Flip it and reverse it

On the life-changing magic of reframes

Photo by Ricardo Arce on Unsplash

Every morning, I awake looking forward to my daily word puzzles. In particular, I’m an avid crossworder, and I came across this clue last year: “Sign of healing,” four letters.

It was in an easy puzzle, a Monday or a Tuesday, and it should’ve been a breeze of a clue, but it stumped me; I had to keep circling back to it after plowing through the no-brainers, a knot that needed smoothing in an otherwise painless puzzle.

Maybe the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet, I thought.

When I finally deduced the answer from filling in the cross-clues, I was surprised. The answer to “sign of healing,” was SCAR. The solution hadn’t eluded me because of grogginess; it had escaped me because of a limiting frame of thought.

It simply hadn’t occurred to me that a scar could be viewed in a positive light.

I’ve always thought of scars as signifiers of injury, not as badges of resilience or recuperation. Surely the thought of being “scarred by one’s past” was something to whisper gravely, not to shout out in exuberance.

I thought about it all day. The power of a simple reframe. The scar not as a mark of shame or pitiful reminder of suffering, but as a beauty mark, a point of pride: I have overcome. The wound has healed.

Reframing the scar as a symbol of recovery from pain, not as a symbol of the pain itself, made me think, “huh.”

What else am I thinking of in a negative light, what else needs some flipping around and reversing for me to reconsider it anew?

I started to collect things to reframe—to consciously seek opportunities to look at my default perception, or reflexive understanding of an idea or concept—and turn it upside down.

The Power of Framing

I didn’t pursue this exercise spontaneously. For some time, I’ve been reading and learning about the cognitive power of framing. There’s plenty of research to support the practice. And there’s a very helpful overview here including these fundamentals:

• “Frames filter what we see. They control what information is attended to and, just as important, what is obscured.

• Frames themselves are often hard to see. Just as we have to step back from a window to see that it’s there, so too do we have to ‘step back’ from our frame to see that we are viewing the world through a particular perspective.

• Frames appear complete. Frames simplify the world. They do not capture all of reality, leaving gaps. But since our mind tends to fill in such gaps, we usually don’t even notice that anything is missing.”¹

What the late behavioral economist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman called “framing effects” deeply impact how we experience the world. For example, “Different ways of presenting the same information often evoke different emotions. The statement that ‘the odds of survival one month after surgery are 90%’ is more reassuring than the equivalent statement that ‘mortality within one month of surgery is 10%.’”² The information in both framings is the same, but the way we receive the information is drastically different.

The good news is that becoming aware of limiting frames allows us to change our behavior and transform our worldview much more quickly than other cognitive interventions:

“An adult brain contains thousands of mental models, which have developed over decades of education and experience. . . Frames are at the tightly woven structural core of these mental models, what we might call the mental model’s ‘essence.’ . . .

Whereas trying to change any substantial portion of a mental model can take weeks, months, even years . . . frames can be exposed, understood, and realigned in less time.”³

How empowering! If we are alert to the ways framing is shaping our understanding of our lives, we can train our brains to become more nimble and elastic. We can see more of the incomprehensible picture of the universe. And we can pursue a more joyful way of being alive—a way that seeks to expand, not to constrict. A way that cherishes complexity and nuance and balks at over-simplification.

In service to this exercise, here are two reframes that have opened my mind recently.

Reframe 1: ‘Sin’

[Warning: Talk of religion ahead!]

January through April of this year, (almost) every Tuesday night, I took a class on Judaism at a beautiful, welcoming, historic synagogue in Philadelphia, Rodeph Shalom.

I learned so much—more than I can possibly address in a single post—but there was a particular passage in our textbook, Essential Judaism(EJ) by George Robinson, that electrified me and has since transformed my relationship to my spiritual practice.

EJ explains that the Hebrew word for “sin” distinctly strays from the English-speaking, largely Christian understanding of the word. (And I in no way mean to denigrate Christianity here, which like all religions contains countless beautiful traditions and lessons for living a life.)

In EJ, Robinson writes: “The word used to denote sin, kheit, comes from archery and means a shot that falls short of the mark, or to fall from the path,” and as such the “sins” that we are called to repent are less dire transgressions (although they may be) and more “a failure to live up to our potential,” or, “a failure to fulfill one’s obligations.”

This reframe certainly hit its mark, piercing me right in the bullseye: This interpretation of the concept of sin was so resilient and generative to me, I felt my spine straighten when I read it—like my entire body wanted to rise to the challenge.

How powerful to consider that we are all born with limitless divine potential, rather than tainted with the congenital defect of “original sin.” What a gift to believe that our duty to ourselves, and each other, is to rise to the call and fulfill our potential, rather than operating from a place of guilt that we are indelibly flawed.

No. We are not deficient in some fundamental way; we are complete by virtue of being human.

This understanding of sin is hopeful, not punishing.

