Unlimited Power - Chapter 16

 

Chapter 16 - REFRAMING: The Power Of Perspective

 

If I asked you, "What does a footstep mean?" you would probably answer, "It doesn't mean anything to me."

But what if you're sitting home alone late at night, and you hear footsteps downstairs?

A moment later, you hear the steps moving toward you. Do the footsteps have meaning then? They sure do.

The same signal (the sound of footsteps) will have many different meanings depending upon what it has meant to you in similar situations in the past.

Thus the meaning of any experience in life depends upon the frame we put around it.

If you change the frame we put around it the context, the meaning changes instantly.

One of the most effective tools for personal change is learning how to put the best frames on any experiences.

This process is called reframing.

Reframing in its simplest form is changing a negative statement into a positive one by changing the frame of reference used to perceive the experience.

There are two major types of reframes, or ways to alter our perception about something:

context reframing

and

content reframing.

Context reframing involves taking an experience that seems to be bad, upsetting, or undesirable and showing how the same behavior or experience is actually a great advantage in another context.

For example, oil was once considered something that destroyed the value of land for crop usage. Yet look at its value today.

Content reframing involves taking the exact same situation and changing what it means. For example, you might say your son never stops talking. He never shuts up!

After content reframing, you might say that he certainly must be a very intelligent young man to have so much to say.

Another kind of content reframe is to actually change the way you see, hear, or represent a situation.

If you're upset about what someone said to you, you may envision yourself smiling as he says the same negative words expressed in the tonality of your favorite singer.

Unlimited Power is full of reframes. "The Seven Lies of Success" is a whole chapter of reframes.

Think of a major mistake you've made in the last year. You might feel an instant rush of gloom. But chances are the mistake was part of an experience with more successes than failures. And, as you consider it, you'll begin to realize you probably learned more from that mistake than from anything else you did that month.

So you can zero in on what you did wrong, or you can reframe the experience in a way that focuses beyond it to what you have learned. There are multiple meanings to any experience.

One of the keys to success is finding the most useful frame for any experience so you can turn it into something that works for you rather than against you.

Take a moment to reframe these situations:

1. My boss yells at me all the time.

2. I had to pay $4,000 more in income tax this year than last year.

3. We have little or no extra money to buy Christmas presents this year.

4. Every time I begin to succeed in a big way, I sabotage my success.

Here are some possible reframes.

la. It's great he cares enough to tell you how he feels. He could have just fired you.

2a. That's great. You must have made a lot more money this year than last year.

3a. Great! Then you can become much more ingenious and make something people will never forget instead of buying run-of-the-mill gifts. Your gifts will be personal.

4a. It's great that you're so aware of what your pattern has been in the past. Now you can figure out what triggered it and change it forever!

Most reframing is done for us, not by us. Someone else changes the frame for us and we react to it.

What is advertising, after all, but a huge industry with the sole purpose of framing and reframing mass perceptions?

Do you really think there is anything particularly macho about a specific brand of beer or particularly sexy about a particular cigarette?

Few of us spend much time thinking about how to frame our communications with ourselves. Something happens to us. We form an internal representation of the experience. And we figure that's what we have to live with. Think how crazy that is. It's like turning on the ignition, starting up your car, and then seeing where it decides to go.

You need to start framing and reframing experiences in a way that makes them work for you.

Reframing can be used to eliminate negative feeling about nearly anything. A phobia, for example, is often rooted at a deep kinesthetic level, so you need to provide more distance from it in order to do an effective reframe.

The way to deal with people who are phobic is to disassociate them from their representations several times.

We call this double disassociation. For example, if you have a phobia about something, do this exercise below that will take you step by step through a process that can free you of fears and phobias in a matter of minutes.

PHOBIA CURE EXERCISE

Step 1:      Go back to a time when you felt totally empowered and alive.

Go back to that state, and feel those strong, confident feelings.

Step 2:      Now see yourself as protected by a radiant, protective bubble.

Step 3:      Once you have that protection, go to your favorite mental movie theater.

Sit down in a comfortable seat with a good view of the screen.

