I use this reframe often, and it works instantly for me. It doesn’t last, but it can take you out of your negative loop right away. After all, how can I be anxious about something that doesn’t exist?
The Virtual Reality Reframe
Try this one right now. Observe the objects in your immediate vicinity and imagine them being some sort of computer-generated creation—like a video game or an animated movie—that looks exactly like what you assume is reality. The point of this reframe is to bring you into the present. And that’s all you need. You are only trying to break the mental loop you’re in. Any distraction will do, but this one you can do anywhere and anytime.
Usual Frame: Reality is exactly what you see and feel.
Reframe: Imagine the objects around you as virtual objects.
It takes a fair amount of mental processing to reimagine your environment as computer generated, and that’s another reason it works. You want your brain distracted with a challenge—otherwise it will drift back to its default loop of negativity.
If you are not a visual person, you might discover some other type of distraction works best to pull you out of a negative headspace. Experiment. Pick a distraction that interests you and engages your brain and see for yourself if it reliably puts you in a different frame of mind. I recently learned how to play drums (poorly), and I discovered it is completely absorbing. My brain must coordinate four limbs working independently plus a brain that is keeping a beat and anticipating the next fill (a drummer word for the interesting flourishes). There is no brain power left to think about any problems. So I don’t. And when I’m done drumming, I almost always feel great.
Find the activity that takes over your entire mind. That’s your escape hatch.
The Death Bed Reframe
This one goes like this.
Usual Frame: My stress and anxiety are caused by events in my life.
Reframe: I won’t care about any of those events on my deathbed.
If you know something is too small to be remembered in your final days of sentient existence, what are the odds your problem is important today? We evolved to care most about what is happening to us here and now. But that frame can make your problems feel worse because “right now” does not include a future time in which those problems are (usually) resolved or at least diminished.
When you use the deathbed reframe, you see your life as bigger than your current problems. That can make the importance of today’s problem shrink, at least in terms of how you process it in your mind.
Whenever my young stepson got a scrape or cut, I discovered his attitude would immediately improve if I told him how long the pain would last. I’d look at his cut or scrape with a knowing expression and confidently tell him, “This one is a four-minute situation.” It always helped.
I don’t think adults are much different from kids when it comes to how we process pain. The degree of pain matters, but you also care how long it lasts. If you don’t know how long it will last, that’s an extra mental burden on top of the pain. If you know the pain will be done in a minute, you can ride it out with far less mental friction.
Usual Frame: I am in pain.
Reframe: I am in pain for a minute.
When you shift your mind from your immediate pain or problems to some imagined future in which the pain is gone or forgotten—no matter how near or far in the future—you weaken the power of your current discomfort. Try it. You’ll be surprised how well it works.
The View from Space
This reframe makes no logical sense but works for me anyway.
Usual Frame: You are the center of your universe and the highest priority.
Reframe: Viewed from space, everything looks small, including your problems
How could imagining yourself looking at Earth from space improve your attitude? Because any kind of perspective shift can interfere with your looping and cascading negative thoughts. It’s like taking a walk in the woods or going on vacation to help you forget your troubles and reduce your stress. When the vision-handling parts of the brain are involved, it’s hard to hold any other thought at the same time. Looking at the scenery outside or imagining Earth as viewed from space both call on parts of the brain that can absorb all your attention at least temporarily, and that can be enough to take the edge off your worries.
Mental Shelf Space
This next reframe is an all-star in my book. (Literally, in this book.) And by that, I mean it has the most potential for immediately improving your life. It goes like this.
Usual Frame: You need to stop thinking negative thoughts.
Reframe: You can’t subtract negative thoughts. But you can crowd them out.
I call this the mental shelf-space strategy. If something bad is happening in your life, it makes perfect sense that you think about it a lot. But there comes a time when obsessing over a negative thought becomes so corrosive you need a mental vacation. You need to get rid of the negative thoughts looping in your head.
Unfortunately, you can’t subtract thoughts. Brains don’t work that way. You can, however, stay so busy that you don’t have time to ruminate on all the bad news. Over time, the memory of the bad thing will fade. You might need to create some new experiences that thrill you so much you can’t think of much else. But hey, wouldn’t that be fun anyway?
Our brains evolved to solve our problems. If you have problems, your brain will pounce and—for many of us—never release. That’s what you want if your problem is one that can be solved—you want your brain to automatically attack the problem and find a solution. But reality is too messy for that. Many of our most vexing problems exist entirely in our minds, like this one:
I worry that my friends stopped liking me because of that thing I said.
For that kind of problem—the usually-irrational worries—your best bet is to bury it with new thoughts and experiences. Fill your shelf-space. Make yourself busy. It works.
For example, as I mentioned, I have discovered that learning a musical instrument takes up so much brain power, I crowd out any competing thoughts while I practice. Compare that to walking or running, which invites stray thoughts. Pick hobbies, tasks, and social interactions that demand your full attention. If you’re only using your legs such as taking a walk, that probably isn’t good enough. You must get your mind involved.
When I go to bed, I direct my thoughts toward wonderful things that happened to me recently as well as to incredible things I fantasize about happening later. You can’t prevent bad thoughts from trying to sneak in, but you can crowd them out with stronger, more addictive thoughts.
The shelf-space concept differs from the mental exercises I described earlier such as imagining yourself from space, imagining your deathbed, or imagining a virtual world. Those hacks also crowd out negative thoughts, but they are entirely mental exercises. The mental shelf-space idea is more about real world actions of all kinds that keep you too busy to think about your worries.
Philosophy Reframes
When you remind people that life is short, they automatically become more flexible because no one wants to squander the precious gift of time on whatever nonsense is making us angry now. The reframe works as well when you remind yourself you won’t be here forever.
I don’t recommend using this reframe to talk yourself into doing something dangerous. Use it to get moving on something you want to do but worry is holding you back.
Usual Frame: I’m afraid to do the thing I know I should do.
Reframe: Life is short.
The life-is-short reframe can help you get off the couch and make some decisions you keep putting off due to one worry or another. I include this reframe in the Mental Health chapter instead of the Success chapter because the greatest benefit is how it makes you feel. When you frame your life as a limited opportunity, your mind automatically puts more value on each minute of it, and the value of variety, adventure, and curiosity seems greater—much like how you approach a vacation. Your vacation days are limited, so you have an instinct to maximize that experience. Once you reframe your life as a limited engagement, you automatically start operating with more boldness to get as much as you can out of it before you go. That’s great for your mental health.