William R Miller, PhD, is one of the pioneers of motivational interviewing, a psychological technique that helps individuals overcome apathy and create change in their lives. Dr. Miller’s research has become the standard practice in psychology, especially when clinicians are treating patients with addictive behaviors and patients who are recovering from depression that need help reigniting their personal motivation. His latest book, “8 Ways to Hope: Charting a Path through Uncertain Times,” which releases August 2024, takes lessons from Dr. Miller’s research and applies them to the bridge between psychology and hope.
This episode of Menninger Clinic’s Mind Dive podcast features Dr. Miller, accomplished psychologist and author, joining us for a conversation about hope and his findings on the psychological effects of optimism versus pessimism. Dr. Miller also shares a sneak peek into his latest work which explores the varying types of hope and how to foster self-efficacy during difficult times.
Dr. Miller was a clinical psychologist at the University of New Mexico for 30 years where he retired as emeritus distinguished professor psychology and psychiatry. Dr. Miller has continued to publish in his retirement and has seven books in his bibliography, including this latest one. All of Dr. Miller’s titles can be found on his website.
“Hope is something that we can do when we’re uncertain,” says Dr. Clark. “It’s the opposite of fear... fear is imagining a dreadful future and hope is imagining a better future. You can actually experience these emotions simultaneously and that’s when hope becomes a choice.”
Follow The Menninger Clinic on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new Mind Dive episodes. To submit a topic for discussion, email podcast@menninger.edu. If you are a new or regular listener, please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform!
Visit The Menninger Clinic website to learn more about The Menninger Clinic’s research and leadership role in mental health.
William R Miller, PhD, is one of the pioneers of motivational interviewing, a psychological technique that helps individuals overcome apathy and create change in their lives. Dr. Miller’s research has become the standard practice in psychology, especially when clinicians are treating patients with addictive behaviors and patients who are recovering from depression that need help reigniting their personal motivation. His latest book, “8 Ways to Hope: Charting a Path through Uncertain Times,” which releases August 2024, takes lessons from Dr. Miller’s research and applies them to the bridge between psychology and hope.
This episode of Menninger Clinic’s Mind Dive podcast features Dr. Miller, accomplished psychologist and author, joining us for a conversation about hope and his findings on the psychological effects of optimism versus pessimism. Dr. Miller also shares a sneak peek into his latest work which explores the varying types of hope and how to foster self-efficacy during difficult times.
Dr. Miller was a clinical psychologist at the University of New Mexico for 30 years where he retired as emeritus distinguished professor psychology and psychiatry. Dr. Miller has continued to publish in his retirement and has seven books in his bibliography, including this latest one. All of Dr. Miller’s titles can be found on his website.
“Hope is something that we can do when we’re uncertain,” says Dr. Clark. “It’s the opposite of fear... fear is imagining a dreadful future and hope is imagining a better future. You can actually experience these emotions simultaneously and that’s when hope becomes a choice.”
Follow The Menninger Clinic on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new Mind Dive episodes. To submit a topic for discussion, email podcast@menninger.edu. If you are a new or regular listener, please leave us a review on your favorite listening platform!
Visit The Menninger Clinic website to learn more about The Menninger Clinic’s research and leadership role in mental health.
Welcome to the Mind Dive podcast brought to you by the Menninger Clinic, a national leader in mental health care.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:We're your hosts, dr Bob Bowen and Dr Keri Harrell Join us twice a month as we talk with friends and colleagues from around the world about exciting innovations in the field of mental health. William Miller PhD. After receiving his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Oregon, dr Miller has been at the University of New Mexico since 1976, where he retired as Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry in 2006. Dr Miller's primary scientific interest is in the psychology of change, but his research spans the treatment of addictive behaviors, self-regulation, spirituality in psychology, motivation for change and pastoral psychology. He has been a visiting scholar at the Oregon Health and Science University, the University of New South Wales in Sydney, australia, stanford University and the University of Bergen and the I dare you to say it.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:Oh no.
