Our emotions are dramatically affected by the meaning we give to our experiences, and the meaning we give to any experience is shaped by the lens or filter through which we perceive it.
When
Goliath came against the Israelites,the soldiers all thought, "He's so big we can never kill him."
But David looked at the same giant and thought,
"He's so big, I can't miss him."
-DALE TURNER
The quote from Dale Turner is a wonderful example of the power of reframing. Whereas the other soldiers all were afraid of Goliath's mammoth presence, David saw the situation in another, entirely different way. His frame of reference enabled him to feel powerful instead of petrified.
Reframing is an invaluable tool for creating a Winning Mind set. It gives you the opportunity to see things in different, more empowering perspectives. Research has been done with self-rated pessimists and optimists. Both groups of people were given a series of tasks to perform which could be easily measured. When they completed the work, both groups were scored, and the researchers found that both performed equally, completing approximately 75% of the tasks correctly. When asked how they thought they did on the various tasks, the pessimists were much more accurate. The optimists were off by a much higher degree, and consistently rated themselves as doing better than they actually did.
What we found interesting, though, is that when asked if they would like to try again to improve their scores, the optimists were much more likely to want to try again. Because they thought they did better, they were more motivated to keep going. The pessimists, on the other hand, felt that they hadn't done that well (from their frame of mind), and were much less motivated to repeat the task.
How Can You Use This?
What exactly is re framing? It's just a question, really. You might say it's a better quality question. How, then, can you reframed a situation? Easy. All that you have to do is ask different questions.