Reframe & Change the Way You Feel

Managing Emotions Through Reframing

Your emotions are a reaction to the events and environment around you. However, these reactions may be based on an imperfect perception of your situation. Our minds take the small slice of information that we receive through our senses and attach meaning to it. In this way, your thoughts and beliefs about the situation act as a frame in which you re-present a picture of the situation as you believe it to be. If you can change the way perceive the situation, you can change the way you feel. You can do this through a process that psychologists call reframing.

I am not suggesting that you try to see the world through rose-coloured glasses, or that you stick your head in the sand and just hope that all your challenges will just go away. Reframing is not about unrealistic, wishful thinking. However, human nature is such that when in the grip of a strong emotional state, people have a tendency to lose perspective, overgeneralise, jump to unwarranted conclusions and make other similar thinking errors. Reframing is a way to challenge and refine any distorted or unhelpful beliefs that you have about what has happened.

Try asking yourself some of the following questions to help you reframe your perception of the situation at hand:

• How may you be blowing things out of proportion? What do you really know vs. what do you believe? How are you exaggerating the negative consequences of this situation? What is the realistic scope and fallout that will follow from this?
• What good can come of this? How can you learn from this to make you a better leader? How can you turn potential threats into opportunities to improve? How can you turn it to your advantage?
• Is this really all your fault? What was outside of your direct control? What and who else have contributed to this situation?  What can others do to help rectify this?

When people say that emotions are illogical, they are more likely to be referring to the fact that the thoughts and beliefs underpinning our feelings can often be inaccurate and unhelpful. Reframing helps you change the way you feel by forcing you to examine the reality of the situation in a more accurate and helpful way.

Tagged as: emotion, reframing