Psykologisk Institut

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What is the method about?

 

A solution-focused method. This method and the tools will guide you step by step through a process of creating solutions as well as setting and achieving personal goals.

As you use the tools and learn how to use them, this may become your personal way of encountering new challenges in your everyday life as well as in life at large.  Thus, the method and the tools will empower your general grip on life.

The app contains two tools: The 360-degree tool empowers your abilities (life skills) to shape your life in a personally meaningful way. The LGT tool is a step-by-step guide on how to work with challenges and goals in your life. Start with the 360-degree tool. Take your time to learn about the general human life skills and how they may work for you.

A 360-degree check on your life skills

 By using this tool, you will get to know the general human life skills, how they work well for you, and how you can empower them.

The tool will guide you through two steps:

Step 1: How and in which situations the general human life skills will work well

Step 2: How you can empower each of these skills so that you may improve your grip on life.

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LGT: a solution-focused approach to life

This tool will guide you step by step through a solution-focused way of using your general human life skills to get a grip on challenges and goals in your life.

Step 1: Choose a challenge you want to work on right now. It may be something you want to achieve or something you want to change. It may be a problem that bothers you - about yourself, your relation to other people or the surrounding world.

Step 2: Set a goal. Define a goal that will help you handle your chosen challenge. The goal does not need to be a complete solution to your challenge. If it marks a step in the right direction, it will be just fine.

Step 3: Choose a skill. The Wheel of Skills will help you choose one or more of the life skills by means of which you may get a grip on life in general and achieve a chosen goal in particular. Choose one or more of the skills that will help you here and now decide on the next step towards your goal.

 Step 4: Choose your next step. Use the skills you have chosen (step 3) to define your next step towards your goal. The tools will help you find exactly those next steps, which you will feel motivated to take.

Menu (unfold)

Working with life skills

The Wheel of Skills is an essential part of the tools and consists of ten general human life skills, which we all possess. Each skill shows us how to act and to relate to ourselves, to others and to our life at large. You will find explanation of the skills in the app. The app will guide you as to how to empower them and use them in a solution-focused way.

You will always be able to find situations in which these general human life skills work well for you. Even if you feel that they do not function well enough, there are situations in which you have used them well. If you look closely, you will find such situations.

Also, these skills can always be (somewhat or greatly) improved so that they will help you handle challenges and difficult situations even better in the future.

The 360-degree tool will help you acknowledge how, where and when your skills in fact work well and how they can be developed. Therefore, it is important to work thoroughly with this tool.

(Read more about the skills in the theory section)

Choosig challenges

When you are in the process of learning the method and the tools, you do not necessarily have to choose difficult personal problems as your goal (unless you want to).

It may be a good idea to work on challenges and goals in what you could call the “problem-free zone”, that is, the part of  life not burdened by troublesome and unpleasant frustrations and obstacles. In these zones, you may set goals as well as choose skills by means of which you may define your next steps. When free from the noise from disturbing problems, you will be able to learn the method and the tools at your own pace. Later, you will be able apply the method and the tools to more burdensome issues.   

Setting positive goals

Always set positive goals, never negative goals. Positive goals are set as something you would like to achieve (“I would like to be able to … in the future I will try to….”). Negative goals are set as something you would like to be without or stop doing (“I must stop always being such a …I must not …”). Positive goals are essential because they show you what to do or what you should try to achieve. They give your act a direction. Negative goals have no direction and therefore they do not entail what to do (except going away, but where to?).

Example of how to convert negative goals to positive goals. Negatively stated: “I must stop binge-watching television series” >>>> Positively stated: “Instead of watching the next season of this series I will meet with a friend downtown”

Setting a S.M.A.R.T. goal

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for five qualities of a well set goal. The goals should be 

S - specific (clear what it is about)

M - measurable (easy to see see progress)

A - attuned (not to easy, not to difficult)

R - realistic (possible to reach)

T - Timed ( can be accomplished in the near future)

The S.M.A.R.T. tool can be found in many variation on the web. This is the version of Life Psychology. Read more about the method: "Advanced application > useful goal setting"

Being proactive (BFL)

How do you achieve what you decided to achieve when you worked with the method and the tools?

Consider each goal, each chosen skill to improve and each of your next steps and ask yourself five fundamental questions (Basic Five of Life Psychology):

Do you want to do this?

Are you able to do this?

Are the external conditions for doing this in place?

Are you being met by others in doing this?

Will you in fact do this?

If your answer to any of these five questions is no, then you should consider to change your goal, change your plans for development of your life skills and/or change your next step to something you think you have a better chance of achieving.

 (Read more about this in the section about advanced application  > proactivity...

Revideret 13.11.2023
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Preben Bertelsen