Change the Frame: How Shifting Your Perspective Can Transform Your Life

I’m kind of anal-retentive when it comes to solving a problem. Well, maybe that’s the wrong term. I’m single-focused. I can see one way to approach it. My husband is the opposite. He will literally and figuratively walk all round a problem before he develops an approach. I have one son who follows my approach and one who follows my husband’s. As a result of the different approaches, my husband often reaches a solution much sooner than I would have, because he only has to do it once.

Because of the way my mind works, his approach wouldn’t work for me – it doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried it, but I can still only ever see one way forward – until that one way fails. At that point, I have to flip the script, or change the frame. It’s when I shift my perspective that I can see another dimension, but those are just words until I find a way to put them into action. What I’ve pulled together here is a collection of general observations and examples of Changing the Frame.

FINANCE

Your time has value, even if you’re looking at a block of time that no employer is pay you for, but that’s a discussion for another post. Right now, I want you to consider how you buy things. My son was a pretty impulsive buyer when he first started a job with a regular paycheck. It was easy for him, because he lived at home and really didn’t have too many expenses. When he got his job, we did require that he pay for his own gas and a portion of the insurance on his vehicle, but neither of those represented a huge outlay. One day he told me he was thinking about buying something that cost over a hundred dollars. Let’s put this into perspective: He was a high school senior, working as a busboy, making just a little over minimum wage, working maybe 25 hours a week. Even with very few expenses, he was making very little money. It was absolutely his own money to spend as he desired, but I was concerned about the spending habits he was creating. I saw a teaching moment in this event. I asked him how much money he made per hour, and he told me. I asked the price of the item, and he hold me. Then I had him do some basic math to figure out how many hours of his work it would take him to pay for that item. But wait, there’s more – you don’t actually get that much money, because there are taxes taken out of your pay. Let’s figure out about how much money you actually get by dividing a paycheck’s total by the number of hours you worked that week, and then figure out how many hours you have to work for that item. When he came to the realization that it would take him two days of work to pay for that thing, he had a completely different frame of reference in which to make that choice. Ultimately, he decided to get a similar item with a smaller price tag, one that would cost him about one day of work.

This boy has since gone on to higher-paying work, so it’s not as critical for him to apply that level of scrutiny to every purchase. He’s gotten really careful with his money, though. He’s very generous to those he loves, but he examines every opportunity through the lens of value, rather than just price. It’s not enough that he has the money to pay for an item or an experience, it also has to be worth the effort it takes to acquire it.

Another way to change the frame is by looking at the overall impact of a purchase. This is a real thinking exercise. What did it take to put this item into your hands? The impact encompasses the raw materials, the manufacturing, the labor, the packaging, and the delivery. What about what you discard – the packaging or the unused elements of the purchase? Where do those items go? Also, who produced it – was it produced by workers you want to support? Those workers don’t always have to be in your own country, they could be in an emerging economy that you want to encourage. Many manufacturing jobs are in countries that are trying to break out of “third world” status, particularly apparel manufacturing. That’s not always exploitative; it may be, but it’s not a foregone conclusion. You cast a vote with every purchase, whether you realize it or not. By framing your purchases in that manner, you can decide what you’re voting for or against.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

I like James Allen’s description of the term “Project.” A Project is anything that has more than two steps. Here’s the thing: for most of the things we want to do, they have more than two steps. Using a very simple and familiar activity, let’s look at Washing the Dishes. Simple, right? Well, maybe. You don’t just “wash the dishes,” though. Breaking it down, in the order I’d perform the steps myself (your steps may vary), it looks like this:

1. Gather the dishes
2. Start the water in the sink
3. Squirt the dish detergent into the sink
4. Place the dishes in the sink, plates on the bottom and silver on the sides, glasses to the top.
5. When the sink has enough water, turn off the water.
6. Wash each item in the sink by loading the washing implement with soapy water, then running the washing implement over each item in turn. Place each washed item in the sink for rinsing.
7. As the rinsing sink fills, run the water to get hot, then carefully hold each item under the running water in turn until the soap is gone from the item.
8. Place the rinsed items in the drying rack.

