (and for trainees in those disciplines), especially those who want to learn more about a flexible solution focused perspective. Those professionals will probably find this book of interest as well, because it extends the application of solution focused practice to an area not specifically written about before. It also offers ideas for helping professionals to apply with their own clients. But the helping professional community isn’t the primary audience here.

I anticipate that some of you are reading this now because you’re at a fork in your own road, facing some kind of personal decision. You may be looking for some guidelines to support a choice you’ll be making soon. Maybe you recognize that you’re in a time of transition. Perhaps you’ve recently read some other book (for example, The Defining Decade) that suggested that deliberate choices at your time of life are a good thing.

Or you may be reading this book because you’re interested in the decision-making process in general. Like many people, you may be fascinated by the how do you know? question.

You may be reading this book because you’ve studied decision making from a perspective outside psychology. Maybe you typically view decision making through the lens of another discipline, such as economics, political science, history, theology, philosophy, business, education, or literature. You may be curious about how this perspective is both similar to and different from yours.

How to Use This Book

How should you use this book? My answer comes from my deeply rooted solution focused beliefs: Please use it in whatever way works best for you. You may want to read it