So I’m standing here. That’s Ellis island where millions upon millions of immigrants first arrived in America here in New York city. Over my other shoulders, the statue of Liberty, and for many generations of immigrants coming to this country, these places, this place, that sign represented hope for a new future. Hope for change. Hope for dream accomplishment. I mean, people came to America and called it the land of opportunity. And this is where they started seeing the signs that their lives could be different.
And as I walk around and look at this place and think about what this is represented and thinking about what this means, it makes me think about signs of hope in people’s lives. It makes me think about the power of hope when you notice the signs being present in your life.
I think one of the most powerful things that Solution Focused Brief Therapy represents is we use questions to help our clients to notice signs of change happening in their life, but not just change, not just any change, not justrandom change, not just general change, but the type of change that leads them towards their desired outcome.
And so often the change that they start to notice have been changes that were there all of the time, but they didn’t notice. And once you see these signs, then your hope rises. And once your hope rises and your energy rises, your motivation rises, your ability to dream about a positive future rises. And that in and of itself changes lives, just seeing opportunity changes lives. And I think about what those people who arrived here for so many years must have been thinking when they landed in something they referred to as the land of opportunity.
I actually want all of us in our life to look at our futures as the land of opportunity. Because truly your future can be anything. If you can dream it, you can become it. If you can see it, you can be it. The future is so littered with signs of opportunity, but we have to be able to train our brains to see it.
Now, I don’t mean to say everybody’s life is easy. I don’t mean to say that nobody has problems. I don’t mean to say that the future also doesn’t have traps and pitfalls as the people who landed here knew this is the land of opportunities, but there are traps and pitfalls. There’s opportunities to mess up just as there are to do wonderful things.
But what I do mean to say is the more you can train your brain to notice signs and evidence of opportunity. Signs and evidence of hope, then the more likely you are to have a life that turns in that direction and start accomplishing dreams. So practice that in your life. Start to notice signs and evidence of change that’s moving in the direction you want to be because I promise you that will make a huge difference in the way you live your life.