It is a sunny day outside and suddenly … life is GOOD!
Yesterday was a foul rainy day and the room felt so dark and dreary and gloomy. The same room with the sun shining has suddenly turned into a happy, spacious bright place that I want to hang out in! So what changed? Not the room, for sure – just the perspective changed – the lens through which I was looking changed.
And this got me thinking. We go through life feeling down, depressed and negative because of an event or a set of events. We have no control over the events that happen in life. Yet, we have full control over how we experience those events. We can choose to perceive the event with a negative lens or choose to perceive the event with a positive lens. Without changing the event – just changing the perspective will also give us a solution to dealing with the situation. Is it really that simple? Yes it is!
Take an example of my client in America, Aiden. When Aiden started coaching with me, he was depressed because a colleague who was new to the company and with far less experience had been given the promotion which was rightfully his. Aiden could have experienced this situation in one of two ways – get angry and become a “difficult” employee or become self-sabotaging and eventually leave the company. Instead, supported by coaching, Aiden chose to take this event as a learning – he learnt that his Brand was not strong. He took steps to improve his brand image in the company. Yesterday he called me to tell me that he has received an award for the most innovative employee of the company!
In NLP, this is called re-framing. There are two types of Reframes: Content and Context.
Content reframe is when the meaning is re-framed. In the example above, Aiden got depressed when his colleague got the promotion. The meaning Aiden gave to the event was “I am not good enough”, hence the depression. However he then reframed the meaning to “My Brand needs some fine tuning”. By re-framing he took charge of his situation and was able to turn the situation around and win an award.
Context reframe is where the meaning of a behaviour is the same however the context is changed to reveal the positive intention of the behaviour. For example “That child is too stubborn”. When the context is reframed this becomes a positive behaviour. “This child is too stubborn – she has the potential to be a great leader since she obviously knows her mind.”
Reframing is easy when we focus on the positive intention of every event / situation.
On my part, I am happy to say I reframed my foul rainy day and found it to be a great opportunity to stay indoors and finish my paperwork!