Dr. William Miller:Hjellestad Clinic. Yeah, you were very close.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I don't think I was. That was generous in norway and and I you know you maybe could pull this, maybe a listener could pull this from what you said, but you're one of the founding fathers of of motivational interviewing um, so I'm so excited and yeah, we're delighted to have you welcome.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:Thank you I have to say too, even hearing your in reading through your interest we have. So, you and me, we have so much in common in regard to our interests and I'm curious if you could talk us through a little bit of your career so far, and particularly your interest in motivational interviewing, the psychology of change, and, yeah, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. William Miller:Yeah Well, I don't feel like I planned my career very thoroughly. It's been lots of happenstance along the way. I actually went to college intending to become a pastor but measured in psychology and through studying religion figured out it wasn't as simple as my childhood faith, so I wasn't exactly sure what I believed at that point. Later had to develop an adult faith. But found my way into psychology. Wasn't sure when I was in internship what path I wanted to go. But the university here had a job opening very early. I had a job offer in November so I knew nothing about New Mexico but said well, why not? And never left. So still here. And motivational interviewing wasn't planful either.
Dr. William Miller:I went off on my first sabbatical to the Yellowstock Clinic near Bergen, norway, and they actually asked me to lecture on behavioral treatment of alcohol problems. It was an alcoholism hospital and I said sure, I can do that. But the director said, would you also meet with our therapists, with our psychologists and social workers? And many of them were kind of recently out of school and just have some conversations. And I said sure, I can do that.
Dr. William Miller:So I was teaching them in my own training, by the way, really started with Carl Rogers with a person-centered approach, but that was in a behavior therapy graduate program, so fortunately, I learned this person-centered way of being with people before I started doing behavior therapy graduate program. So fortunately, I learned this person-centered way of being with people before I started doing behavior therapy. So I was teaching those both of those things to the colleagues in Norway how to do reflective listening, how to, you know, take a person-centered approach with people, but also behavioral methods. And they wanted me to show them, not just tell them, but we want to see what it looks like. So they would role play patients they were seeing that they were finding challenging and say show us what you would do. And the subtext was kind of okay, smart guy, what would you do with this? And I did my best to demonstrate and they did something my American students never did, which was interrupt me right in the middle of a demonstration.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I love that.
Dr. William Miller:So it's partly a function of the way Norwegian psychologists are trained, but it was. You know. Hold it a minute Now. What are you thinking right now? What an interesting question. You asked a question here, but you could have asked many questions.
Dr. William Miller:Why did you ask that particular question?
Dr. William Miller:Or you reflected something the patient said and you've been teaching us how to do reflective listening, but gosh seemed to be using of which I was unaware and that were almost embarrassingly different from what I was lecturing about in the next room and had to do with the way of relating to people, particularly around ambivalence, and the essence of it was arrange the conversation so that it's the person who's making the arguments for change and not you.
Dr. William Miller:If you make the arguments for change with somebody who's ambivalent, they naturally respond with the opposite side, and that's not a good thing, because we talk ourselves into doing or not doing things. So clients are more likely to believe what they say than what I say. So we kind of developed this little set of decision rules that I called motivational interviewing, just put a title on it and sent it around as a discussion paper for some colleagues to say what do you know? What do you think about this? And one of them wanted to publish it. He was the editor of a journal in Britain called Behavioral Psychotherapy. And I said, ray, we just made it up, I mean that's how it all goes, someone makes it up.
Dr. William Miller:That's right. The only numbers are the page numbers. I mean, I have no evidence for this. And he said no, trust me, I think it's an important paper. So he did publish it and that was the first description of this method of motivational interviewing and I honestly thought that's the last I would hear of it. That was about when again 1983, that paper came out and actually the person he sent it to to review the editor sent it to review was a young colleague named Steve Rolnick who eventually became my co-author. But I didn't know that at the time and I didn't meet Steve for seven more years, and we both happened to be on sabbatical in Australia Now he's South African, but he was living in Cardiff, but he was seconded to Sydney, australia to do some research.
Dr. William Miller:And he said you think I wrote that paper on motivational interviewing, okay, you read it you read it you know wow, I'm glad you read it and he had been trying to teach this method up and down the uk and said it had become a popular way of helping people with addictions. And I was unaware of that and so I said, well, let's, let's write together. And so that's where the first edition of motivationalivational Interviewing came from, and happenstance meeting in Australia with Steve Rolnick, and so my life has kind of been like that.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:Well, I have a few reflections. One that has been such a common theme among the many different topic experts we've brought on Is that people kind of happenstance a lot of times into their area of expertise, which I love. That fits with my mind so well it goes against what you're often told oh it's so.
Dr. Bob Boland:Training because you need to decide early on what you're going to be an expert and who you're going to like no, it's a rare path.