The idea that when we mess up (e.g., “sin”) it is not that we must beat ourselves up with endless self-flagellation. Rather, we should regroup, reflect on what went awry, and then rise to the moment, take responsibility for ourselves and for our potential, acknowledge how we’ve fallen short, and remember that we can always recalibrate, refocus on our target, and try again.

As I am rediscovering and deepening my faith in midlife, this reframe has helped me see that a spiritual practice can be aspirational, not punitive.

It follows that observance of religion does not need to focus on suffering and self-denial, it can be steeped in joy. It can be about wanting to live into our values, and growing into our higher selves.

And worship certainly doesn’t require that we focus on policing other people in regards to their sexuality or what-have-you in the name of some perceived “sin” we think they shouldn’t be committing. Maybe they’re missing your mark, but they might be hitting their own. (So mind your own business, fanatical busybodies across every religion!) 

Instead, we can pursue a faithful life through looking inward with a view towards abundance, by adding to our lives: Adding kind deeds, doing good works, finding new ways to share our gifts with the world, creating space in our week for ritual and self-reflection, seeking community, practicing our craft.

Becoming more devout does not need to be a process of paring down, of pious abstinence, of ridding ourselves of some poisonous sin that lurks within us. It can mean staying focused on our target, continuously striving to live a better life, to keep going even when it’s hard or when the wind blows our arrow far off course.

Today, more than ever, my spiritual practice is about remembering that we’re all charged with a noble quest: Hitting our mark.

And when we miss, we don’t despair, we simply take aim again and do better.

Reframe 2: ‘Rejection’

Like many writers, I sometimes experience a perilous fear of rejection which can be paralyzing and counterproductive as all holy hell. (I talked about this a little bit in this post where I wrote: “Any time we share our output with the world, there is the chance of being ridiculed, misunderstood, disliked, or challenged.”)

So I loved this guest post from L’Oreal Thompson Payton on Jane Friedman’s blog entitled, “How to Deal with Rejection: Celebrate!” The call-to-action in the title is counterintuitive for me given that my natural reaction to rejection is to wallow, sulk, ruminate, doom scroll, and cry. Turns out those are not healthy ways to cope, who knew!

Although following this advice doesn’t come naturally, I found the wisdom in Payton’s reframe so refreshing:

“One way I’ve learned to reframe rejection is by celebrating it. . . I believe celebrating your rejection is part of how you take your power back.”

“Another reason I recommend celebrating rejections is because it means you tried. You did a brave thing, a new thing. You took a risk, and it didn’t work out this time. But so many people talk themselves out of even trying. It’s easy to play it safe, play it small, and not put yourself out there. But the real magic—the real good dope stuff—happens outside your comfort zone.” ⁴

This reframe helped me muster the courage to apply for a prestigious international writer’s residency last fall and allowed me to feel proud of myself for taking the risk even when I was not accepted. Yes, I was disappointed, but I didn’t spiral like I might have in the past.

And I was happy I’d done the work for the application because it helped me clarify my mission statement as a writer and to generate concise synopses of my novel-in-progress—all things I would need to do in the future anyway. I was able to see that the exercise of applying was productive even if the outcome wasn’t ideal. And I felt good about it. Magic.

I also want to add some context to this reframe: It’s not that we all deserve “participation trophies” for trying—but that many people don’t try at all because they can’t endure the reality of rejection. It’s about building mental toughness. Each time we expose ourselves to the risk of criticism, it gets easier the next time. And nobody else is going to coach us through it; we have to be in our own corners, hyping ourselves up, and pushing ourselves back into the ring. It’s hard to get up after we’ve been knocked down. And when we do it, it’s absolutely worth celebrating.

So next time you get rejected, look in the mirror and tell yourself you’re hot shit for taking risks and believing in yourself, because it’s true.

—

What about you—what reframes have been life-changing for you? I’d love to hear yours and add them to my collection.

Looking for more on this topic? Explore this post from last year which reframes the word “FOOL.”

Here’s an excerpt.

“A top fear for so many of us is feeling embarrassed, ashamed, silly, foolish. We think of a fool as an object of derision. But 'The Fool' in the Tarot recasts our worst fears in a revelatory light, revealing a figure not to be pitied, but exalted as a symbol of hope—delighting in the sunlight, serene, facing their journey with lightness—happy, brave, and free.”

And here’s the link preview to the full post.

1. Sheril Mathews, “The Power of Framing in Creating Psychological Safety,” Leading Sapiens, March 3rd, 2023, https://www.leadingsapiens.com/leaders-framing-psychological-safety/

2. Mathews, Leading Sapiens, https://www.leadingsapiens.com/leaders-framing-psychological-safety/

3. Mathews, Leading Sapiens, https://www.leadingsapiens.com/leaders-framing-psychological-safety/

4. L’Oreal Thompson Payton, Jane Friedman.com, https://janefriedman.com/how-to-deal-with-rejection-celebrate/