ABSTRACT
While encouraging your clients to establish what their problems are and what they hope to gain from therapy is very important, it is just as important for you to elicit their commitment to effect change. Encouraging your clients to make a commitment to effect change involves discussing with them what they are prepared to do to achieve their goals, and what sacrifices they are prepared to make. Discussing with clients what they are prepared to do in order to achieve their goals and what this might involve is, tremendously important. A central part of gaining your clients' commitment to effect change is to help them become aware of the fact that change almost invariably involves some kind of discomfort. If you discuss this issue with them, then you will help them to commit to the arduous business of personal change. More productive is to discuss with your clients how they are going to tolerate discomfort when they move into discomfort zones.
