I have a story I want to tell from my childhood.
A dear friend of my parents came to spend Shabbat with us. He was an activist, deeply committed to helping bring peace to a painful conflict in the world. As we sat around the table, he began speaking about all that was difficult. The suffering. The struggle. The impossibility of the situation.
My parents listened with great respect.
After a while, my mother gently interrupted him.
She said, “On Shabbat, we embrace what is good, what is possible, what is aspirational.”
He smiled and answered, “I’ve already talked about that.”
Without missing a beat, my mother replied, “Then talk about it twice.”
I have never forgotten that moment.
Only many years later, when I encountered Appreciative Inquiry, did I realize that my mother had been living one of its most foundational principles long before I had language for it.
Where we place our attention matters.
If we continually focus on conflict, conflict begins to occupy more and more of our attention.
If we continually focus on problems, we become increasingly skilled at finding problems.
But if we place our attention on possibility, on strengths, on dreams and aspirations, something remarkable begins to happen, and our energy begins to move in that direction.
This does not mean we deny suffering or pretend challenges do not exist. Quite the opposite. The difficulties are real. They deserve our care and our attention.
The question is not whether we will visit them.
The question is from where we will visit them.
That distinction has become one of the deepest foundations of Encounter-centered Transformation.
Appreciative Inquiry has profoundly influenced the way I think about relationship and transformation. One of the gifts it has given us is the distinction between the language of deficit and the language of abundance.
The language of deficit sounds very familiar.
“I want less conflict.”
“I wish we argued less.”
“We don’t have enough intimacy.”
There is nothing wrong with longings. They are honest.
Yet they are all organized around what is missing.
The language of abundance asks something different.
It asks: What is the relationship you long to create? What is the life that calls to you? What is your wildest dream and aspiration for your relationship?
Instead of saying, “I don’t get enough intimacy,” perhaps we begin to imagine, “I long for a relationship that feels joyful, playful, deeply connected, and safe.”
Can you feel the difference?
One is moving away from something while the other is moving toward something.
That shift changes more than our words. It changes our direction.
Over the years, I have discovered that this principle is just as true in our intimate relationships as it is anywhere else.
When couples first come to me, they often want to begin with the places that hurt. They want to tell me everything that has gone wrong.
And yet I have learned that before we visit neighborhoods of challenge, we need to become resourced by remembering who we are at our best, when we are in our essence. And we need to reconnect with our strengths, dreams, and aspirations.
Only then do we have the inner resources that are deeply needed to enter the neighborhoods of challenge in a way that serves growth rather than simply repeating the past. When we begin from this place, our work is no longer about resolving conflict. It becomes about allowing conflict to dissolve in the service of learning, growth, and a more generous and connected life together.