Not sure where to start?
Try the Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI) to clarify what to focus on, or start with Relaxation Therapy for guided meditation.
What Is The Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI)?
A Private Self-Assessment Tool For Understanding Your Personal Concerns
If You Can Clearly Verbalize A Problem, The Solution Becomes Readily Available
If you’ve ever wished you could quickly pinpoint what’s holding you back and know exactly where to focus, the Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI) can help. It is a private self-guided tool that helps you identify, prioritize, and address the concerns that matter most in your life while tracking your progress over time.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Reaume Carroll Mulry developed the PCI as a different approach to psychological self-assessment. Instead of focusing on outside evaluation, the PCI helps you identify your own concerns, recognize what is most important, and decide where to direct your attention.
The PCI is the self-awareness foundation of the Mulry Method. By clearly identifying personal concerns, you can move toward Focused Action and develop a better understanding of yourself.
How The Personal Concerns Inventory Works
The PCI guides you through a structured series of questions covering more than 1,000 possible personal concerns. Most people complete the online inventory in approximately 20 minutes.
Dr. Mulry described the PCI as functioning like a highly efficient, well-organized mind. It begins with a wide-angle view of possible concerns and gradually narrows the focus, bringing your most significant concerns into clearer view.
After completing the PCI, you receive an instant personalized “This Is Me!” Report. The report identifies your highly focused concerns and provides a starting point for reflection and action.
Your results remain private unless you choose to share them. The PCI gives you control over your information and allows you to decide how you use what you learn.
Why The PCI Was Created
As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Mulry spent decades studying psychological assessment and helping people understand their concerns.
Traditional psychological assessment often uses questionnaires, personality tests, and other evaluation methods. These tools can be valuable, but Dr. Mulry questioned whether such an extensive process was always necessary.
The question was simple:
Do people always need someone else to determine what matters most in their lives?
Dr. Mulry recognized that people often already have important information about themselves. Direct questions can help them identify and clearly verbalize concerns that may already be present.
He wanted to “cut to the chase, assessment-wise” by directly engaging people in identifying their own concerns.
The PCI follows this principle. When concerns are clearly identified, they become easier to understand and address.
The Development Of The Personal Concerns Inventory
Dr. Mulry’s background in psychological assessment included:
- Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Center for Psychological Research in Princeton, New Jersey
- Teaching graduate-level courses in Clinical Psychology assessment at the University of Texas at Austin and Indiana University at Bloomington
- Administering hundreds of psychological assessments throughout his career
Through this experience, Dr. Mulry developed an assessment process that gave individuals greater ownership of their personal information. He wanted to reduce “evaluation apprehension” and the fear of being incorrectly labeled while keeping results private unless the individual chose to share them.
Dr. Mulry created the PCI to help people define their own concerns, identify priorities, and take Focused Action.
In 1991, Dr. Mulry presented the PCI as part of his Freedom From Back Pain program. At the time, it was a paper-based self-study tool containing 52 personal concerns. Participants rated each concern from 1 to 10 every day for three weeks. Dr. Mulry described the PCI as a way to explore the feelings, thoughts, and activities of daily life, identify sources of tension, and decide what changes to make in a focused and self-directed manner.
Watch Dr. Mulry Present The Personal Concerns Inventory In 1991 →
From Self-Assessment To Focused Action
People often seek help because they do not feel the way they want to feel, but they are unsure why.
Consider a person who believes a relationship problem is caused by personality differences. After looking more closely, alcohol use, stress, communication difficulties, or other concerns may emerge as more significant issues.
The original concern may not have been the real concern.
The PCI helps bring these underlying concerns into clearer focus. Once you know what truly matters most to you, you can decide what you want to do about it.
This is Focused Action.
Maintaining consistent focus on an important concern is the next step. When that concern is resolved, future completions of the PCI can reveal what deserves your attention next.
As Dr. Mulry explained, “life is a continuing process of challenge and resolution.”
Tracking Change Over Time
People change. Their responsibilities change. Their concerns and priorities change.
Creating a free account allows you to save your PCI results and return to the inventory over time. Your history can help you:
- Compare previous completions
- Recognize patterns over time
- Observe changing priorities
- Measure progress
Continued use of the PCI provides a tool for self-navigation as your life and concerns change.
The PCI becomes more than a single assessment. It becomes a tool for ongoing Self-Learning.
Focus And Attention Create Change
Focus and sustained attention are important parts of learning and personal change.
In The Mind and the Brain (2002), Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz described how sustained attention can influence the functioning of the brain’s neural circuitry:
“The power of attention not only allows us to choose what mental direction we will take. By actively focusing attention on one rivulet in the stream of consciousness, it also allows us to change—in scientifically demonstrable ways—the systematic functioning of our own neural circuitry.”
Dr. Mulry connected this ability to focus attention with personal change:
“We become what we do.”
The PCI provides a practical way to direct attention toward the concerns that matter most. When attention becomes clear and purposeful, change becomes more achievable.
Be Your Own Psychologist
When you can clearly identify and verbalize your personal concerns, you are better prepared to find solutions and take meaningful action.
The PCI reflects the larger philosophy of the Mulry Method:
Relaxed, Balanced, Flexible, and Focused.
It is a Self-Learning approach that helps you better understand yourself, develop useful skills, and take greater responsibility for your own progress.
As Dr. Mulry explained in 1991, by making changes in your life, you can take “greater and greater charge of yourself” and enjoy the life you want to live.
Take The Personal Concerns Inventory
The PCI provides a private way to identify your most important concerns, track changes over time, and take Focused Action toward meaningful goals.