Most of the time life can not give us what we desire and when it does, it might be a tragedy as George Bernard Shaw said. How can reframing help with this?
What is positiveness (happiness) but reframing. Having the ability to handle whatever life brings with a solid conception “first, I notice positive sides, then I reframe other sides to be positive, as well”. Thus, all we get are acceptable and considerable.
In Outcomes Well-Formedness Conditions, NLP suggests that we state outcomes in positive. That means; what we want instead of what we don’t want. The reason is; our minds process positive then negative, so when we say: we don’t want get bored, we first think of the state of being bored.
I find this a contradiction, since avoiding what we assume negative, is in the same time not a positive approach for the natural mechanism of our minds.
I hope readers notice that how our minds naturally using reframing when we state outcomes in negative according to NLP. Our minds reframe by thinking of positiveness of negativity, and if we could reframe the semantically part of negativity as well, we would get perfect mechanism.
So, it is ok to state a goal by considering something you don’t want, as soon it is congruent with other aspects of your life. Let’s consider situations of many patients who challenge incurable diseases, when they positively state: we don’t want to die.
The idea here is to start changing how we look to words like: no, not, never, etc. we will keep calling them negative words as linguistic distinguishing, we shouldn’t damn them at all. Just connect them to positive semantics, and that’s all it takes.
Practical side for such change was already mentioned in Magic of Reframing I, where we would simply do following steps:
1) Listing what we consider as negative statements.
2) Reframe the semantics positively.
3) Use NLP and Hypnosis techniques to implant the effect.
Examples of reframing negative statements:
– No/Not/Never: is yes for the other part of equation or possibilities.
– Negative Statement: I want to exercise to not get fat.
– Related Semantics: I want to be slim.
– Negative Statement: No Smoking.
– Related Semantics: Yes to stay healthy.
Always practice how magically you can reframe whatever looks negative with weakening radiation. And from now on, there’s no empty half a cup!
Ahmed Hakami, Ph.D, NLP Trainer