Meet Gustavo

There are probably more conventional ways to begin a blog about Motivational Interviewing.

And then there is Gustavo.

Gustavo is a sardine.

This requires surprisingly little explanation in The MI Universe.

He arrived somewhere along the way as a small idea connected to my trip to the annual MINT Forum in Lisbon and has since become increasingly ambitious. He has acquired a personality, opinions, an excellent sense of style, and apparently a position within The MI Universe that no one formally offered him.

His guiding principle is simple:

Be curious.

Which is also why he belongs here.

Motivational Interviewing asks something deceptively difficult of us: to enter a conversation without assuming we already know where it should go.

To listen before fixing.

To become interested instead of certain.

To notice what happens when another person's meaning matters more than our clever response.

And sometimes to discover that the theory we carried confidently into a conversation does not survive contact with the actual human being sitting across from us.

Gustavo understands this.

Or at least he claims to.

He is curious, occasionally overconfident, willing to be surprised, and remarkably comfortable wandering into places where he does not yet know the answer. I suspect he will appear here from time to time when there is something worth wondering about.

There will be more serious things in this space, too.

Reflections on Motivational Interviewing. Questions about empathy, autonomy, listening, learning, teaching, and the strange complexity of conversations between human beings. Ideas I am still forming. Things I notice while practicing, teaching, traveling, reading, or simply paying attention.

Not everything will arrive neatly resolved.

That is intentional.

The MI Universe isn't meant to be a collection of answers.

I'd rather it become a place where we explore questions, practice becomes reflection, and the way we are with people keeps deepening.

Gustavo, naturally, approves.

He has already wandered ahead.

Be curious.

That is enough. Truly.