Usual Frame: People with bad judgment often pursue dangerous and unproductive pleasures.
Reframe: People need a minimum level of pleasure to make life worth living, and if they can’t get it safely, they will get it unsafely.
This reframe is subtle. At first glance, both frames seem to say something similar—that humans pursue pleasure. But it is deeper than that. Once you realize people need a daily minimum of pleasure, you understand why people will break laws, cheat, and lie to get it. You will also understand the best way to reduce bad behavior is to flood the zone with safe and legal options that can act as substitutes for illegal stuff.
The practical use of this reframe is that if you know someone struggling with any kind of vice or addiction, there’s not much chance they will stop unless they can find some other source of acceptable pleasure. This idea is not too far from the concept that addicts need to “hit bottom” before they decide to turn their lives around. Hitting bottom usually signals that the pleasure part of the addiction has collapsed. At that point, the only reasonable way to pursue pleasure is without drugs.
What do almost all rehab organizations do as the first step? They remove all sources of pleasure from the patient. I’m frankly surprised traditional rehab has ever worked for anyone, but clearly some people do succeed at getting straight. I believe the success rate would be higher if patients trying to quit their primary source of pleasure had easy access to healthy and acceptable alternatives. Compare trying to quit a vice while having nothing else to give you pleasure to, for example, sitting in a massage chair listening to your favorite music in a room full of puppies. One of those conditions will make you want to take drugs more than the other.
I used to believe in something called willpower. The idea is that some people had this amazing ability to endure discomfort and pain to achieve their goals. Others had no willpower at all, it seemed, as they would make one bad choice after another to chase small pleasures.
Eventually, I learned willpower isn’t a thing that a human or any other creature possesses. It’s just a way for observers to explain behavior without knowing what is happening in anyone’s brain. You might want to pause here and debate me about the nature of free will, but I will ask you to hold that debate because reframes don’t need to be true or logical.
Here’s the reframe.
Usual Frame: Some people have no willpower. They are weak.
Reframe: Some people get more pleasure from certain vices than you do.
I no longer judge overeaters. I used to think if I could maintain a healthy weight, so can anyone else. Now I know I was mistaken. Once you realize some people enjoy eating more than others, the whole world starts to make sense.
On a scale of 1 to 10, enjoyment of food is maybe a 7 for me. I like food. I’m just not in love with it. If I were, I’d weigh 400 pounds. And it wouldn’t be because I lacked willpower. It would be because I loved food.
I learned this reframe from my hypnosis instructor decades ago. He was overweight and explained it this way: “I like to eat.” The context was his larger explanation of why hypnosis isn’t especially effective for weight loss—it only works when the subject wants the change. And people who “like to eat” don’t want to lose one of their greatest loves.
Compare the treatment of overeating to, for example, a fear of flying. No one wants to have a fear of flying, so hypnosis could potentially help with that. But cutting down on sugar, cigarettes, or alcohol would be harder because it involves giving up something you love. Hypnosis isn’t an ideal tool for that.
Bad Days
Everyone has bad days, except me. I only have days that are suited for one kind of purpose versus another. If everything goes well in my day, I feel happy and satisfied. But if everything goes wrong in my day, I can use that energy to handle the ugly tasks I had been putting off, and that usually works out well.
For example, if you are having a bad day anyway, you might as well fire that employee you didn’t want to deal with before. Your day won’t get worse.
Is there some kind of risk you have been wanting to take on but couldn’t quite pull the trigger? Skydiving? SCUBA lessons? Quit your job? Whatever it is, it will seem less risky on a bad day.
Have you been wanting to increase your workouts but couldn’t muster the energy? Try increasing your exercise routine on an otherwise bad day. Your negative energy will turn into muscles.
Usual Frame: There are good days and bad.
Reframe: All days are useful in different ways.
I’m exaggerating about never having a bad day, but I think you get the idea.
Ending Your Life (Don’t)
Sixties superstar Janice Joplin famously sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” That blew my mind the first time I heard it. How could freedom be such a sad and lonely thing? But the longer you live, the more you know it’s true.
Usual Frame: Freedom is the ability to do what you want.
Reframe: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Divorces and job losses and tragedies of all kinds can give you a sense of losing almost everything. But gaining your freedom in the deal is not a bad consolation prize. If you have a decent talent stack and good health, some extra freedom might be exactly what you need to have a fully realized life. I got through two divorces using this reframe so I can tell you from experience that it helps a lot.
If you have a limited talent stack, you won’t be able to take advantage of freedom right away, but at least you will have the freedom to develop the skills you need to thrive later. So do that. That’s always the right play.
The best time to use the freedom reframe is when you are extra sad and broken, and life has kicked you in the head. If you start thinking dark thoughts about ending your life, the fastest way back is to remind yourself you have nothing to lose, which means you are free. Free to talk to a stranger. Free to ask for a raise. Free to join a club without shyness, free to make a long-overdue phone call, free to take a scary adventure, change your fashion, shave your head, learn an instrument, get a tattoo, or sample a new religion. Go nuts. Have some fun. Put yourself out there and get shot down. Laugh. Try it again. You’re free.
Here are a few more reframes you might find useful if you are fighting off the feeling that you might want to end it all.
Usual Frame: I can’t handle this for the rest of my life.
Reframe: I can do anything for a day.
If you can’t imagine being happy in the future, don’t spend too much time thinking about it. Instead, ask yourself if you could handle one more day of this suboptimal life if you knew for sure there was a chance of things improving. Of course you could. And there is always a chance that things will get better. I’m improving your odds right now.
Maybe things will look better tomorrow, or maybe it takes longer. Either way, narrow your timeframe of consideration from the entire rest of your life until you can see your own future as a manageable unit. You don’t need to fool yourself. You only need to shift your focus. Remember, reframes treat your brain as a programmable machine, not a logical machine. Logic won’t persuade you that your long-term future is better than you think because you have no way of knowing. This problem calls for a logic-free solution, and putting your focus on “one more day” can help you get that done. Now use that day to try these brain hacks.