Becoming ready

We were involved in a meeting the other day, discussing with a colleague how she might use a different approach for the benefit of her team. We were giving her some tips and plenty of encouragement, but then she looked a little uncertain. It was Jennie who smiled and said ‘you’ll do it when you’re ready.’

When are you ready? What does it take to become ready? At MyST, we’ve discovered that no-one joins our teams already completely ready to do this work. We all have some necessary development in order to tackle the job. For some, the development can involve learning more psychological ideas. For those who have this already, it’s learning to shift from theorising about psychological ideas into to weaving them into an ongoing therapeutic process whilst daily life rolls on. For others, the development is learning to persist when progress and its rewards are not readily apparent.

The list of areas in which we all could develop is probably very long but perhaps the most important condition for our development as practitioners is having someone who says to us ‘you’ll do it when you’re ready’. This someone is telling us that they believe in us to be capable of becoming more than good enough at anything. It is a validating experience, and bathed in this trust, we can all do it.

Jen & Jael