Dr. William Miller:Among people who were famous in psychology at least, say I knew what I wanted to do. I decided at the beginning this was what I was going to study, and just that kind of trajectory is not so common, it's more whether it happened to be this programmer, they had a job here, or I met this person.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:For the uninitiated motivational interviewing is like the intervention in addiction, psychiatry and psychology, I mean, like it is, and I think so much. I mean what you said to me makes so much sense, especially working in a team-based model. We often talk about how the patient is ambivalent and so when we only pick up one side of the ambivalence, the patient's naturally going to pick up the other, and then we end up in tension when in reality we've got to get that ambivalence talked about within the patient. It's the patient's ambivalence.
Dr. Bob Boland:Right, but you should tell us more about that, because I mean, obviously you told us how you started and it was just kind of like, you know, a thought piece essentially, but you did expand on that and, you know, tell me, I'd like to hear more, because a lot of this is about the psychology of change and how we make decisions and how we change things about ourselves, and how did you explore that?
Dr. William Miller:Well, I mean, ambivalence is actually a step toward change. Yeah, if you're familiar with the trans-theoretical model of change from Prochaska and DiClemente, you start out with never even thinking about change, not even considering it, and then you start considering it, which they call the contemplation stage, and that's the stage of ambivalence. You see reasons why you ought to make a change and reasons why you don't want to, and that's perfectly normal. That's not pathological. We used to pathologize it in the addiction field and denial, and just normal stuff.
Dr. William Miller:It's just normal stuff, and the thing that your gut tells you to do, which is to tell people what's wrong with them and what they need to do, is exactly the wrong thing to do because it evokes the opposite. And so there's a lot of, I guess, restraint involved in motivational interviewing, of not trying to prove or persuade or convince people, but help them convince themselves, talk themselves into changing. And I think that was the fundamental thing that the group in Norway came up with of oh, actually, it's the client who needs to be making the arguments for change, and if you meet resistance which is the term I now issue and push back against it, you only strengthen it. But in the addiction field in the 70s and 80s, when I entered the field, that's what you did.
Dr. William Miller:People were in denial. You had to make them see reality. Sit down, shut up. I'm going to tell you what's wrong with you and what you need to do. Yeah, I know this works. Human beings don't respond well to that, but but we really believe that was that's the only thing those people understand. That was literally said.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:Our colleagues in the field of suicidology would agree. I you know, one of the main interventions we use here on suicide is cans the collaborative assessment and management of suicide, and one of the foundational pieces of that is human reactivity, which is that when you tell a suicidal person, hey, you can't kill yourself, all of a sudden they're like I have to kill myself. That's true, that's oversimplified, like some of the goal. I mean this idea that, like it's such a human nature to get into this reactive stance when we're scared we're going to lose something important to us.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:And that, yeah, we got to.
Dr. William Miller:Yeah Well hold on.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I want to go back to my third point that I was going to make earlier. This was not in your bio, and I think this is actually really important, because this is what we brought you on. Especially to notice is that you have a new book that's coming out. It's not out yet, august. Yeah, it's coming out in August, called Eight Ways to Hope Charting a Path Through Uncertain Times. Already I'm obsessed. I have so many, even just to the title, just reactions of love towards that. But I wonder if you want to tell us, especially as somebody who's been again so invested in helping people change, and especially change their lives for the better, how you got interested in the role of hope and felt like you wanted to write a book about it.
Dr. William Miller:Well, I get interested in these universal human experiences like ambivalence. I wrote a book on ambivalence in 2021, called On Second Thought, and that's something that every human being experiences. We actually know a lot about it, you know, but there wasn't a book for people on just. You know what's this about, so I did that. I got interested in loving kindness, which we aspire to. What what's this about? So I did that. Got interested in loving kindness, which we aspire to, but what's it actually look like? How do you actually do that? You know?
Dr. William Miller:Uh, and and around hope, um, my editor said you know, given everything happening in the world, we need a book on hope. Could you, could you write one? And I said, well, I don't know, I'd have to think about it. And so I did what I usually do, which is read, read really widely and see if I didn't just want to write another book saying hope is a good thing, but what I found was that hope is actually quite a number of different things, and that's hence the title Eight Different Kinds of Hope that I came across. That I came across and that's a hopeful thing in itself that it's not one single thing. If you want to act with hope and choose hope. There are a variety of ways to do it, and so then I was hooked. I said okay.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I can write this book now.
