Fox's principles for making the most of things

This is a tutorial guide for people who provide support where client's attitudes to their situation needs to be positive.
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Introduction

This article was written for a Multiple Sclerosis support group in response to their need for a way to deal with newly diagnosed sufferers. In this case, how do you 'turn around' somebody who has just been 'sentenced to a miserable death by shunned disability' to take advantage of the support network and take positive steps to deal effectively with the condition and consequences?

The approach used is to establish some principles as 'good ideas' then use those 'good reasons' to drive the adoption of things that can make a worthwhile difference.

Tutorial

This article is written for supporters. There are six easy and fairly short exercises which develop materials for
• Actively selling the principles
• Building the environment to get practical results
Supporters should be able to see the benefits of a structured approach, get a feel for which selling techniques will work, and what 'marketing materials' will be useful.

The issue is one of exchanging negative ideas for positive ones - hence a 'selling' approach.

Principles

  1. Take charge of managing your condition
  2. Get all chips off shoulders
  3. Make the most of things
  4. Think about your priorities
  5. Join the support network
  6. Overcome self-prejudice
  7. There are only six principles
There are good reasons for No.7

Take responsibility - Get on with doing things - Achieve results. All of these are matters of attitude and applicable to everyone in any situation: Bereavement, divorce, illness, losing driving licence, failing to achieve a career goal, and so on. That's pretty cute. Your job is to present each of 1-6 as a worthwhile principle with achievable benefits.

You've probably got the strong whiff of self-help and it is true that fundamentally this is about motivating people to get on and do things. But condescending Victorian worthiness, whether intended or just perceived, is not the right way to go about it. It's the old problem of giving advice - No matter how useful it is, a smug platitude will be resented.

This tutorial builds a framework anyone can use to address problems which might only be mitigatated.

The result is your own method for convincing the dispirited that there is something useful they can do.

CommentsPossibilities
  1. It's a tough job being a supporter. My intention here is to make it easier by giving a simple framework so that sympathy and care can be augmented by purposeful self-help.
  2. Perhaps it's because I'm a business analyst by profession and not sympathetic by inclination, but I fancy that there's a lot of sharing-caring people who would benefit from a logical divide-and-rule method to conquer defeatism.
  3. Society reacts much better to hopeful tryers than angry, whinging no-hopers.
  1. Let me know how you get on.

Contact details are in the article