Cognitive Reframing - Taking A Different Perspective

One of the best things about developing awareness of yourself is that you see yourself from a different perspective.

Technically, this is known as "cognitive reframing", or "cognitive restructuring" if a therapist helps, but those terms only refer to your thoughts. I like to include the ability assess your own feelings as well.

You can listen to your own thoughts and feelings and use them to choose how to respond to a situation. Again, it's the sequence, "awareness, choice, change"...

Perhaps you're cursing the rocks in your path as obstacles slowing you down. You're going to take longer to get where you're going, and rocks are hard to navigate. You get frustrated and annoyed.

If you recognise those thoughts and feelings, you can take a fresh perspective. The rocks aren't going to get out of your way, so perhaps you can simply accept their presence. It may take you longer to get to where you're going, but is that worth getting annoyed about? You can't change it, so relax and enjoy scampering over the rocks like you did as a kid.

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When you realise that you can see yourself from other perspectives, you can also see yourself from the viewpoint of other people. How did they feel about an action you took? What would they feel about an action you're considering taking?

Seeing and feeling things from another person's point of view is empathy. So awareness of yourself leads directly to empathy.

How do you reach this "awareness" of yourself? Through mindfulness. Pay attention to each minute, what you're thinking and how you're feeling. Develop it as you would any other skill.

A very nice summary of this concept is the quote, "when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change", which means that taking a different perspective results in seeing a different picture. Your "point-of-view" has changed.

Suddenly, by taking one different perspective, you realise that there are many different possible perspectives, including those of other people, with their pre-conceptions, feelings and biases. It makes you appreciate that your pre-conceptions, feelings and biases may colour your view of the situation and perhaps it isn't as you thought it was.

Another example of inspecting your thoughts is checking for "absolute thinking"...

The human mind is very prone to absolute thinking. We like clear-cut answers. However, life is very rarely black or white.

There are usually many shades of gray, subtleties, nuances, variations and viewpoints.

For example, when you mess something up, do you often say, "Man! I ALWAYS mess that up"? Is it true? Have you done the thing ten times and messed it up two or three times? So you actually mess it up less than half the time, but that became "ALWAYS". Hmmm. Why did you think that way? Is the voice of your inner critic very strong? Why?

When you inspect your thoughts, using awareness, you can catch the negative statements and fact-check them. You'd be amazed how often they're incorrect.

Try thinking something like this...

"I recognise that I just thought to myself that I ALWAYS mess that up, but I did it without a problem yesterday, so that "ALWAYS" isn't true. I won't let myself feel like a failure because I messed it up this time. I'll just see it as something I could practise".

Can you see how absolute thinking is like a constriction whereas flexible thinking lets you breathe?

That's what it is! Restriction v relaxation.

Doesn't it intuitively make sense to desire flexible thinking? If so, start working on it today and develop it like any other skill.