Dr. William Miller:Just because there are these, the image I use is like a diamond. A diamond is rock-hard, solid, and hope is like that too. But if you turn it, there are all these interesting facets to look at too. So I'm looking at the phenomenon of hope, which is a universal experience, from these eight different perspectives, and I really enjoyed researching and writing the book. And also think I had something new to say here about, about hope. So that's where the book came from.
Dr. Bob Boland:So what are the eight ways? Well, that's a lot of ways.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:Well, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be who I am as a podcast co-host if I didn't just quickly throw in my my I. I love this. I cause I really. I mean I worked a lot with suicidal young people. If you don't know that this is about me, dr Miller, I'm on our youth division. I work a lot in patients.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I work a lot with people who are suicidal and hope is one of those things that feels really scary. I think, to a lot of our people who've had trauma, who've known hopelessness, that it almost feels like climbing up a mountain that they're destined to fall down again. Like hope feels so inherently uncertain and, I think, risky. For people who have known hopelessness, and I think the idea that we would help people understand what it is and the different ways people can think about it does feel so important. That feels new to me. I mean, again, I feel like I'm often like saying like I'm holding hope for you based on what I've seen of other people change and grow, but I love the idea that we have a little bit more texture to hold on to. So yeah, I'm, I'm curious if you want to. I know it's an entire book. That's an unfair question for us to ask, but if you could kind of give us a little bit of a taste of these different flavors and types of hope.
Dr. William Miller:To start with, hope is something that we can do when we're uncertain, when it's not clear what the future is, when things are kind of foggy. In a way, it's the opposite of fear. Fear is imagining a dreadful future and hope is imagining a better future. Now you can actually experience those two things simultaneously. So you can, you can hold them together at the same time. Hope s So it's a choice. It's something you decide to do, something you can choose to do in the face of uncertainty. Now, so what are some of these different facets?
Dr. Bob Boland:Yeah. What examples of yeah?
Dr. William Miller:Well, I mean one is is desire, and in fact you don't hope for something if you don't want it, uh, and, and so wanting is a piece of it, now wanting to be pretty empty. It can be wishful thinking, it's. It's me getting home from having been traveling for two weeks, having eaten too well and exercised too little, and about to step on the bathroom scale. Maybe you'll be better than I thought. That's pushful thinking. But hope is also. Desire is also quite powerful, it's. The Pygmalion story is a piece of that, and Pygmalion you probably know the story, but was a sculpture statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it and the statue wound up coming to life, just like Pinocchio does in the more modern. Is this a?
Dr. Bob Boland:musical or is this? Well, my Fair Lady was based on it.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I was like I feel like there's a musical, but they did an overbillment.
Dr. Bob Boland:Yeah, though she wasn't a statue. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. William Miller:It's an old, old story, but it got made into the play Pygmalion, yeah, and then that became my Fair Lady. So yeah, but it's in our culture. You know that wanting something helps it come true, and that is the Pygmalion effect in psychology. What you expect is what you get, that if you expect your students to succeed, they're more likely to do so. If cynical and and see the student as hopeless, they tend to also fulfill that prophecy. So it's, it's the self-report.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:We call this manifesting, that we are manifesting this, that we're going to think it and we're going to manifest it into existence is that right?
Dr. Bob Boland:yes, how's that working?
Dr. Kerry Horrell:works great for me. Thank you so much okay.
Dr. William Miller:So just the wanting is is just one facet, just one piece of it, but, as I said, you don't hope unless you want it. Yeah, it also. It also has to be possible. We also have to see a possibility, because you don't hope for things that you regard to be impossible. The possibility can be small. If you have a life-threatening illness and there's a surgery with a 5% success rate, you might go for it. We'll bet on long odds. You buy lottery tickets. Your odds are infinitesimal.
Dr. William Miller:But also, we'll hold out for distant hopes as well. But it has to at least be possible, and seeing possibility is a really important aspect, a kind of hope. Not only for yourself, but seeing possibility in others. That is the my Fair Lady story and the Pygmalion story. And when you see possibility in your students, when you see possibility in people you're mentoring. People did this for me. They saw possibilities in me that I didn't see and call it forth.
