April often talks about the importance and value of listening to other people’s reframe stories. Why? Because the more times we hear the reframe stories of others, the easier it becomes for us to successfully reframe in our own lives. In today’s episode, April tells the story of an avid runner named Doug. He runs pretty much every morning. Well, one morning, as he was running, it started to rain. Hard! And Doug found himself getting upset about it. His happy, winning mindset started to tank. But then something happened that caused him to have a change of heart. He began to feel much better about his circumstances and started his day on a good note. This lesson is not just for runners. It applies to all of us. So whether you run or not, you’ll want to listen to episode 23 of the Winning Mindset Mastery Podcast.
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Did Someone Sabotage Your Success By Raining On Your Parade? Fix Any Fail!
This reframe comes from a gentleman by the name of Doug Skoke and I love it. You know I love a good reframe because the more times we hear people reframe situations, the easier it becomes for us to do it. I love this one because this probably happens to a lot of people, especially anyone who runs. The method that Doug used to reframe this could be used for so many situations.
Reframing: The more times we hear people reframe situations, the easier it becomes for us to do it.
First, a little about Doug. He is an avid runner. He runs every single morning. He was out doing his normal morning run, the sky opened up, and it poured on him. Whether you’re someone like him who is an avid runner or you’re someone like me who maybe did a lot of running earlier in life for me in the military, you know that when you get poured on and you’re soaking wet and running, it is not fun. This can have an impact on your mindset. For Doug, it really did. He got pretty pissed off.
He felt his temperature rising and his mindset was going to a bad place. He didn’t want that to happen, so he asked himself, “I am annoyed about this. How often does this happen to me?” What I found so brilliant was he did the math. He thought, “On average, I run five times a week. That’s roughly 260 morning runs a year. What’s the number of times that I’ve gotten soaked on a run over a year?” He’s thinking six times.
If he’s got the math right and he is accurate about the amount of times, that’s about 3% of the time. It’s not that much, but then, he flips it and says, “97% of the time I go running, it doesn’t rain on me. It doesn’t happen that often. It’s not worth getting overly fussed about.” While it was annoying and it wasn’t a great thing to experience, he quickly used that math to make himself feel tremendously different about it to be able to finish out his run and start his day on a good note. What are some ways that we can use that in other areas? What are some other things that happen to us that don’t happen that often? Looking at how often it doesn’t happen could reframe the way we’re looking at it and change our entire mindset.
Reframing: Looking at how often an unfavorable situation doesn’t happen could reframe the way we’re looking at it and change our entire mindset.
Some other examples of this might be you’ve got a friend who leaves you waiting for 30 minutes at lunch. You’re starting to get upset about it and annoyed, and then you start to think, “This friend is never late to meet me. There must be an important reason that they’re not here yet, especially if I haven’t heard from them. I’ll give it another few minutes and see what happens.” Immediately, you are in a different state and you’re not as frustrated because you looked at the numbers and this isn’t something that happens often with this particular friend.
It is the same thing if a colleague misses a meeting. That’s not something that they normally do in this day and age when we’re doing so much by Zoom. Someone’s a few minutes late, but they’re not normally late. You know that something important must have happened. You can stamp down that irritation and keep yourself in a great mindset.
Another example is sitting in traffic. You can watch and feel your temperature go up when you are sitting in traffic for 1 hour, 2 hours a day, or whatever it is that you’re spending time doing it. It can be something that can be tough to wrap your head around. There are lots of things you could do to improve your mindset around listening to a book, talking to a friend, or doing things that make it more pleasurable.
Reframing: There are lots of things you could do to improve your mindset.
If we stick to this math reframe, another thing that you could do is count up all the hours that you have in a day and then the number of hours that you spend in traffic. Granted, 2 is a big portion of 24 when you figure it is 1/12, but it is much less time than you have to spend doing all of these other things. This is a great way to reframe things. It’s one other tool to have in your toolkit of the things that will make you feel better about the situation you’re experiencing at that moment.
Your mindset and the way that you feel about something as it happens affect how empowered you feel and how able you are to accomplish the things that you're looking to accomplish. Share on XRemember, your mindset and the way that you feel about something as it is happening affect how empowered you feel and how able you are to accomplish the things that you’re looking to accomplish. Your mindset is also going to impact the way that the rest of your day goes. If you can find a way to reframe a situation that is causing you angst or irritation, you are that much more likely to have a much better day going forward from that point. You don’t have to prove the thing that folks say about, “Bad things happen in threes.” Not if you have a winning mindset. They certainly don’t have to because you can use this opportunity to reframe what’s happening to you and turn your entire day around. Here’s to your success.