Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, you don’t achieve the expected results or things happen that are challenging your confidence bringing questions if your work is worth it. Perhaps you didn’t get a promotion, didn’t pass an exam, a presentation didn’t go as you wished, your journal article was rejected or returned with major revisions or you got negative feedback on your draft chapter. You feel like a total looser. But it can be a lot simpler – you could have missed the tube, forgot your travel card at home and had to return, got stuck on a bus and missed an appointment. The day has started in a wrong way..
When we experience these moments, we always have a choice about how we respond to the situation and mainly – how we interpret it. This is called reframing.
Our thoughts create our emotions and understanding this in the first place gives us more control over how we actually feel. What matters here is how developed our self-awareness is and if we are able to observe the moment when our thought process changes, when negative thoughts occur about what happened. In that moment, reframing allows us to ‘rewrite’ the script and come up with a different story that is supportive and helping us to move ahead. Reframing brings us to design thinking. If you haven’t heard about design thinking yet and would like to find out more one of the best books on this is Designing your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.
Reframing a situation is one of the ways we can look at something that happened and see the teaching that we got rather than just the failure. It was Nelson Mandela who said: I never lose. I either win or I learn. There is so much wisdom in this quote. This change in mindset makes us feel different.
At the beginning reframing might not sound like an easy concept but by adopting it you will create new habits and the way you think will change. What is vital is the shift away from blaming yourself for what happened and instead asking: What can you learn from the situation? What would you do differently next time?
If you can answer these questions you are moving from focussing on a problem – and often being stuck in the past – to giving attention to a solution and so looking to the future. Metaphorically, there are lots of routes leading to different destinations and different gates that you can enter. It’s only you who can decide which path to take and what to focus on.
If you are interested to read more about the brain in an engaging way incl. reframing, I very much recommend Your Brain at Work by David Rock. It’s an excellent book showing practical examples (stories of a working couple and their family) how your brain works and how you can change the way you work and feel transforming your results.
Did something happen in the last couple of weeks that challenged you? Looking back at it – how could you reframe the situation, so you feel empowered to move forwards?