Step 4:      Next, feel yourself float out of your body, up into the projection booth, all the time feeling your protective bubble around you. Look down and see yourself sitting in the audience looking up at the empty screen.

Step 5:      After you've done that, look up at the screen and see a still frame, black-and-white image of the phobia or some terrible experience that really used to bother you.

You're looking down on yourself in the audience and watching yourself observe what's happening on the screen you're doubly disassociated from it.

Step 6:      In that state, run the black-and-white image backward at an extremely fast pace so you see the thing that's been haunting you appear like a cheap home movie or an old slapstick comedy.

Notice your funny reactions to it as you watch yourself in the audience watching this movie on the screen.

Step 7:      Let's take it a step further. I want the part of you that's really resourceful, the part that's up in the booth, to float back down into where your body has been sitting, and then get up and walk to the front of the screen.

You should be able to do that in a very strong, confident state.

Step 8:      Then tell your earlier self that you've been watching over him or her and have come up with two or three ways that can help change that experience, two or three reframes of the meaning or the content that will help him or her to handle it differently, now and in the future-ways that the younger you could handle with your present-day, more mature perceptions.

You don't need to have all that pain and fear. You're more resourceful now than when you were younger, and that old experience is just history, nothing more.

Step 9:      Help your younger self cope with something (s)he couldn't handle earlier, then stride back to the seat and watch the movie change.

Step 10:    Play the same scene in your head, but this time watch as your younger self handles the same situation with utter confidence.

Step 11:    When you've done that, you should walk back to the screen and congratulate your younger self, give him or her a hug for breaking free of the phobia or trauma or fear.

Step 12:    Then pull that younger you back inside of you, knowing (s)he is more resourceful than ever before and an important part of your life.

SIX STEP REFRAME

1. Identify the pattern or behavior you wish to change.

2. Establish communication with the part of your unconscious mind that generates the behavior.

Ask yourself the question, "Will the part of me that generates behavior X be willing to communicate with me in consciousness and give me a signal in body sensations, visual images, or sounds." Now test the response by asking the part to communicate yes ...and then no ...so that you can distinguish between the two responses.

3. Separate intention from behavior.

Thank the part for its willingness to cooperate with you. Now ask it if it would be willing to let you know what it's been trying to do for you be generating behavior X.

4. Create alternative behaviors to satisfy intention.

Go inside and contact the most creative part of you and ask it to generate three alternative behaviors that are just as good or better than behavior X for satisfying the intention of the part we've been communicating with. Now ask the creative part if it would be willing to reveal to you what the three new behaviors are.

5. Have part X accept the new choices and the responsibility for generating them when needed.

6. Make an ecological check.

Go inside and ask if there are any parts that object to the negotiations that have just taken place or if all parts agree to support you.

Then step into the future and imagine a situation that would have triggered the old behavior, and experience using one of your new choices and still achieving the benefits you desire.

If you get a signal that other parts object to these new choices, you must start at the beginning, identify which part is objecting, what benefits it's been giving you in the past, and have it work with part X to generate new choices that would maintain the benefits it's always given you and also provide for you a new set of choices.

Almost any seemingly negative experience can be reframed into a positive one. How often have you said, "Someday I'll probably look back and laugh at this." Why not look back and laugh at it now? It's all a matter of perspective.

It's important to note that you can reprogram someone's representation through swish patterns and other techniques, but if the person gets greater benefits from the old behavior than from the new choices, the person will probably return to the old behavior.

I don't want you to only think of reframing as a therapy, as a way of going from situations you consider bad to ones you consider good.

Reframing is really nothing more or less than a metaphor for potential and possibility.

There are very few things in your life that can't be reframed into something better.

One of the most important frames to consider is possibilities.

Make a list of five things you're doing right now that you're pretty pleased with. Then imagine them as even better.

Possibility reframing is something we can all do.

We all know people who are reverse reframers.

No matter how bright the silver lining, they can always find a dark cloud.

But for every disabling attitude, for every counterproductive behavior, there's an effective reframe.

You don't like something? Change it.