Reframe Your Mind

About a week ago, I performed a speech at my Dawnbreakers Toastmaster club. It was on the concept of reframing and it went over well - it may have been one of my best speeches to date although I find it hard to judge the quality of my own speeches.

In my speech, I told two stories on the concept of reframing and I'd like to share one of them now.


Back in the summer of 2008, I was working as an Orientation Coordinator for UBC. As part of being an Orientation Coordinator, we had to conduct information sessions and tours for prospective high school students.

A little background on UBC: it's an old campus. Many of the buildings are quite old and so you can imagine that there is a lot of construction going on to both improve the roadways and renovate the buildings. The construction at UBC garnered a somewhat negative reputation - it was noisy and disturbed classes (as well as people trying to sleep in) and it blocked pathways that students often used.

In any case, a fellow Orientation Coordinator had just finished giving a tour to some grade 12 students. During her tour of the important buildings on campus, one of the students asked about the construction going on at UBC. Rather than saying that the construction was noisy or that it often forced students to walk different paths to their classes, she said "UBC is constantly improving their campus".

For me, that was an interesting way to 'reframe' my perspective of construction on campus.

If you break down the word of reframing, you'll realize that it's definition seems to be to change the frame. What is a frame? It's a belief about the world that often narrows your view. By changing your frame, or changing your belief about the world, you'll open up your eyes to different views of the world and allow new interpretations to develop. Any time you're harboring negative thoughts about something like work, an assignment, a chore or your bad luck, think about the positives of the situation. You probably already know the power of positive thinking - reframe your mind.