The clutch pedal broke on my car the other day. If something like this had happened to me in the past, I would have responded in a rather negative way you can probably imagine what I might have said to myself! However, with my knowledge of reframing I was able to manage my emotions and feel grateful about the fact that the inconvenience was minimal compared to what could have happened we were able to stop in a safe place off the road, were recovered in 30 minutes and taken home, and then the car was delivered to my garage the next morning and fixed the same day.

In both personal and business development I have found the use of reframing, an NLP technique, to be a useful tool to shake the foundations of a negative belief or assumption, and help someone to a different perception of a situation. When it really works, reframing can have surprising results.

So how do you do it?

Reframing takes what someone says and changes the context or the content of the information. A context reframe is where you keep the behaviour constant, and change the context by asking where this behaviour might be effective or where it would be an appropriate response.

For instance, someone I was coaching said they felt they were hopeless at finishing things off they would have great motivation at the start of a project and get things moving, but would lose impetus once the initial excitement wore off. To reframe this from a negative perception to a more positive one, I suggested that this is a strength of someone who is an entrepreneur or leader, and that other people can find it very difficult to start anything!

A content reframe holds the context constant and changes the meaning of the behaviour. You ask yourself what else the behaviour could mean or what it is that the person has not noticed that will bring about a different meaning and change the response. What is particularly useful here, is to find positive intentions in everything.

A classic example of a content reframe by Virginia Satir, the respected family therapist, concerns a father who complains at the stubbornness of his daughter. He has labelled her behaviour as negative. Virginia reframes this by pointing out that in some circumstances her stubbornness will be a distinct advantage in life in order to protect herself or achieve something for instance.

Words are spells, and if we can say the right thing at the right time, we can help someone to have a richer appreciation of the world. Think how you might reframe the apparently negative things that happen to you to give yourself a more positive experience of life.

Andy Britnell

Andy Britnell has worked as a professional musician, a cheesemonger and in hotels, including Claridges and the Savoy in London. He spent 15 years with BT, latterly designing and delivering international management, sales and graduate development programmes. He now lives in Cornwall, UK, where as well as enjoying the surf and the coastal footpath, he runs a training and coaching practice specialising in sales, customer service and personal development training for the private and public sectors. He is an accredited coach and trainer of the Insights Discovery System which is a model based on the pioneering personality profiling work of Carl Jung. Using colour as a common language for better understanding of self and others, it helps people operate and communicate more effectively. Andy gains great satisfaction from helping his clients to grow and learn, and from the rapid progress they make in their business and personal lives. He works constantly on his own development and practises Ki Aikido, the ancient Japanese art of working with energy.