The Power of Reframing Your Mindset!

Reframing equips you with techniques to help you see things through a new lens that will enable you to stay open to new possibilities. As we try to make sense of our surroundings, we are constantly having thoughts and experiencing emotions, often based on previous assumptions which influence our interpretation of a situation. However, when what we believe depends solely on the information we have at the time, our perception may not depict the entire truth of the situation.

Take Lily, for example. Lily was in a cab on her way to a job interview in Manhattan. She had been waiting for years to interview at this company and had flown in from England just for this interview. The Brooklyn Bridge was Lily’s best way into Manhattan given that her hotel was in Brooklyn. She was less than 15 minutes from her destination. Just as the cab got off the ramp entering the bridge, everything came to a complete stop and Lily found herself in a massive traffic jam.

Lily noticed the chaos (hooting) of horns honking, people yelling.?Hey, move it! Get out of the way! Come on, people.And opening car doors as people proceeded to get out in order to see what was going on. At that moment, Lily thought to herself that this 15-minute drive had now turned into at least an hour and 15 minutes. She checked her phone only to discover that she had no service. She felt devastated and was worried that she would lose the opportunity of a lifetime because of repairs to the bridge or someone's broken-down vehicle.

Lily felt angry and yelled out the window.?Get out of the way!?In frustration, Lily took a deep breath and looked up to the pedestrian pathway above. There were many people looking down from the pathway. One of them was Abigail, out on her afternoon walk. As Abigail looked down at the traffic jam, she felt grateful she was not in the middle of all those angry people and continued walking down the pathway. After she had walked about a half mile, she looked down again and saw a massive traffic accident with ambulances, fire trucks, emergency workers, and severely injured people.

The traffic was completely stopped in the Manhattan-bound lanes. However, the people in the vehicles near the accident appeared to be sitting silently in their cars, most seemed very calm and some had their heads bowed down. Abigail felt concerned for those people who were hurt. She moved her gaze to a lady sitting in an ambulance having her head bandaged. This was Rachel. Rachel was coming back from eating lunch with her husband near her office in Brooklyn when traffic suddenly stopped because of an accident that had just happened. Rachel was unable to push her brakes fast enough and ran into another car. Rachel told the paramedic she felt terrible, that she was going to miss a very important interview with a woman from England.

Rachel had hoped she could hire the woman to work for her company but now was concerned that she wouldn't want to reschedule. Rachel was referring to Lily who was thinking the same thing about Rachel. What about having these extra details would have changed Rachel’s perspective and her reaction to her situation?

The point is that before jumping to conclusions about a situation that may cause us to react negatively, we might want to consider practicing reframing techniques. Reframing can be used to create a different way of looking at a situation, person, or relationship. It equips you with techniques to help you see things through a new lens that will enable you to stay open to new possibilities. New facts can change the entire meaning of a situation.

The next time you are in a situation where you start to feel stressed, stop and acknowledge your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and intentions from the story you are telling yourself about the situation. Think about how you can reassess a situation. Imagine seeing the event play out from a bird's-eye view and think about what someone completely unfamiliar with the situation might see.

Consider what you might be ignoring and what might be going on in the background. Ask yourself, "What would be an alternative explanation? What is really happening?" Make a list of sources where you could go to check your assumptions, seek out new data, and gain a new perspective.

Now, acknowledge any new thoughts, new emotions, new behaviors, and new intentions you are having. Finally, ask yourself, "What part of the situation can you control?"

This article is authored by Center for Creative Leadership and published on the Uplevyl platform, an AI-powered platform built by women for women.

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