People believe their perceptions, their viewpoints, their beliefs, and their versions of life are "the truth". It is being stuck in that belief that one does not make the progress that one could make in life. (Read the summary: The Believing Brain
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REFRAMING: To shape, fashion, or form, usually to a pattern.
USE: A bad "frame of mind".
A conflicting motive. People will often skew their viewpoint (frame) consciously or unconsciously to prove how awful their lives have been. The motivation does not appear to be that which would create any good results.
WHAT I SEE (ASSESS, BELIEVE) IS THE TRUTH! ABSOLUTELY!
Assessing from an objective point of view: The correct point of view is that all things in life are neutral and that we simply add our own meaning. Of course, while that viewpoint is true, it is not 100% achievable by humans, at least none I know of.
As humans, we will add meaning.
The essential thing to understand, however, is that the meaning added by us is just that a meaning, not an absolute truth. It is a viewpoint.
And the healthy way to look at it is to realize that something else could be true! When we insist that is not the case, we are believing something as a truth simply because we have repeated it so often it seems to be the truth and/or we just haven't questioned it enough to know that it cannot be the "only truth." (See The Believing Brain.)
A REFRAME IS JUST ANOTHER VIEWPOINT
Reframing something is simply deciding to look from another viewpoint - and then to see if that works for the better.
It is often adding a positive spin or at least a possible other assessment.
It is finding something good or an advantage from something that might not have been seen that way at first.
It is questioning looking for additional viewpoints:
What skills did you develop? Traits? Contributions?
Are you a "condition" (all f'd up) or is that something you have simply not yet done correctly. One thing for sure, is that if a person describes him/herself as being a certain way, as if it is a permanent condition, that person will most likely have to operate as if the person is a victim of that condition. (Few people rise above this to say "I have a condition and I will simply do my best given that it is there; I will not be the bemoaner/victim of it, I will simply move on, as if I had a bum leg, hobbling along, but still going as far as I can.:)
CONTEXT REFRAMING
Context reframing is taking an experience that seems to be negative, not useful, and/or distressing and showing how the same behavior or experience can be useful in another context.
CONTENT REFRAMING
Content reframing is simply changing the meaning of a situation - that is, the situation or behavior stays the same, but the meaning is changed.
Her life from another viewpoint: I did have moments...I did have some times where I was semi-ok even though I had my background program running. I made this bad, it was just a life I lived and a path I had to go down to learn to get as far as I've gotten. Although I repeat bad habits, I can stop that. I can live a good life. I have developed some good traits and skills from it. I do not live in my past any longer, so I choose to see what I could do now, in living my life, now! I have a new strategy which I will follow that has worked to create great lives for the people who follow it - and I can certainly choose to do this simple thing. It is now my choice to do or not to do. (See The Time Out Tool.)
THE PYGMALION EFFECT: PEOPLE MAKE UP STORIES AND THEN...
The story demonstrates that our self-perceptions, or who it is we learn to think we are, is a primary determinant in how we will fare in life.
Self-fulfilling prophecies have been called the Pygmalion effect from a play that later became My Fair Lady.
There is story after story about class room experiments in which teachers were told that a group of randomly chosen students were gifted and that another random group were slow; sure enough, at the end of the experiment, students tested just that way.
WITH REFRAMING, THE SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE OCCURS...AND IN THE SAME SITUATION!
Reframing, then, is expanding our own or others' perceptions by providing a new frame through which to view a life situation.
What is a disastrous problem for someone is a challenging growth opportunity for another.
Victor Frankl (1963) who survived Nazi Concentration camp, recounted that although most of his fellow inmates lost hope and subsequently died, Frankl kept hope and planned for the lectures he would give after his release. In his own mind, he turned a potentially hopeless situation into a source of rich experiences that he could use to help others overcome hopeless situations.
A major implication of this concept is that there are no correct or right frames of perceptions. There are only useful frames and not so useful frames depending on the particular context. A useful reframe is to understand that all perceptions are useful in some context. Given that, you can always ask yourself or someone else, "where would this perception be useful, or where would it make sense?"
SCANNING FOR AND SEEING "WHAT IS RIGHT"
If one chooses to reframe what occurs in life into the most useful framing, once it becomes a habit, the whole world and everyone in it are seen in terms of "what is right" rather than "what is wrong."
This is a fundamental shift in our cultural paradigm in that we are encouraged and rewarded to be problem-solvers from an early age. American culture gives great accolades and much money to those who can solve the big problems. We learn to measure our self-worth in terms of our ability to solve problems.
to "scan for problems."
Our very evolution depended on looking out for dangers, and those who erred on the side of seeing more dangers ended up surviving more often and passing those genes down to us. If we live stupidly or ignorantly, we let our primitive brains rule. If we live smartly, we use our higher brains to address what is really a threat and what isn't and to look for what is good and/or useful in life. The difference is unhappiness/reactivity versus happiness/responsibility/proactivity.
Which do you choose?
RESOURCES, READINGS
Developing Self-Management Skills
Articles about:
BOOKS
Reframing: NLP And The Transformation Of Meaning, Richard Bandler - The classic
Also: Get The Life You Want
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EXAMPLES OF REFRAMES
Failure as learning experience. Interestingly this is not only a positive reframe but a true one. It turns out that most negative frames are based on untruth. In this case, it is definitional that if we don't know how to do something yet, we will be relatively likely to do it wrong until we learn it - it is therefore a necessary and implicit part of learning to fail. (Duh!) But to make it mean something about the person being impaired or a failure is sheer madness!
Bandler and Grinder noted that "every experience in the world and every behavior is appropriate, given some context, some frame" (1982,p.9)
DIFFERENT WAYS TO REFRAME
Look at the bigger picture
zoom out and see the bigger picture. time, world, others, life
Be solution-focused vs. problem-focused
"Things could be worse"
Anxiety as motivation - My anxiety is excitement around possibly achieving something I want and might not get, but it'll motivate me to be more likely to get it!
Look through the eyes of a role model (or another person you've chosen, such as a friend or supportive person). How would he/she see it? What would Jesus do? Any specialist in an area (Steve Jobs, Dalai Lama, etc.)
A COMMENT FROM A BLOGGER
Reframing for me means seeing the same picture but in a different way.
So you have lost your job and you are now out of work and earning no money and life looks bleak might be one possible scenario. However recognising that you have some skills and experience and now have an opportunity to move on in your career whatever that may be, which you could not do whilst you were in your previous job.
You moved to New York which you hate, because of your wife but now that relationship has all but finished there is nothing to stop you moving to where ever you want and being the person you want to be.
At the moment you are stuck with a person you don’t want to be with in a place you don’t like but your plan is what takes you out of that pictures and puts you in another.
