Reframing, Part II: Reframing and the Barrier Reflex

I recently wrote about Paul Miller—the self described one-armed dwarf who was one of the most resilient and upbeat people I’ve ever met. Now, a few months after his death, I’ve had a chance to think about some personal change lessons to take from him.

I’m something of a worrier by nature, a glass-half-empty type. When I think about trying something new, my initial reaction is to focus on the barriers that stand in my way. I call this the barrier reflex. The barrier reflex is a knee-jerk, unconscious response that can make it hard to get motivated, hard to get moving, and hard to get out of first gear.

One way past the barrier reflex is through reframing. This is a way of changing the meaning you make of the situation by redirecting where and how you focus your attention.

Instead of focusing on the barriers, focus on the change you are trying to make, especially everything that is enjoyable, enlivening, and motivating about the process of getting there. Rather than barriers, you may have some incidental challenges you have to deal with. But these really are incidental. The emphasis—the reframing—is to understand what you are doing in terms of the enlivening and motivating aspects.

So what does this have to do with Paul Miller? I didn’t know him well enough to get inside his head. But when I met him, I don’t think he was concealing the fact that he had just had his arm amputated. He simply wasn’t focusing on it. The operation was an incidental challenge to be dealt with. His real focus on moving forward cancer-free was with his work, his family, people that the met, etc. His physical body didn’t matter so much to him as long as it worked well enough; he was more excited and motivated by what he called “the life of the mind.” Although I doubt he knew much about cognitive reframing, in essence he was doing it all the time without even thinking about it.

For those of us who don’t have Paul’s resilience and upbeat nature (me, for instance), the reframing process has to be a conscious one. But the core idea is the same. 

[Photo courtesy of loopstas.blogspot.com]