What if you say to the person "Do you have a part of you that you consider your creative part?" And they say "No." What are you going to do? Or they hesitate; they say "Well, I don't know." There's a really easy way to create a creative part, using representation systems and anchoring. You say "Think of the five times in your life when you behaved in a very powerfully creative way and you didn't have the faintest idea how or what you did, but you knew it was a positive and creative thing that you did." As s/he thinks of those five in a row, you anchor them. You then have a direct anchor to the person's creativity. You've assembled one. You've organized their personal history. Or you can ask "Do you have a part of you that makes plans? Well, have it come up with three different ways you can plan new behavior." The word "creative" is only one choice out of a myriad ways of organizing your activities.

The only way you can get stuck in a process like this is if you try to run it rigidly. You say to a client "Well, do you have a part of you that you consider your creative part?" If they look you straight in the eye and say "No," then start making up other words. "Do you realize that you have a part of you that is responsible for all glunk activities? And the way you contact that is by touching your temple!" You can make up anything, as long as the result is that they generate new ways of accomplishing the intention. That is as limitless as your own creativity. And if you don't have a creative part, create one for yourself!

There are a lot of other ways that this could have not worked, too. Do you realize that that's what people in here are doing again? You all saw it work. And you're asking "What are all the ways it could have not worked?" I'm sure you could manufacture a hundred ways to make this not work. And in fact many of you will. The point is, when you do something that doesn't work, do something else. If you keep doing something else, something will work. We want you to make it work with each other so that you have a reference experience. Find someone you don't know to be your partner and try reframing. We'll be around if you get stuck.

(1) Identify the pattern (X) to be changed.

(2) Establish communication with the part responsible for the pattern.

(a) "Will the part of me that runs pattern X communicate with me in consciousness?"

(b) Establish the "yes-no" meaning of the signal.

(3) Distinguish between the behavior, pattern X, and the intention of the part that is responsible for the behavior.

(a) "Would you be willing to let me know in consciousness what you are trying to do for me by pattern X?"

(b) If you get a "yes" response, ask the part to go ahead and communicate its intention.

(c) Is that intention acceptable to consciousness?

(4) Create new alternative behaviors to satisfy the intention. At the unconscious level the part that runs pattern X communicates its intention to the creative part, and selects from the alternatives that the creative part generates. Each time it selects an alternative it gives the "yes" signal.

(5) Ask the part "Are you willing to take responsibility for generating the three new alternatives in the appropriate context?"

(6) Ecological check. "Is there any other part of me that objects to the three new alternatives?" If there is a "yes" response, recycle to step (2) above.

Once at a workshop for a TA institute, I said that I believed that every part of every person is a valuable resource. One woman said "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard!"

"I didn't say it was true. I said if you believe that as a therapist you'll get a lot further."

"Well, that's totally ridiculous."

"What leads you to believe that that's ridiculous?"

"I've got parts that are not worth a dime. They just get in my way. That's all they do." "Name one,"

"I have a part that no matter what I do, all the time I'm trying to do anything, it just totally tells me I can't do it, and that I'm going to fail. It makes everything twice as hard as it needs to be."

She said that she had been a high school dropout. When she decided to go back to high school, that part said "You'll never be able to do it; you're not good enough; you're too stupid. It'll be embarrassing. You won't be able to do it." But she did it. And even when she did that, when she decided to go on to college, that part said "You're not going to be able to do it."

So I said "Well, I'd like to speak to that part directly." That always gets TA people, by the way. They don't have that in their model. Then I look over their left shoulder while I talk to them and that really drives them nuts. But it's a very effective anchoring mechanism, because from that time on, every time you look over their left shoulder, only that part can hear.