Change Your Point Of View

Let’s say you find yourself with an unending stream of work to do. You start with the most urgent and important things on your list. You work smarter instead of harder. You start your day early and finish late. At the end of the week, you have accomplished quite a bit of useful work. The list is longer than ever before. How do you stay motivated when you can never be done?

This is exactly where I found myself in December of my first year of coaching. It was stressful and unrewarding. Not only was my list growing longer by the week, I had days when I would leave exhausted, having completed none of the things on my list. Without having any progress to show, I felt ineffective.

If you have been following my experience up to this point, you know I had tools at my disposal to change my state. I could ask questions to focus my attention. I could change my physiology. I could change my beliefs about my work. I had a lot of useful tools. What I was lacking was a plan.

Reframing

With the help of my coach, I decided to do some reframing of my work experience. Reframing is a process of using a metaphor to change the way you view or think about something. For example, you could ask yourself how you could make a boring task into a game. You use the power of questions to draw your attention into the new frame of reference. Your brain does the rest.

In my case, I chose to rename The List. Overnight, it became The Menu. I loved the idea of treating all that work the way I would a pleasant night out with friends. That thought alone changed my relationship to my work. It brought a sense of exploration and fun to something I previously viewed as hopeless.

Because I enjoy a bit of design work, I created a new way of organizing my daily activities. The Menu had categories such as “Meetings” or “On Fire”. I had fun with the layout, fonts, and colors.

The Menu helped me deal with the overwhelm of my unending work. Much like a restaurant that has more things on its menu than I could ever eat in one sitting, so did my Menu. Sometimes there was a special prepared by someone from another department. If the daily special was too big, I didn’t get to eat the work I intended to. I never left hungry!

Can it be that easy?

If you are anything like me, you may have doubts about something this simple being effective. On the surface, nothing about the situation has changed. Yet it has. When we reframe something, our relationship to the thing is changed. We use different parts of our brain. If we choose to reframe something in terms of fun, contribution, growth, excitement, or adventure, we also change the emotions we experience. Suddenly we have access to those empowering states we discussed before. We become better problem solvers.

When we reframe something, it changes, and we change. That can lead to some exciting possibilities for getting more benefit from almost any situation.

What is happening in your life that is annoying you right now? How could you make the resolution of that situation into a game? If you found a way to be less annoyed — or even engaged — could you teach someone to do the same thing? How would you be a more effective person after you taught ten people how to solve that same problem or overcome that same annoyance? What metaphor could you use right now to take hold of the situation, spin it around, and see it from a new angle?