www.ChangeLimitingBeliefs.com

The Option Method

October 9, 2003, Fairfield Weekly Reader
Get Rid of Limiting Beliefs That Keep You From Being Happy by Jean Greco

"Using the Option Method can help you remove or dissolve self-limiting beliefs and allow happiness to take a front burner in your life," she said.

It was a BIG statement and really, barely believable, but always interested in new and improved ways to live, I wanted to hear more. "Do you mean to say that unhappiness is not just a part of the human condition," I asked, "and we're stuck with it?"

"It may be part of the human condition, but it doesn't have to run your life,"

The maker of these thought-provoking statements was Fairfield's own Option Method dialogue coach, Lenora Boyle. Lenora has facilitated dozens of classes in which the gift of a question helps to explode old myths that support the roadblocks to happiness.

"You can be happy even before you fix everything in your life that you think needs fixing," she said.

I bit. Three months later,thanks to this simple but revolutionary technique, I've gone through a subtle yet profoundly powerful conversion, learning that I hold the key to my own happiness.

Lenora says that The Option Method, a form of dialogue that gets at the heart of personal unhappiness, no matter what your issue, is actually the gift of a question. And questions lead us into an examination and dissolution of the erroneous beliefs that support our unhappiness. For me, the Option Method dialogue raised issues I had left, no matter how uncomfortably, on the back burner. Through the course, I learned that these issues really weren't back burner at all, but front burner, and running my life.

"What about that makes you unhappy," Lenora is asking in one of the group sessions after I unveil an issue that had been dogging me for some time. "Well... I'm not sure," I stammer, squirming in my seat. (This is really making me think.) Lenora gently asks the question another way, so I am encouraged to prod on, attempting to clarify what about issue X makes me unhappy.

"What are you concerned might happen, if you weren't unhappy about X," she asked.

"I guess it's because I have a belief that if I am not unhappy about issue X, then that would mean I don't care and that would make me a bad person; or that I won't be motivated to do anything about it, and nothing will ever change," I reply, resisting a big temptation to ask if this is what I am supposed to answer. You might guess there are no "right" answers with The Option Method, there are just your answers. And your answers provide the first steps toward your own profound breakthrough toward happiness.

The Option Method dialogue was founded by psychotherapist Bruce Di Marsico and has been popularized by Option Method teacher Mandy Evans. Evans wrote two books on The Option Method in 1989 and has traveled nationwide to conduct group workshops and private Option Method sessions. Having studied and presented with Evans extensively over the last 12 years, Lenora is a teacher and trainer in The Option Method. There really is no issue The Option Method dialogue cannot tackle.