Back when I first moved to Santa Fe, I was excited to meet people and make new friends. I remember thinking to myself:
Making new friends is going to be awesome. We’ll go on adventures, try new things, and go out together on the weekends. I can’t wait.
When that didn’t happen after the first month, my excitement turned to anxiety:
Making new friends is impossible. I’m never going to meet anyone here.
After a few more weeks of not making any new friends, I changed my thoughts a bit. I started telling myself:
I can make new friends, I just need to figure out how. Let me figure out what I’m doing wrong and try to fix this issue.
And finally, not too much longer later, I did start to make new friends.
I’m not going to tell you that if you want to accomplish something all you have to do is tell yourself you can do it. But what you believe, and the way you frame your beliefs, do have a big impact on your achievements.
What is Framing?
Framing is the enforcement of a viewpoint. It’s the way you package a belief into a tidy little story that’s easy to understand, although not necessarily the truth.
When I told myself, I’m never going to meet anyone here, I was framing the situation of being able to meet new people as impossible. And even worse, I believed it.
Because of that, I spent more time over the next few weeks watching Netflix on my couch, including Friday and Saturday nights. Why would I go out and try to meet new people if I knew it wasn’t going to work?
When I finally decided to figure out how to fix the problem, I shifted the frame (and my belief), to one where I could solve it if I could just find the right solution.
By changing the frame, I became happier and more energized because I believed I would be able to make friends, even before I met my first one.
As you can see, the way you frame things not only affects your subsequent actions and success but also your mood before you achieve it.
Again, I’m not saying that just changing your thoughts will give you success, but they will help put you on the right path to getting there. If you don’t believe something is possible, you won’t even try for it.
So what can you do to make sure you don’t set frames that prevent you from doing great things?
Listen to Your Words
Way back in college, I remember leaving the Verizon Store thinking the customer service rep who was “helping” me was so rude. And that was how I framed this situation: She is such a rude person.
After some time passed, I put a lot of thought into the interaction. I knew I bore some responsibility for the unpleasant conversation we had and was trying to figure out if she was really the one to blame.
To the dissatisfaction of my ego, I decided that it wasn’t fair of me to label her as a rude person. I came to the store in a bad mood, demanded something I didn’t deserve and blamed her for everything that didn’t go the way I wanted.
Did she make a few rude comments? Yeah, but only after I had been frustrating and annoying.
And this is exactly the problem of framing. We package people or ideas into neat little packages that are easy to explain, even when they aren’t true. Then, to make things worse, we believe that way of thinking is exactly correct.
The Verizon rep could have been an awesome woman defending herself against an argument she could have never won. So rather labeling her as rude, I now look back and think, I have no idea what she is normally like. I only know that after being blamed for something she didn’t do, she became defensive.
In this situation, my framing isn’t a huge deal because I never saw the woman again. But how important can these frames be for ideas, thoughts, and labels that permeate the most critical aspects of our lives? Like:
Our closest relationships.
How we think about our achievements and failures.
What we believe is possible.
The only way to tackle this problem and use framing to our advantage is to listen to the words we use.
Whether we say them out loud to a friend – Yeah, I’ll never lose weight. I’ve tried everything but it just doesn’t work for me. (Really? There’s nothing that’ll work?)
Or if we say them internally to ourselves – He’s an idiot for wearing that. (Do we believe that? Or do we feel bad about our own style and try to bring others down to justify our own looks?)
If you really take the challenge and start listening to everything you say, you’ll probably realize you say the word “can’t” way more often than you should. Is it true you can’t meet up with Sarah? Or is it that you don’t want to, but won’t admit it?
It’s not true that you can’t go to the bar in the middle of the day on Wednesday. It’s that you don’t want to because you’d rather get your work done and keep the income stream flowing.
Listen to what you’re saying. See if you can reframe some of your thoughts to your advantage.
I’m curious, what are some internal frames that you’re becoming aware of? Let me know in the comments below.