Where is My Life Going?

There are many reasons why a person may reach a stage in their life where they ask this question. It may be because of family disruption when they were young, not adjusting to high school, developed mental health difficulties or used alcohol and other drugs. As a result of these difficulties they may be reliant on the Disability Support Pension and have to live with their parents or in shared accommodation and find that they spend most of their day playing computer games.  Or they may just be unhappy with their day to day grind.

One psychological approach that may assist with reviewing your life situation is Solution Focused Therapy.  This approach was developed by Steve de Shazer (1940-2005), and Insoo Kim Berg (1934-2007) and their colleagues beginning in the late 1970’s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It focuses on developing potential solutions to the situation you find yourself in. A key part of this approach is the “Miracle Question”.

“Suppose that one night, while you are asleep, there is a miracle and the problem that brought you to this situation is solved. However, because you are asleep you don’t know that the miracle has already happened. When you wake up in the morning, what will be different that will tell you that the miracle has taken place? Give yourself time to ponder your answer and let your thoughts wander”.

One way to work through the Miracle Question is to write your answers into a notebook or type them up on the computer, so you can go back to your answers sometime in the future.

The next step is to answer the following questions

• Will you wake at the same time?
• Will you know at once that the miracle has happened? How will you know?
• What will happen next?
• Who else will notice?
• How will they tell?
• Who will notice next?
• What will you be doing?
• Who will notice you are doing it?
• What will they notice?

For more information on this approach Dr Alasdair Macdonald’s, (2007) book Solution-Focused Therapy: Theory, Research & Practice has an excellent overview of Solution-Focused therapy.

This exercise aims to allow you to look at your situation from a different perspective and think about the possibility of a different future.

From here it is possible to answer other questions about this miracle including:

• What will be different about others (father, mother, sister, brother, employer, teacher friend etc) after this miracle happened?
• What will the other person notice differently about you after this miracle happened?
• When they notice that difference about you, how do you think they would respond?

After writing down your responses to these questions, it is time to reflect whether there have been times when a small part of this miracle is already happening and are there things you could start to do differently that may help the miracle happen.

Dr Jan Parr has assisted clients to work through their own miracle question.  If you would like to know more or think this approach may work for you, Jan has appointments available at https://psychhelp.com.au/jan-parr/.