For most of us, we can pretty much sleepwalk through the process of washing dishes, but it illustrates how many steps are involved in something pretty simple. Also, we’re likely to run the process from start to finish in one setting. Most of what Mr. Allen refers to as Projects can be broken down into steps that aren’t necessarily all-at-once events. Here’s an example of one of my Projects. I have a great duffel bag that I got from one of my previous jobs. The size is just about perfect to haul all my camera gear on a road trip, or even on an airplane trip. We used the duffle for that on our Yellowstone trip, but it wasn’t a great solution because I was just kind of counting on stuff not getting damaged. I want to turn it into a perfect photo gear bag by putting some foam dividers and a foam base in it. This is obviously a Project, because you can see easily that it is going to have several steps.

1. Measure the bag: length, width, height
2. Identify the components I want to carry in the bag
3. Make a diagram of how I want to carry the components; determine whether to use one level or two.
4. Figure out how to size the dividers
5. Look at the foam available for sale and determine how many sheets I need for the configuration I want
6. Order the foam
7. Experiment with the foam to determine if we want to use a tenon-based or glue-based assembly, or some combination
8. Cut the foam for the base of the bag
9. Lay out the gear on the base to verify the size
10. Remove the gear and cut some foam for the dividers, create the sections.
11. If I decided not to create another level, stop here. Otherwise, continue with step 12.
12. Make a diagram of the top level layout.
13. Repeat steps 4 through 9 for the top level, ordering foam only if necessary

(This is actually going to make a great YouTube video!) Looking at the overall project, it was hard to motivate myself to get started, but I don’t have to do it all at once. I can get started pretty quickly just by completing step 1. Gaining that one small win can provide some momentum to keep moving on the project.

There’s another benefit to working on projects step-by-step. You don’t have to be able to complete the project to be productive. You can take it as far as you can and then move on to something else, if, for example, you have to order more supplies or wait for someone else to complete something before you can move to the next step. You can have that feeling of making progress by completing steps in the project instead of making yourself feel bad for not completing the whole thing NOW.

Another way to Change the Frame in project management is to take a solution-focused approach to problem solving. This is another way my husband and I are different, but it’s not consistent one-way. In other words, when one of us sees a problem, the other sees several solutions to the problem. We rarely both see only the problem. Sometimes we can quickly see why one approach isn’t going to work, but often we can, between the two of us, find ways to work through a problem.

PERSONAL GROWTH

Changing the Frame can be really hard when you receive negative feedback. One very important thing to remember is that not all feedback is equal. That is, not everyone’s opinion counts. There are some people from whom you should NOT accept feedback. You should not accept feedback from anyone who never has anything good to say. You should not accept feedback from people who don’t know what they’re talking about. For example, you don’t take investing advice from people whose investment strategy is to buy a lottery ticket every week. You should not accept feedback from people who want you to fail, or even who don’t care about seeing you succeed.

From whom should you accept negative feedback? From people who want to see you happy. From people who want to see you succeed. From people who may have a neutral opinion on your success but who know their trade. For example, if a car mechanic tells you you’re inflating your tires wrong, that carries more weight than the opinion of someone who knows very little about cars. In other words, take advice from experts, and discount the advice of people who have no experience in what you’re trying to do.

What should you do with negative feedback? You can start by asking the feedbacker how they would approach it differently. You can ask what you did well that you should keep. You can make a plan to try again. You can ask for advice on where to get better information so that your next effort turns out better. Most importantly, you can recognize that most of the things we do aren’t life-or-death situations. Sure, we want to have great results the first time so that we don’t have to re-do things, but that’s just not always possible. Negative feedback is a chance to improve, and understanding that can help you Change the Frame.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably embarked on one or two challenging things. Why do we do that? Why don’t we just take the easy way on everything we do? Well, because we don’t want the results that come from living an easy life. We want better results. In order to have that better life, we have to do some things that living an easy life doesn’t force on us. We have to learn new things, we have to step out of our comfort zone. I’m having to learn some marketing skills that involve having me do some things I don’t like doing, like stepping in front of the camera instead of staying comfortably behind it. I really don’t want to do that! I really, really don’t. I hate photos of myself, and I don’t like the idea of doing videos of myself. It feels narcissistic, even though I don’t think that others that do promotional videos are narcissistic. I’m just going to have to get over it if I want the results I’m looking for.

