Milton H. Erickson > Quotes

“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy." Milton Erickson”
― Milton Erickson

“Change will lead to insight more often than insight will lead to change.”
― Milton Erickson

“It is really amazing what people can do. Only they don't know what they can do.”
― Milton Erickson

“You use hypnosis not as a cure but as a means of establishing a favorable climate in which to learn.”
― Milton Erickson

“When I wanted to know something, I wanted it undistorted by somebody else's imperfect knowledge.”
― Milton Erickson

“I am very confident. I look confident. I act confident. I speak in a confident way...”
― Milton Erickson

“You can teach a child the importance of pain by your behavior. You can also teach as child the importance of no pain by your behavior.”
― Milton Erickson

“Change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change.”
― Milton H. Erickson

“Life's difficulties are merely necessary roughage.”
― Milton Erickson

“I have no intention of dying. In fact, that will be the last thing I do!”
― Milton H. Erickson

“One's appreciation of, and understanding of the normal or the usual is requisite for any understanding of the abnormal or the unusual.”
― Milton Erickson

“Until you are willing to be confused about what you already know, what you know will never grow bigger, better, or more useful.”
― Milton Erickson & Rossi

“It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
― Milton H. Erickson

“I was returning from high school one day and a runaway horse with a bridle on sped past a group of us into a farmer's yard looking for a drink of water. The horse was perspiring heavily. And the farmer didn't recognize it so we cornered it. I hopped on the horse's back. Since it had a bridle on, I took hold of the tick rein and said, "Giddy-up." Headed for the highway, I knew the horse would turn in the right direction. I didn't know what the right direction was. And the horse trotted and galloped along. Now and then he would forget he was on the highway and start into a field. So I would pull on him a bit and call his attention to the fact the highway was where he was supposed to be. And finally, about four miles from where I had boarded him, he turned into a farmyard and the farmer said, "So that's how that critter came back. Where did you find him?" I said, "About four miles from here." "How did you know you should come here?" I said, "I didn't know. The horse knew. All I did was keep his attention on the road.”
― Milton H. Erickson

“Trance helps depotentiate our old programs and gives us an opportunity to learn something new. The only reason why we cannot produce an anesthesia at will, for example, is because we don’t know how to give up our habitual generalized reality orientation that emphasizes the importance of pain and gives it primacy in consciousness. But if we allowed young children to experiment with their sensory perceptual processes in a fun way, they might easily develop skills with anaesthesia that could be very useful when they needed it. This would be an interesting piece of research, indeed.”
― Milton H. Erickson, The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson, MD: Volume 1: The Nature of Therapeutic Hypnosis

“La terapia es como una bola de nieve que se deja caer desde la cima de una montaña. A medida que rueda aumenta y aumenta de tamaño y se convierte en una avalancha que se amolda a la forma de la montaña.”
― Milton H. Erickson, My Voice Will Go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson

“You always call it hindsight. Two weeks too late to think of the right retort to make. You lead with your unconscious; you make that retort immediately... Trust your unconscious; it knows more than you do.”
― Milton H. Erickson

“In a different room, but comparable to the first, subjects were met individually, and it was explained that they were to seat themselves comfortably with their hands in their lap in a chair before a writing table on which was a pad of paper and a pencil. They were to look continuously at the pencil until their hand picked it up and started to write involuntarily. They were to concentrate secondarily on the lifting of the hand and primarily on seeing the pencil begin to write, and to do nothing more.”
― Milton H. Erickson, The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson, MD: Volume 1: The Nature of Therapeutic Hypnosis

“you say the right thing at the right moment. But you have no business knowing it ahead of time because as surely as you know it consciously, you start to improve on it and ruin it.”
― Milton H. Erickson, The Collected Works of Milton H. Erickson, MD: Volume 1: The Nature of Therapeutic Hypnosis