Life Coach Training
Lesson 13
The High Art of Reframing
In our last lesson we underscored the coach’s role to assist the client to find relief. The simplest way to help your client get to “Ahhhh” is to help her reframe. To reframe is to find a way to regard an unpleasant or fear-inducing situation from another angle, until you find a perspective that yields empowerment rather than distress. When you reframe you do not attempt to deny, change, or overlook any of the facts of the presented situation. You simply find a new way to hold it that feels better and closer to resolution.
All of life is about interpretation. There is no situation that is always absolutely anything; the experience of the situation depends entirely on the way you view it. When you or your client regards a situation as negative or victimizing, you are seeing the issue through a filter of fear. If you can find a way to re-view the situation through a filter of peace, ease, or trust, three things will happen: (1) You will feel better; (2) You will have access to paths of action and solutions that were not available when you were seeing the issue through a dark glass: and (3) You will attract people and events that yield tangible positive results. Thus your role as coach becomes primarily a facilitator to shift perception.
You can make anything out anything. Your client has already made up a story about an event. He can just as easily make up another story. You can your client find a new story that works. To the extent that he is willing to do so, he will find relief and success.
Reframing is a great deal of fun, and you can practice it anywhere at anytime, for your own benefit as well as your clients’. Use the next few days to practice being a masterful reframer, and you will be amazed at how great you feel and how well things work out.
Here are some examples:
1. A king in a tropical land had an advisor who was very positive. This lieutenant always found some benefit in everything that happened — to the point that he annoyed the king with his constant optimism.
One day the king and lieutenant set off for a journey through the jungle. Along the way, the king decided to chop open a coconut. While doing so, the machete slipped and the king accidentally cut off his big toe. In great pain, the monarch hobbled to the lieutenant and showed him what had happened.
“That’s wonderful,” exclaimed his advisor.
“Wonderful?” the king answered, astounded.
“Something good will come of this,” the lieutenant insisted.
“Are you crazy!?” railed the king. “How dare you make light of my misfortune?”
“Trust me,” answered the optimist. “One day you will be glad this happened.”
That was it; the king had had enough. Outraged, he picked up the lieutenant and cast him into a deep pit. Then the king limped off into the jungle, leaving the arrogant lieutenant to die.
Along his way, the king was apprehended by a band of headhunters, who decided he would make an excellent sacrifice to the volcano goddess. The headhunters took the king back to their village and dispatched him to the tribe’s shaman to prepare him for the sacrifice.
As the shaman was anointing the king, he noticed he was missing a toe. The shaman informed the king, “We cannot use you for the sacrifice. The volcano goddess accepts only healthy specimens . . . You are free to go.”
Elated, the kind hobbled out of the camp. Suddenly it dawned on him that the lieutenant was correct — his injured toe turned out to be a benefit. He lost a toe, but saved his life. Immediately the king was overcome with remorse, since his advisor was trying to help him, and he left him to die. As fast as possible, the king tried to find his way back to where he had left the lieutenant, and rescue him if he was still alive.
After a day the king located the pit. To his relief, there sat the advisor, whistling happily (he was indeed a positive thinker!) The king helped the lieutenant out of the pit and dusted him off. “I am so sorry I threw you into that pit,” the king apologized. “I was taken captive by headhunters who were about to make me a sacrifice. But when they saw my toe was missing, they let me go. You predicted my good fortune, and I left you to die. Can you ever forgive me?”
The lieutenant smiled and replied, “That’s alright — no apology is necessary. It was a very good thing that you threw me in this pit.”
Astonished that the lieutenant would find benefit in such a cruel act, the king asked, “Why would you say that?”
“Because,” replied the lieutenant, “if I was with you, the headhunters would have taken me for the sacrifice!”
2. A lone shipwreck survivor on an uninhabited island managed to build a rude hut in which he placed all that he had saved from the sinking ship. He prayed to God for deliverance, and anxiously scanned the horizon each day to hail any passing ship. One day, he was horrified to find his hut in flames. All that he had was gone. To the man’s limited vision, it was the worst that could happen and he cursed God. Yet the very next day, a ship arrived. “We saw your smoke signal,” the captain said. —Walter A. Heiby
3. In a small town near my home, a Jewish congregation was looking for a meeting space for their Sabbath services. After hunting for a while, the only feasible place they found to meet was in a Christian church. Although this was not their ideal, there were enough elements of the rental arrangement to make the arrangement attractive, so they took it.
After the first Sabbath service, one of the congregants took the rabbi aside and pointed to the large cross on the wall over the altar. “Rabbi,” the fellow asked with concern, “Do you think it is acceptable for us to pray under the shadow of that cross?”
“Shhh,” the rabbi answered, his finger to his lips. “It’s a ‘T’ for ‘Torah.’”
Some humorous examples of reframing, yet with a point:
Watch a reframing scene from Scary Movie (Schoolboy joke at beginning is related to another scene)
Watch a reframing scene from Dumb and Dumber
Watch a reframing scene from Stir Crazy
(You may or may not be able to view some or all of the clips, depending on the movie player application your computer uses. You may also need to wait a minute or two for the clip to load.)
Exercise:
Choose three situations that seem troublesome to you or a client. Find a reframe for each that brings relief:
Situation 1:
Facts and circumstances:
Current interpretation:
Reframed interpretation that brings relief:
Situation 2:
Facts and circumstances:
Current interpretation:
Reframed interpretation that brings relief:
Situation 3:
Facts and circumstances:
Current interpretation:
Reframed interpretation that brings relief: