The “alcohol is poison” reframe works because some people had a profound reaction to it from the start, and their minds kept returning to it when thoughts of alcohol popped up. That was enough focus and repetition to hack their brains. Others—especially non-drinkers—heard the reframe and probably never thought of it again. It wasn’t important to them.
As a rule, the reframes you need will probably be sticky from the first exposure. The reframes you don’t need will rapidly fade from memory.
Reframes You Already Know
It won’t be hard to convince you how powerful reframing is because you’ve already been doing some version of it for years. Are any of these familiar?
In chaos there is opportunity.
It’s darkest before the dawn.
The customer is always right.
Those are reframes. Note that none of them are “true” in any total sense, but all of them are useful. That’s why they survive as old sayings; they work.
As I will often mention—no matter how much you hate it!—good reframes often have the weird quality of being untrue literally while still being useful. Take the first example on my list. It isn’t true that chaos necessarily creates opportunities for any specific person or entity, but accepting it as true (enough) is a great way to improve your attitude and your odds of success in the long run.
If you learn to look for opportunities in chaos or in bad news of any kind, I guarantee you will spot some sooner or later. All you need to do is train yourself to look for the opportunities. I use this reframe a lot. The first thing I think when something falls apart is that an opportunity has been created. I still deal with the problem, of course, but I’ve rewired my brain via repetition to automatically look for the upside. I always find it.
Similarly, I’m sure it’s not always darkest before the dawn in any real sense except that one of those things must always follow the other. But it predicts nothing about your specific situation. Nevertheless, rewiring your brain to think in that positive way can help you anticipate good news others do not see coming. It also keeps your anxiety in check when everyone else is saying the world is about to burn. It hasn’t burned yet.
On to the third reframe, is the customer always right? Heck, no. A McDonald’s employee recently told me about an elderly man at the drive-thru window who complained about McDonalds having an app. He said, “Why does McDonald’s need an app now??? Is McDonalds planning to build an airport???”
It’s not entirely clear what an airport has to do with the McDonalds app. That customer was not “right” in any coherent way. But that’s not the point of “the customer is always right.” It is not meant to be literally, universally true. It is meant to rewire your brain toward fixing problems instead of debating them. And it works.
This book introduces new and more powerful reframes, but they all have the same qualities as the old reliables: They aren’t necessarily true, but they work. Once you understand why that apparent contradiction can exist without any downside, you’ll know how to make your own reframes.
Chapter 1
How to Reprogram
Your Brain
What does it take to rewire a brain? Not much. You only need three things, and one of them is optionaclass="underline"
Focus
Repetition
Emotion (fear, happiness, hate, love, passion, etc.)
You can rewire brains fastest with an emotional turbocharge, but focusing on and repeating a reframe without emotion will also get you where you want to go eventually. Your brain builds new structures in response to whatever stimuli you’re pumping into it. Focus and repetition move an idea (or reframe) from conceptual to physical, meaning physical changes in your brain structure. Adding emotion can make the rewiring happen faster, but again, that part is optional.
If you want to add emotion to a reframe to give it more impact, you can start with a reframe that is conceptual, such as this familiar saying:
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
To add emotion to the reframe, think about what accomplishment this new strength will help you achieve. Do you need to gather strength to demand a raise or to win a competition? Focus on an emotionally powerful endpoint and imagine it often. That emotional energy will make the reframe burrow into your mind faster.
Writing and speaking on the topic of success for a few decades has taught me that people like their advice in simple, accessible forms. In addition to giving you the new reframes in this book, I also recast the strongest ideas from my prior work as reframes because that makes them easier to remember and share.
If you plan to share reframes with others—especially teens—it isn’t always practical to ask them to read a book. But most people can digest and remember a two-sentence reframe. If they like what they hear, perhaps they will double-back later and read the source material (this book).
Reframes are easy to learn, easy to remember, often influential, and portable—which makes them easier to share, post, text, and embroider on a pillow. And you’re about to experience a lot of them.
Because reframes are quick and easy to learn, I packed more than 160 of them in this book, which raises the odds that at least one of them will change your life.
That’s enough priming. Let’s get to the good stuff.
Chapter 2
Success Reframes
The Odds of Success
Have you ever noticed how surprised some people are by their own successes? For every person who “knew they would be great” and succeeded, there are twenty who exceeded their own expectations. And that has always suggested to me that humans are bad at predicting their own success.
Personally, I’ve failed at most of the things I’m qualified for while succeeding at many thinGs I’m not qualified for. My education includes a degree in economics and an MBA from a top school. But I’ve had no luck as a banker or entrepreneur for a variety of reasons. On the flip side, I’ve done great in areas in which I had no experience or training whatsoever.
Qualified: Banker, entrepreneur
Unqualified: Cartoonist, author, public speaker, political pundit
That teaches me I’m terrible at estimating my own odds of success. So-called common sense didn’t help me a bit. I suspect many people reading this book are in the same situation; you think you know what you would be good at, but you could be wildly wrong.
Usual Frame: My odds of success are low.
Reframe: Maybe I’m bad at estimating the odds.
Once you realize you’re terrible at estimating the odds of your own success, you’re free to try things you might otherwise not consider. You are allowed to expand beyond your comfort zone without pressure because the only way to know what will work is to test it for yourself.
I won’t try to tell you that anyone can succeed at anything they want if they approach the challenge with enthusiasm and passion. That would be nuts. I probably succeed at about 10 percent of what I try no matter how hard I try, but I generally try a lot of long-shot ideas that could be huge if they work. I only need one-out-of-ten to win big and I’m in good shape. This book, for example, is one of several projects I will have worked on this year. I might try adding an interview feature on my YouTube channel. Recently, I began testing my own funny-but-useful cooking show for people who don’t know anything about at-home meal prep. I’ll test several content ideas to see what catches on. A year from now, I’m sure I’ll be able to say I tested ten different content ideas to see what created its own energy in my mind and among my audience. I’ve been testing ideas at about that rate of ten per year for decades, and I still have no idea in advance which will work out. I’m bad at estimating my own odds of success in any specific domain, so I compensate with volume. That’s what I recommend for you, too. If the first thing you try doesn’t work, try something else. You never know for sure what will click.