We have been thinking a lot about “teaching stories” these days.  So, I want to share one that I use, and invite other people, therapist or not, to share some of your teaching stories with us, Memories of Milton Erikson, who wrote a famous book of teaching stories.

I was  working with a couple that I really love the other night. We were talking about a woman’s relationship with a difficult and critical mother, with whom she has frequent phone contact.

I shared this story:

When I was deciding to divorce my first husband, I was sitting at my desk talking about it on the phone with my mother. She was being extremely critical and saying things like, “I don’t know who to side with.” In my family we would NEVER hang up on each other. I had never hung up the phone on anyone in my life. Suddenly, it dawned on me, like a bolt from the blue,  that I didn’t have to listen to her criticism anymore. I just took the phone away from my ear and gently replaced it on the receiver. It was like a miracle! Her voice stopped!

I went on about my business, and, twenty minutes, later my grandmother called me crying. When I asked what the matter was, she said that my mother had just hung up on her.

My action had changed something in the system.

I am NOT recommending hanging up on people. I don’t think I have ever done it again.

But there is a lesson here in how systems can change when one person has the courage to do something differently.

We saw Invictus last evening, and were deeply impressed with the courage Nelson Mandala had in changing the apartheid systems in South Africa through personal action. So I ask us all to take a moment and see where we are paralyzed by the way we have always done things, and what actions, even small ones, can change the systems we are in.