Framing and Filtering – I’m going to postpone the last episode in the Autumn series until next week to comment on something more timely.
This week I’ve been having discussions on “framing” or “filtering”.
This is the concept of how we interpret a situation and often how we judge events through particular personal filters. It could be the positive but more noticeably its the negative attachment we apply to scenarios.
Often it’s the reaction to something “going wrong” like a mechanical, the pacing of a race or the weather! A powerful technique is to reframe or consider this from a different point of view.
Its hard.
The “chimp” can be a powerful influence. However, how can this play in your favour. Bad weather? Maybe it’s perfect practice for bad weather in an event. A mechanical causing you stress – maybe its a voice that you have heard before reminding you its an opportunity to develop some skills and do a 1-2-1 course with a local mechanic.
The difficulty is making the reframe something that you genuinely believe in rather than having to convince yourself as you seem to know somehow its false.
Alternatively you can reframe something that feels huge at the time to something inconsequential by comparing to something even more vast. This is a bit out-there but you can see the technique used when people say “step back from the problem” or “think of the bigger picture” or “this storm will pass”.
The reason this is timely, alongside the conversations this week was my recent travel experience.
On arrival at the airport there were way too many people in the lobby. Yep, that early morning start, the stress to get there on time was going to be wasted. The flight was going to be delayed by a number of hours.
Sitting down I got chatting to a few of the folks around me. Some were very frustrated. Quite a few swearing. Then we were told the latest information was the inbound plane had not left and we were looking at least a 4-6 hour delay. Much swearing around the group resulted.
I started on my usual mental approach i) think what if….all the arrangements I had spent lots of time making were going to be scrubbed, the main purpose of my trip ref estate agents was likely to be missed ii) gaining a sense of control – I started on flighttracker working out details on planes that had left and details on the outbound flight.
You could feel the stress rising.
So then I thought ok, lets see if you can use any of the techniques you coach.
Approach 1) Make the issue less significant. The most striking vastness for time was the view of the mountains, rising 3000m yet they have taken millions of years to reach that height and are changing with the smallest of height every year. What is 4 hours in the vastness compared to this. It helped a little but I didn’t fully buy in
Approach 2) Reframe – ok so lets see if we can find a new opportunity in this. I passed some time ticking off some research I needed to do and also listened to the podcast from my to-do list. This helped a little.
Finally I thought I’d make some connections with those I was sitting in the airport with. Yep, interesting to hear about the car transporter driver, on his way to UK then Lithuania. But super annoyed as this was going to blow his plans. Ok, the family opposite. They had been on pilgrimage to Lourdes and trying their best not to get too annoyed at lack of food options as they had such a nice pilgrimage and mentally had been super so they didn’t want to spoil things. Better but not great.
Finally the last of our group. She shared with the group that she was from Ukraine. Suddenly you could feel the atmosphere shift, we knew immediately the implications.
This week there were bombs that landed on her home town. Whilst she had been in London when the war started most of her family were still at home. Her 2 brothers cannot leave due to regulations. Her mother and father are both medics so also are not permitted or want to leave.
She said she was ok about the reschedule of a plane as there were tougher things going on for her at the moment. Plus it means she keeps a phone signal when on the ground so she knows that her family is safe as she can see them when online.
It was a really dramatic reframe. Suddenly the 4-5 hours delay was inconsequential.
I’ve talked about this in the past and used the example of Joe Skipper after a mechanical and the shift in the mental state when he “reframed”. I think the above example is an even more powerful case of suddenly seeing the same scenario in a totally different light.
So the next time you are faced with a challenge in training or in an event, take a moment to see if you can mentally reframe and approach the scenario with a different perspective.
Have fun out there!