A third way to Change the Frame in personal growth is learning from failure. Yes, again, this is really hard to do. I saw a guy wearing a T-shirt a few months ago that said, “I never lose. I win or I learn.” Failure hurts. Sometimes it feels almost like a physical pain, sometimes it’s a psychological pain, but it’s pain either way. I had a certification test for a professional level to take once, it was one of three exams for the overall cert. I failed one of the exams. I had thought, given the title of the exam, that my professional experience would have me completely prepared for the exam, but the cert explored areas of the subject matter that we didn’t deal with in our environment. Understanding that I really didn’t have any exposure to the areas where I failed helped me accept the score as a benchmark. I received a printout of the areas tested and how I scored on each areas, so I was able to dig in and learn those topics. I passed the exam on the next try. I also accepted the responsibility for assuming preparedness rather than seeking information on what subject matter would be tested. The score would really have stung if I had felt prepared and just failed anyway, but working in tech is like standing on shifting sand anyway. There’s always more to learn, and there’s always stuff I don’t know about what I do know. I’ll always have opportunities to learn.

I have also published a book recently, and I had made myself a sign to remind myself that my book can’t “bomb.” It can only provide tremendous value to the readers. Everything that I do to promote the book is just going to help someone find the book and improve their security posture. Nothing I do to promote the book can “fail.”

MINDSET AND WELL-BEING

There will always be challenges and frustrations. You can Change the Frame by listing the things you’re grateful for. Expressing gratitude has a proven emotional positive effect on your outlook. I have pictures on one of the walls in my study, where I spend all of my workday, of things I’m grateful for – my Savior, the scriptures, my family, a secure home, a great job I love. I also start my day in a prayer of gratitude. That puts me in a positive frame of mind for the rest of the day.

We can also Change the Frame when approaching new situations. Rather than saying, “I don’t know this place” or “I don’t know how to do this,” we can say “Let’s explore” or “I’m ready to try and to learn.” How you approach something will have a lot to do with how successful you are at it, and how much you enjoy the process. Additionally, you can Change the Frame on how you view success. Success doesn’t have to mean perfection. Success can mean that you’ve had a positive impact on others, and it can mean that you’ve taken a step toward something you’re working on. Understanding how you view success and reframing it if necessary can lead to a more meaningful and satisfying life.

TIME MANAGEMENT

I did a post on managing your time and energy, and another one on prioritizing a long list of tasks, but something that wasn’t really included in either of those posts was an instruction to Change the Frame of what you do. There are some tasks that you just have to do because they’re part of your job, but for the tasks you generate on your own, you have the opportunity to examine each task to ensure that it aligns with your values and your goals. I have a running task to spend some time in my scriptures every day, because it aligns with a value of seeking a relationship with God. The thing above about making that camera gear bag, each of those is a task that will move that goal forward. Take a look at the tasks on your list. The ones assigned to you by a boss or supervisor, yeah, those are staying. But you can decide on your other tasks. If a task isn’t going to serve a purpose, get rid of it and stop worrying that it isn’t done.

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Ugh – exercise. Yeah, I know. I hate it. I know that I’ll feel better if I exercise. I need to eat my own dog food here and Change the Frame on how I look at exercise. I need to find a way do to that. I always feel better when I’m done, but I can find a thousand excuses not to do it. It’s hot. The yellowflies are out. I’m busy. I don’t have a place to do it. All of these things are true. That’s not fixing the problem of my sedentary life, though, is it? I do eat good foods, I don’t deprive myself of things I enjoy, because I enjoy plenty of the “good” foods. I’m working on this one. Any ideas for me?

YOUR TURN

Changing the Frame can help you see another side of things, which can help you make adjustments to your life that can help you move forward from what feels like quicksand. If you have a different method for doing that, drop a comment below and let’s continue the conversation!

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