Look for What's Already Working

“October had tremendous possibility. The summer's oppressive heat was a distant memory, and the golden leaves promised a world full of beautiful adventures.” Sitting on the bench beneath the kitchen window this morning wrapped in a blanket I watched a blackbird turning over leaves under the quince and thought about the pressure that comes with tremendous possibility. Where do you start?

Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, and my inbox and social media were full of advice: do this, try that, add these seven habits to your morning. All of it is well meant. But I noticed the familiar feeling that comes with a long list of things I'm not yet doing, and I thought I'd offer something different for a Sunday.

Start with what's going right

In solution-focused coaching we don't begin with the problem. We begin with a question that sounds almost too simple: when has it been even a little bit better?

We call these moments exceptions. They're the days when the exam nerves were quieter, the grief was softer for an hour, or the Sunday-night dread didn't turn up. Almost everyone has them, and almost everyone overlooks them. When a mind is under strain, it files the good days as flukes and the bad days as the truth.

A client told me recently that she'd "done nothing right all week." Then, over a cup of peppermint tea, it emerged that she'd walked the dog each morning, phoned her sister on Tuesday and managed a proper lunch break on Friday. That isn't nothing. That's a week with a shape to it, and a good place to build from.

Why this works

When we notice what's working, we stop treating change as something that has to arrive from outside. We find that we already have some of the resources we need. It's the difference between building a garden from bare soil and finding that something is already growing, and it's usually much easier to feed a seedling that's up than to plant from scratch.

Try this week

• Think of a recent moment, however brief, when things felt slightly easier. What were you doing? Who was there? What was different?

• On a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is "life is as I'd like it to be", where are you today? Then ask yourself why you're not one number lower. Whatever you name is your evidence.

• Do a little more of whatever helped, just once this week.

None of this replaces proper support when things are hard, and it isn't meant to. But it's a gentle way of turning towards what's already there.

If you'd like a hand spotting your own exceptions, whether you're a student, a teacher or someone finding your feet after a loss, I'd love to hear from you. One conversation can be enough, and we can have it in person, outdoors or on the phone.

Cally x