The Work Before the Work
How do you prepare yourself to enter into the space of therapy? How do you make room not just for your client, but for you, to facilitate the entrance of emotional safety, the safety...
Tagged: deliberate practice
Blackbox Thinking For Psychotherapists (Part I of II)
With each plane crash, future flights become safer. With each therapy failure, we feel less safe with ourselves. We are cast into a sea of self-doubt. Our confidences plummet; our competence is called into...
What Does Deliberate Practice Look Like? Onstage, Backstage, and Offstage.
“What does deliberate practice look like?” Thanks to Ivan for a great question! “Lots of people want to be the noun,” says artist and writer, Austin Kleon, “without doing the verb.” First, I want...
10 Things to Avoid in Deliberate Practice
“Those who control their passion and make it work for them have presence. Those who fail to control their passion look like excited, nervous teenagers. Those who have no passion at all have no...
Being Average is Compelling
Singer Billy Joel said, “I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.” Being a good enough[1] therapist is compelling. Besides, there are real upsides of being...
Everyone Needs a Coach
I was consulting with an agency just last week, and one of the therapists said this to me, “I want to get better. This is important… If I don’t know this about my outcomes,...
The Biggest Stumbling Block Towards Individualised Professional Development
The biggest barrier towards your professional development is not on how to get from zero to 10, but from zero to one.[1] Many therapists struggle with systematically measuring their outcomes. Because of this, they...
The Paradox of Focusing on the Therapist
Empathy has a hard time seeing a bigger picture. That is why fundraisers for charities do better when they tell a compelling story of an individual child with no access to clean water, rather...
First Principles: The 5-Step Process for Deep and Accelerated Learning in Therapy
In a previous post, I’ve talked about the importance of Developing First Principles Before Methods. I’ve also talked about the ways you can develop first principles from challenging situations, therapeutic mistakes, and guidance from...
Develop Your Own Wealth of Learnings
In a previous post, I talked about the iterative cycle that we can take in our professional development (click HERE to revisit it, and download the free infographic). Here’s something that I’ve recently revisited that struck...
Do Not Seek Out A Supervisor
Seek out a portfolio of supervisors, mentors and coaches. The apprenticeship model of clinical supervision certainly has its merits. It takes us beyond what we read and what we derive from experience in clinical practice....
Stop Talking, and Start Performing.
What if one of the ways of transforming our practice in psychotherapy is to stop calling it talk therapy, but to see it as a performance ritual? What if we stop talking, and start...
Signs That Therapists are Barking Up the Wrong Tree in Our Professional Development
I’m going to re-look at some deeply held truths we were taught to believe about professional development in the field of psychotherapy. Actually, if these truths are closely examined, they are perpetuated lies.
Mastery Learning for Therapists: Figure Out the What Before the How
“I always wanted to be someone. Now I think I should have been more specific.” ~Comedian Lily Tomlin One of the most rudimentary, yet the most difficult thing to do in your professional development...
Scenius vs. Genius
Not only does his brilliance shine in his collaborations, he’s also good at coming up with words. Heard of the term “ambient music“? He came up with it. Heard of the word “Scenius”? Probably not....
Why We Need This One Person For Us To Get Better
When this guy was in the room, I played better. We first met Randolf Arriola when I was about 17 years old. My bandmates and I saved up enough money to go into a...
The Pursuit of Excellence is Not the Pursuit of Perfection
The pursuit of getting better at our craft in therapy requires us to make fine distinctions. One of them is to make the distinction between the pursuit of excellence vs. the pursuit of perfection.
Productivity for Therapists: The Top 5 What-Not-To-Dos (Part 2 of 2)
In the previous post, I talked about the pit-falls of engaging in the “Blame-Game” and getting mixed up with being busy and being productive. We continue the final count-down of “What-Not-To-Do” if we want...
Productivity for Therapists: The Top 5 What-Not-To-Dos (Part 1 of 2)
Just do a google search, and you’d soon be inundated with many blogs and self-help books that specifically addresses the issue of raising productivity. Many of them provide useful to-do suggestions.
Clinical Practice vs. Deliberate Practice: Why Your Years of Experience Doesn’t Get You Better
It is crucial to make a distinction between work, and work that targets at getting us better at what we do. Therapists often confused that they worked hard to improve at their craft when they find themselves experiencing “flow” states during sessions. Professionals who values their craft are more likely to have the notion that you need to continuously hone in on your skills. Besides acquiring new skills, skills maintenance is critical, if not, more important. This applies not just for athletes, musicians, and other pros, but also for psychotherapists.
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