Dr. William Miller:And perceiving possibility is another aspect of it. If you're more data oriented, probability is another form of hope. Well, what are my chances? Doctor, you want to make an investment. You know well what is like. What's the likelihood that this investment will yield good return? So, so that's looking at some information, some data, what's looking at history in a way. But if you only look at history, then you all you have is life as it has been. Yeah, the man of Mancha, or Don Quixote, is told he's insane because he sees possibilities in people. He meets this prostitute and sees her as the magnificent Lady Dulcinea yes, crazy, he says. Real craziness is to see life only as it has been and not as it could be. So that's that's the seeing possibility piece of that's. Uh, that's so important. Um, optimism, another form. You're doing okay with different types here, or anybody no, no, keep going, yeah I will say really quick something I'm interested in hearing you say about optimism.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:If I recall in your book and maybe I got this wrong, but you said optimism is a choice these are all choices. I am fascinated by that If you could say more about optimism as part of hope. But also, I guess I kind of feel like yes, it is a choice, but I've always felt like people are kind of characteristically a little bit more. It's a personality type of thing, so say more about it.
Dr. William Miller:It's a personality type. Yeah, so say more about it. Yeah, it's more like a personality trait in that it's more consistent. So it's not that you're hopeful about just one particular thing. When you look at life in general, you tend to look on the bright side, think things are going to work out okay, at least in the long run.
Dr. William Miller:And the opposite, of course, is pessimism and cynicism, that that you know, if anything can go wrong, it will. You know, and those are self-fulfilling prophecies as well. But optimism is different in that it's it's more trait, like it is, it is more characteristic of people.
Dr. William Miller:But you get there by practicing it oh, I love that and so you, if you consistently choose to look on the bright side. To give people the benefit of the doubt is one of these phrases that we have. Give people the benefit of the doubt. If you're not sure, cut them some slack, and that's an optimistic person. And optimism, by the way, and hope in general, is associated with all kinds of positive outcomes. People who are more hopeful and more optimistic are more creative. They tend to see more meaning in life. They're more resilient people. They're from even physical injury and disability more readily. They get back more of their function, they have better outcomes in psychotherapy and they're just all of these correlates, so much so that it's called the Velcro effect. It's so much sticks to it.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:Well and I think you're probably alluding this, but the opposite is true as well Pessimism tends to be more correlated with depression, anxiety and some of our mental health conditions.
Dr. William Miller:Poor health.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:yeah, predict predicts longevity also, by the way yeah, this is making me feel good because one of my little slogans or catchphrases is that I'm recklessly optimistic um. I've actually thought about getting that as a tattoo, so I'm a reckless optimist like you know we're doing. Sometimes I'm delusional, I, I I think I I need to maybe take it down Not sometimes, because I'm a very optimistic person, but I love to hear that this is a good thing.
Dr. William Miller:In the book I say I'm a pathological optimist. I love you.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I'm obsessed with that. That is exactly my way, why not?
Dr. Bob Boland:For those of us who aren't, though, it sounds like you're saying that there are ways to nurture. Yeah, well, yes.
Dr. William Miller:It's a choice and practice you, practice it yeah. So it is something that you can do. So what I got through? Four of them, five.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I think we still have trust.
Dr. William Miller:Trust is one. Yeah, see, trust is interesting.
Dr. William Miller:I read a lot of your book okay all right, good, yeah, I mean trust has an object. You know you trust a person, or you trust a rope or a ladder or an elevator, or just you know an object even. But it's just moving ahead, expecting the positive of this, of this person or this experience or whatever, and again, trusting is one of those things with lots of positive outcomes in life. Now, there are downsides to this. I mean there are some dangers to optimism. You can underestimate risk. For example, I tell a story in the book of a guy sitting in front of an airplane who never fastened his seatbelt On takeoff, on landing, when there's turbulence, so you believe you're invulnerable, which when you're younger you tend to do that.
Dr. Bob Boland:There's a hazard in that, yeah well, we've certainly seen the news where that's a bad idea.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:Well, if you fly enough, I mean, when does my seatbelt ever really come in handy?
Dr. Bob Boland:I'm like, are you following the news at all? It's like it's a small probability, but I know I will say this is.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:This is where I'm not up to.
Dr. Bob Boland:I'm a very nervous flyer, I'm a panicky flyer, so I mean I would always fast luckily to say I don't think I ever really needed it, but it's like see this man's logic yeah, you really should fasten your seat belt when you're sitting in a plane, but if, if we go back to probability, it's way safer than driving.
