I Hope This Big Risk Pays Off for the Field of Solution Focused Brief Therapy

I’m about to do something crazy. And when I say crazy, I mean I’m about to take a big risk. One of the parts of my personality is I’m very much like a “Fine, I’ll do it.” kind of a person. And what I mean by that is, believe it or not, I never expected to be in the position of leadership and visibility that I am in the field of psychotherapy. It was never the goal, it wasn’t something I sought out to do. But in the early to mid like 2000s, I couldn’t help but notice every time I went to a conference in my field, I didn’t see a lot of people that looked like me.

I couldn’t help but notice that every time I was assigned a book to read when I was in graduate school, the authors were never people that looked like me, or came from my background in my culture.

So, “Fine, I’ll do it.” It’s my personality.

So I started writing books and I started lecturing at conferences, literally because I didn’t see other people looking like me doing it. It wasn’t because I was seeking money. In fact, it was a huge financial strain at the time. It wasn’t because I wanted to be famous. I actually don’t, I’m very much an introvert. It was because I didn’t like that there was no representation, I mean literally zero in my field and in my space.

I eventually partnered up with Dr. Adam Fromer and we started working together. And diversity and representation and quality training were really important to us, and we ended up building what we have today, a huge business, and lots of representation, and we’ve impacted lots and lots of lives.

What does that have to do with now? We got to the point where we were like the number one trainer, still are the number one training organization in the field of Solution Focused Brief Therapy.

And we were hosting the largest in-person events. We started hosting our events in 2018. We went to this amazing place in 2018, and we brought hundreds of people from all over the world. And then we hosted another event in 2019. And then in 2020. And then since 2020, everything was kind of shut down, and live in-person events haven’t really come back.

And as they start creeping back in our field, I can’t help but notice the events are small, uninspiring, and the lectures are boring and not quality. And I don’t say that to insult anybody. I’m not. But we gotta do something about this and we’ve gotta do better.
So here I am again, “Okay. Fine, I’ll do it.” I think our events need to be so much more exciting and so much more inspirational, so much more invigorating and so much more positive, uplifting and energetic.

“Fine, I’ll do it.”

If the people in my field, if the people in the Solution Focused world and Solution Focused community won’t up their game and host events that represent this way of working in a way that attracts an audience and inspires those people to make a huge difference, then “Fine, I will do it.”

So I am right now working on something big, and in a short amount of time I’m going to make an announcement about what this thing is. But I just wanted to let you know that I think this approach deserves more attention and more care and more nurturing in the events that we host. And I don’t think that that’s what’s happening now.

So, “Fine, I’ll do it.”