The power of reframing

If you ask most kids to clean up their room, they're going to say, "No way", or be out  the door before you can finish your sentence. But when I was little, my older sister had an ingenious way of getting us to pick up the house. 

We'd be hanging out in the living room, and suddenly Sherry (my older sister) would announce, "Would you guys like to play "king and queen' ?" We would leap to our feet, all excited, and ready to go. 

She would then exclaim  in solemn tones, "King, I command you to go over and pick up that stuffed teddy bear"- or whatever the thing lying around was- and I would reply,  "Yes, your majesty", and run off to pick up the aforementioned item. Then it would be my little sister's turn. She would take her order and  run to pick up the next thing- and in a few minutes, the whole living room  would be clean, and my sister had achieved her goal of a tidy living space. 

 In her creative way, my sister had "reframed" an arduous task, and turned it into a special activity that others  were eager to do. Not only did she get her work done by someone else-  we had fun doing it. That's the power of reframing. (For an example of this in literature, see Mark Twain's famous chapter in Tom Sawyer, where Tom gets his buddies to paint a fence). 

Cognitive restructuring is the fancy term psychologists use for the process of reframing or rethinking events. The goal is to help people by teaching them alternative ways of thinking about things, ways that might have more healthy and positive outcomes. 

In the example above, my sister could have just yelled at us and said, "OK you punks... it's time to clean the house. Get on it, before I give you hell!".... Instead, by reframing the job as a game, she tapped our creative imaginations and role playing skills, which most kids love. 

In his book, Growing Up Mindful, Christopher Willard cites a famous study by play expert, Lev Vygotsky.  Lev asked four year olds to stand still for as long as they could -which they could do for a few minutes. But when he asked them to imagine themselves as guards at a factory, they could stand about four  times as long. 

Reframing can be very powerful when it comes to managing emotions like anxiety and stress. Nearly 20% of Americans, struggle with anxiety, and there are some powerful ways to reframe that emotion. 

Consider these phrases for reframing anxiety:

My anxiety isn't dangerous- just a nuisance. It will pass

I'm not anxious, I'm excited!

It's just my body/ brain stem  doing its thing

This is nothing 

Notice how in all of them, anxiety is reimagined- as either a pesky little event that will pass, or even more positively, as excitement.

Perhaps the most powerful way to reframe a stressful situation is by thinking of others.
Anxiety is often a byproduct of thinking about the self- protecting our self image, or hoping to project an image for others to admire. If that image is threatened, we can feel immense discomfort- similar in physiology to how we feel when we are truly in danger, like by being hit by a speeding car. When people fear public speaking, it's not death they fear, but shame or embarrassment: a blow to their self -image.

But if we go into a situation with a mindset of service, or thinking of helping others in even a small way (like making the speech about serving others) , then we have left the island of self, and will be much more comfortable. Or even if we continue to be uncomfortable, we can say along with Marcus Aurelius, "I do my duty; other things trouble me not."

Sounds like something a king might say.