What Animal is That? Stories of Reframing by Connie Brannan, CHt. & Licensed Trainer of NLP ™

The mind is a very powerful, flexible thing. Belief is flexible, too. I invite you to watch this video. What animal is that? It’s a couple giraffes “necking,” isn’t it? Or, is it? Keep watching. What do you see now?

Wow, as they say!  It’s not a giraffe. It’s an elephant! No, wait…is it both? If you move where you’re standing, you can see it either way. A new perspective brings a new understanding.  This is true in this amazingly creative sculpture, and it’s true in life on a broader scale as well.

When you develop a new way of seeing, you get new choices. That’s the purpose of hypnotherapy and how change by design happens! Which way of seeing do you prefer?  Hint:  The one that moves you from where you’re at to where you want to be! When we change how we see something, we also change how we feel about it, what we think about it, and what we DO behaviorally in the world.

Personal choices! A person could be fearful on the airplane, white-knuckling it with images of disaster in mind, or he could relax and snooze. A person could obsess on that old, failed relationship, or she could let it go and direct her attention to the people and things she wants in her life. A person could look at cigarettes and see an old, comfortable friend, or he could look at cigarettes and see a lying, backstabbing witch. You could focus on failure, or you could see yourself successful in every way you choose to be successful. And make it happen!

Dr. Wayne Dyer said the same thing in his own way: “When You Change the Way You Look at Things, the Things You Look At Change.” Absolutely, yes! Just like in the video, a different angle on the picture, and the whole meaning changes. In NLP parlance, we call it “reframing.”

A problem is simply a frame of mind, a way of looking at things. How we feel and how we respond to things and the thoughts/frames we create around them are all moveable furniture. Within our control. If you want to rearrange your mental furniture in a way that creates more beauty and ease and success in your life, that’s what skilled hypnotherapy and NLP can do.

Here’s a classic example of reframing. Imagine a roaring fire in a fireplace. That elicits positive feelings, right? Cozy, nice, warm. Now, expand the picture’s parameter, and you see the house is on fire as well. Oh, no, run for your lives! Negative feelings. Now expand the picture further and you see it’s all a movie set and they’re only filming a controlled reproduction of a house fire. Positive feelings, again. A shift of frame changes everything.

What makes this “reframing” process cool of course is changing things that are problems in your life to non-problems. Like the fear of flying. What if your experience of planes and flight became a frame of relaxation, like lounging on a tropical beach or sitting in your easy chair at home? Hypnosis can do that.

When you change the way you look at things, you change yourself. The “things” may seem different. Not so. YOU are different. In our example, the airplane ride didn’t change. Thinking did.

Here’s a couple client stories to illustrate this:

I helped a girl with social anxiety in the workplace. Her co-worker interactions were uniformly negative and stressed. We worked on anxiety release, and she reported that suddenly people were responding more positively to her and work was becoming a pleasure. She attributed it to: “Human resources must have spoken to them, they all seem so much nicer.” That pesky, puny conscious mind, trying to find meaning. No. No one else changed. SHE did. And her interactions in the world changed around her because of it.

Another story:

I had a client who had trouble losing weight, it was a lifelong issue. We worked it, improving her confidence and self image and motivation. She started losing weight. However, she attributed the “easy” changes to a great “food plan” she found. Not so. The food plan was always there, what was different was her mindset that allowed her to KEEP to the food plan. Her frame had changed.

Reframing problems out of existence. This is my expertise. This is my gig. My passion. My fun. Learn more any time. I can guide you through it one on one for improving your life story, or teach you how to do it, for yourself or others, through the career school side of my work.

 

© All material herein is copyright Connie Brannan, CHt.  2016.  All rights reserved.  No reproductions of this material without prior written permission.