Dr. William Miller:Yeah.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:Why, but so you know.
Dr. William Miller:So we have these different ways of thinking about hope.
Dr. Bob Boland:Yeah, exactly, it's also evaluation of risk. That's a different.
Dr. William Miller:Yeah, you can get complacent. You know I got this. You know I don't need to study for this test. Yeah, well, place it, you know you, I got this, you know I don't need to study for this test? Yeah well, maybe not, you know. Yeah, so that's a downside, but in general, optimism and hope are overwhelmingly positive things in in life and you can you can choose them I know.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:so the other ones maybe and the other ones we haven't covered yet are meaning and purpose, perseverance and hope beyond hope. I'm especially interested in hope beyond hope, that's, I think, especially working with people who can be pretty chronically hopeless and feel such a sense of hopelessness Even thinking about the idea of possibility, the possibility that they're going to get better after trying treatment, so much they often don't believe it. So I wonder if you can say a little bit more on hope beyond hope and what that means to you.
Dr. William Miller:and yeah, well it's, it's long horizon stuff yeah, it's it's uh, you know, continuing to see the long-term picture and moving your life in that direction, even though you may not see it in your lifetime. It's's Martin Luther King's last speech, saying I've been to the mountaintop and I've seen the promised land and I may not get there with you. And he was assassinated the next day.
Dr. William Miller:I may not get there with you, but we as a people will get there. I mean, that's hope beyond hope. So when all the other stuff is exhausted, probabilities are not looking good. You don't even see how it's possible at this point. Uh, nonetheless it, it is a almost prophetic vision, uh, that that sees in the long run and remains committed to that. It's levy zell, survivor of of concentration camps who lost his faith in a way. I I mean you read his books over the years. You know you see the trauma that's involved in that. But the place that he got to was what do you do in a world where that kind of evil is possible? You live against it and you know it's just doing what you can do. Stories of people walking through concentration camps, caring for people, you know, giving that last piece of red away. There may be few people, but these are people committed to that hope beyond hope.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I'm a huge fan of musicals. One of my favorite musicals is Hamilton, as I'm sure very much in the majority here, and one of my favorite lines in Hamilton that I hold with me as a therapist is at the very end as he's about to be spoiler alert shot and killed. He has a line where he says what is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you'll never get to see, and I think about that a lot as my worst in inpatient work, you know. So I'm doing short-term work with people who face a lot of pain.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:You know I hold onto that, that I'm like I I'm not going to see this person's whole story, the fruits of all of the change that hopefully happens in their life. I'm not going to see that. But I know that there's something important about believing that I'm doing something important, even if I'm not going to see it all Like. Like to me as a therapist, even important, even if I'm not going to see it all. To me as a therapist, stephen, that feels like such an important part of the hope of the work is that I hold on to. I'm not going to bear witness to this person's whole story, but I do think there's something important happening here.
Dr. William Miller:Refusal to succumb to hopelessness.
Dr. Bob Boland:Yeah, I mean, do you see a line from your work in motivational interviewing to this?
Dr. William Miller:I mean it sounds like it right, Because you're kind of taking advantage of an ambivalence and the possibilities in both well, in my that very first 1983 paper on motivational interviewing also talk about supporting hope and self-advocacy, because if if you do cause people to see that this is a serious problem, but there's nothing you can do about it, you haven't done him any favors, you know um and and so in motivational interviewing you're both helping people to to see possibilities you know to to have hope and to talk themselves into changing in that direction.
Dr. William Miller:And if you don't see possibilities there's, there's really not much reason to even try. Um, and so that that's been a part of motivation, living from the very beginning nurturing, nurturing hope or, as you said, lending people hope. When you, when you have it and they don't seem to, you know, you can lend them some of yours for the time being, but better still, to evoke hope from them and it, and in the Living book we have a chapter on literally evoking hope, calling it forth from people.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:There's a quote you say in this book that I thought and I think this is a good place to maybe kind of come to a conclusion. But you say we live in a distressing, dismaying and even frightening world, which retweet I really deeply agree with that. And you say hope is a good way to live in that world. I thought that I like stopped in my tracks a little bit and I was like I can already just imagine a cacophony of people who would maybe not agree with that, that that feel, I mean we live in such a world of cynicism, we live in such a world of, I think, people protecting themselves because of how much is going on by, I mean, deciding not to have children, deciding that things are hopeless, I mean just like the shutting down. And so I'd love to hear you say a little bit about this idea that hope is a good way to live in this world. It's a good thing to nurture, especially when we're living in such turbulent, challenging, frightening times.
