Motivation & Confidence Ruler: Rate Your Readiness to Change and What It Means

About this tool

The motivation and confidence ruler comes from motivational interviewing, a well-researched, collaborative approach developed by William Miller and Stephen Rollnick for helping people work through ambivalence about change. It separates two things that often get tangled together: how much you want a change, and how able you feel to make it. You can badly want something yet feel powerless to do it, or feel perfectly capable of a change you do not actually care about. Seeing both numbers makes your real readiness clearer.

The clever part of the ruler is the follow-up question. After you rate importance at, say, a 6, the most useful prompt is not why so low, but why not lower, why not a 2. This pulls your own reasons for change into the open in your own words, which research in motivational interviewing finds is far more persuasive than reasons supplied by someone else. The same trick works for confidence: asking what would move it up a single point surfaces small, doable next steps.

Use this whenever you feel two minds about something: starting a habit, ending one, having a hard conversation, or taking a health step you keep postponing. Low importance with high confidence suggests reconnecting the change to what you value. High importance with low confidence suggests breaking it into smaller pieces or finding support. The ruler does not push you to change. It helps you hear where you honestly stand.

The ruler is used widely in clinical and coaching settings for health behaviors such as smoking cessation, exercise, and medication adherence, because it turns a vague sense of not being ready into two separate, workable numbers. Clinicians trained in motivational interviewing ask the same two questions, importance and confidence, to decide where to focus: raising importance when it is low, or building confidence and skills when it is high but confidence lags. You can use the ruler the same way for any change you are weighing on your own.

If a change keeps stalling even after you have named your reasons and a smaller first step, or if it involves a serious health, safety, or substance use concern, working with a therapist trained in motivational interviewing can help. You can search Psychology.com's therapist directory for someone who works this way.

The ruler also works well as a private check before a decision you have been putting off, or side by side with a specific goal you have already set. Rating two related changes separately, for example starting therapy and telling a partner about it, can show you which piece is actually the sticking point: the change itself, or a step connected to it.

Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW
Reviewed the ruler and prompts for fidelity to motivational interviewing practice.

References

1. Miller WR, Rollnick S. Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change. 3rd ed. Guilford Press; 2013.
2. Rollnick S, Miller WR, Butler CC. Motivational Interviewing in Health Care. Guilford Press; 2008.

Motivation & Confidence Ruler FAQ