Ten years ago, from 2015 to 2017, The International Focusing Institute undertook a two-year-long strategic planning process. During those years, the Board met monthly with the International Leadership Council (ILC) to discern the purposes and goals of TIFI. It was a time when Gene and Mary had retired and the future of the Institute was uncertain. The Board hired Joe Colletti to guide them in their process and, in the final stages, Rosa Zubizaretta. They had an intensive two-day-long meeting prior to the International Focusing Conference in Seattle in 2015. During the conference, they held meetings with the Coordinators as well as any conference attendees interested in giving input. After that, they continued to meet monthly. Finally, after all that felt-sensing together, they produced a Strategic Plan which included a mission statement, four goals, and a long list of action steps, all of which set the direction of TIFI for years to come. We are the inheritors of all that good work.
L to R: Mary Jennings, Susan Lennox, Jim Iberg, Hejo Feuerstein (seated), Marine de Fréminville, Barbara McGavin, Sergio Lara.
In 2024, we, the current Board, looked at the goals that had emerged from all that previous work. The fact that almost 10 years later, the goals still seemed to fit is a testament to how well our predecessors had done. Yet, because we have evolved over these years, we felt that they needed some refreshing. Board member Evelyn Fendler-Lee was asked to spearhead working with the Executive Director, Catherine Torpey, to suggest revisions. The changes we desired were:
- Refreshed wording where needed to reflect how we’ve evolved as an organization and where we are now
- Explicit language indicating that TIFI’s mission is not only about Focusing, but the whole of Gendlin’s legacy, including the philosophy of the implicit, Thinking at the Edge (TAE) and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy (FOT) as well as Focusing
- Addition of the goal to nurture community among those who study and practice Focusing, TAE, FOT and the philosophy of the implicit
- Clearer language where needed
Over many months, Evelyn and Catherine proposed edits, and the Board considered them with a lot of felt sensing. In 2025, when the Board felt that they were ready, the ILC was consulted for their input followed by the Membership Committee.
We have now uploaded these revised goals on focusing.org/mission. Please take a look. We hope you'll find that they are in alignment with what you feel TIFI's role is and should be. We hope that what you are seeing happen is in alignment with what the words express. We invite you to send us your feedback at [email protected].
We always strive to do our work as a board in keeping with a felt-sensing ethos. The goals as they had been written by the previous Board and ILC were excellent, so we see this revision not as a correction, but as a reflection of the good work that was done previously which has brought us to a new moment.
Thanks for being part of this grand vision of a world infused with felt sensing.