Dr. William Miller:Yeah, I guess the concern you're talking about is passive, passive hope that everything is going to be fine, we don't need to do anything. Uh, you know that's not helpful that's so.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:That's it. That's a great way to phrase that. Yeah, that it's like people might see hope. It's just sort of this um colored glasses. Don't worry about it, and that's not what you're talking.
Dr. William Miller:Yeah, or, oh, there's nothing. There's nothing we can do, what could I possibly do? So I'm not really talking about that kind of hope, although that is not only does my life have meaning, but I have a purpose here. There's something that I can do, and so that piece of doing what you can, even though it's not much, don't do nothing because you can't do everything. Contribute what you can. Recycling recycling, you know, I mean recycling your trash is such a tiny, tiny contribution.
Dr. William Miller:voting yeah right voting is such a tiny contribution to the whole big picture and it is everyone doing that that creates an election or creates, you know, a better environment and so on. So it's not succumbing to hopelessness or that there's nothing I can do.
Dr. Bob Boland:Yeah or that, it just doesn't matter what you do.
Dr. William Miller:Yeah, right, and persisting. That's the eighth one that we didn't talk about, I mean that's a behavioral form of hope you know to continue trying and not.
Dr. William Miller:We use perseverance as a different term from persistence. Actually, persistence can be just doing the same thing over and over, and, over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Perseverance is trying different things, trying different ways, finding different ways of pursuing that horizon that you have in mind. So these things all fit together. I mean, they're all facets of the same diamond and their choices, and I close the book with Nelson Mandela's blessing. You know, may your choices reflect your hopes and not your fears. I like that.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I think, one of the things in reading your book that I was thinking about was I feel like a kindred spirit in your work and in how you think, dr Miller, and one of the things that I noticed in your book is you started every chapter with quotes. You pay a lot of homage to other people who are thinking about this, and I am a quote girly. I love a good, I love holding other people's words and I was just looking one of my. I wanted to get it right. One of my favorite quotes, oscar Wilde, said it takes great courage to see the world in all its taint of glory and to still love it.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:And I think about this idea of hope, that I think it takes a lot of courage. I think about a lot of times when I'm cause. My area of interest is an intersection of spirituality, religion and psychology, and a lot of times we talk about faith. I said the opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's uncertainty, and I think, like hope, it's. You wouldn't have to hope in something you knew for sure. Hope is. Hope is like this thing where it takes courage. I think, to hope in our future, in people and ideas, and I think that like helping people to have more to hold on to, to find that courage is really really incredible work, and I'm very grateful for this book and for your wisdom and for the time. It's so clear from reading it, the time that you poured into it, to move beyond passive hope and this idea of something that feels really again sort of trite to something that people can really use, especially in our current world. But I do want to say thank you for your work.
Dr. Bob Boland:Yes, and thanks for being on.
Dr. William Miller:Oh, a pleasure. Thank you so much for being interested.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:We like to give our guests the last word. Is there any you know?
Dr. Bob Boland:maybe something for clinicians. Most of many of our listeners are clinicians and stuff. Any advice for them?
Dr. William Miller:Well, yes, I mean if you're working with people who need hope there are at least eight ways you can go. I like that, and choosing hope is one of the most hopeful things that you can do. But I think the book is a gift for clinicians in that you can think through these various ways of approaching hope For this particular client. Which of these might be an opening, which of these might be possible now? It is very useful.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:So out in August Dr William Miller's book Eight Ways to Help Charting a Path Through Uncertain Times. Again, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about this.
Dr. Bob Boland:We've been your host Once again. You've been listening to Dr William Miller and we're your hosts. I'm Bob Bowen.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:I'm Dr Keri Harrell.
Dr. Bob Boland:Thanks for diving in.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:The Mind Dive podcast is presented by the Menninger Clinic. If you're curious about the professional experiences of mental health clinicians, make sure to subscribe wherever you listen.
Dr. Bob Boland:For more episodes like this, visit wwwmenningerclinicorg.
Dr. Kerry Horrell:To submit a topic for discussion. Send us an email at podcast at menningeredu.