People often ask us how clients complete The Seven Challenges program. How do they graduate?

When I’m feeling cheeky, I like to simply say, “They don’t.” 

It might seem we are straight from the Eagle’s song Hotel California: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Although we deliberately avoid speaking in terms of completion or graduation, our clients do leave, ideally when they are ready to do so. I say “ideally” because it is only the fortunate ones who have this privilege. They come of their own free will and pay their own way. They get to say when it ends. This makes sense because The Seven Challenges is a counseling program, not a series of classes or modules or pre-scripted sessions that can be completed. Counseling doesn’t have a finish line: Circumstances permitting, people stay and work on issues to make their lives better until they are satisfied and decide the expense and time outweigh the possible benefits of continuing.

Sadly, most of our clients don’t have this privilege. Many rely on insurance companies to pay for their services. They are at the mercy of third-party payers who cut things off according to their own business model instead of client needs. This cannot be called graduation. Rather: termination. So, we have to prepare these clients for that reality.

Many more of our clients are coerced or mandated to attend counseling, sometimes by a court of law, sometimes by a school, coach, or workplace. Adolescents are often forced by parents. Adults are sometimes coerced by employers or a romantic partner or spouse. These clients may not want to be attending sessions in the first place (though they have chosen to come as an alternative to a less desirable consequence). Like it or not, they have a relationship with the people who have influence or power over them. For better or worse, those people set criteria for when the counseling will end.

When we work with coerced or mandated clients, we always try to differentiate ourselves from the gatekeepers: “They require your attendance. We do not. They may insist upon abstinence. We do not (unless it’s required in a residential counseling setting). They may impose ‘graduation’ requirements. We do not.”

We do, however, offer to help clients understand what the institutions or people in power expect of them, and how to satisfy those requirements if they wish to do so. But, we make it clear that these are external requirements, not ours. We are their counselors, not gatekeepers.

The “no graduation” concept is fully aligned with the Mastery Counseling model used in The Seven Challenges. With it, we teach clients how to adopt a Mastery Living approach to life. It involves identifying “issues” (anything that is not going well or as well as we would like it to be going) and working to resolve them. Issues are normalized. No one has a perfect life. Throughout our lives, we all have issues and can effectively confront them. It would make no sense at all to tell people: “You have no issues. You have graduated.”

Mastery Counseling uses a framework and set of skills to help clients resolve their issues. Our clients not only benefit from resolving issues while in counseling, but also from learning the framework and skills they can apply after they leave.

When our more fortunate clients are satisfied with their progress, they will choose to leave. We hope by that time they will have learned enough to be able to successfully identify and confront their issues in the future on their own, with the support of friends and family.

When third parties are involved, clients and counselors are working within the constraints of business models and individuals in authority who decide when to terminate counseling. There is a special urgency. The “no graduation” concept helps. There is no pre-determined end point with Mastery Counseling. Resolving issues is a lifetime proposition. We help clients resolve as many issues as they can while they are with us. When they leave, we do not want them feeling they failed to complete a program. Rather, we hope they feel they have improved their lives significantly, gained a mastery approach to life, and learned skills that they will carry over and continue to apply in the years ahead.

Although The Seven Challenges offers no completion or graduation criteria, we strive to empower clients and make every effort to reinforce success along the way. We give unique certificates for completion of each journal. We make a point of watching for, recognizing, and complimenting effort, progress, and all the success our clients attain. When our clients do eventually leave (or are forced to terminate due to insurance), we look forward to saying to them: “Well done. Keep up the good work!”