10/16/24
Hello, friends. Welcome to episode number 166 – Pre-Frame Your Stories
In Episode number 106, we talked about how to Frame, Reframe, and Deframe Your Stories. The purpose of that episode was to show you how to change your entire life by learning to change your stories.
So, as you’ve heard me say numerous times, the way you’re experiencing your life right now, whether your life and all the circumstances and people in it feels stable and calm, or it feels more like a whirl wind of stress and chaos, has more to do with the stories that you’ve told yourself about your life’s experiences than anything else.
Now remember, your brain is doing this all the time in the subconscious, by default. Your brain is always trying to make sense of your world and so it’s making up stories to make whatever happened in your life make sense. And if there’s not enough information available, if there’s a gap, it just makes things up, creates stories to put things in order. But unfortunately, it does hurt you in so many ways because many times those are made up stories. They are lies.
Framing your story is something you do in your present moments based on your current experiences. You have an experience and then purposefully frame it. You don’t just passively let your brain decided for you and create perceptions out of your emotions. I gave you an example of when I was at the grocery store getting a birthday card for my son and I had a meltdown right there in front of the hallmark cards.
As I was walking out of the grocery store, I started framing the process. I said, “That was a good experience. I got in touch with a part of my heart that hasn’t been nudged lately, and it feels good to have such strong emotions connected to a loved one. When I allow myself to feel that deeply and respond so openly, I am never more alive. I’m so thankful I got to remember some of the most precious moments with Brian as we prayed together for our children. He would be so happy I’m sending that particular card to our son as if it was his very own words. This was good.”
And that is how I framed that experience. It was good. Not, “It was overwhelming. It was sad and depressing. I can’t handle my emotions. Feeling so deeply is scary, and I feel out of control.”
No, it was good. That’s what I chose. And it’s now been embedded into my subconscious and neural-associations were created: “Getting birthday cards for my kids is a good experience.”
Now, to reframe your story means to take a story you have in your mind about something – by the way, stories are just a string of thoughts put together – but this is where you’re able to take an old experience or event in your past and change the way your brain thinks about the event. You do this by bringing in new understanding or information to the brain which make the brain malleable. This changes the story completely and turns it on its head. You’re making it look entirely different in your mind. In your remembering. You’ve taken that frame and rearranged it.
Then deframing means to take the frame off the story all together. Not just changing it, like we did in reframing, but destroying it altogether. And you can do this when you give enough attention to the story to know that the whole thing is a lie.
Go back to episode 106 to get more detail on these.
But today we’re going to dig into the daily life benefits of Pre-framing our stories. So, of course, pre means “before.” And obviously, this means we’re going to frame our stories before they even happen. We’re going to intentionally decide how we want to experience events in our lives ahead of time.
So, what would that look like exactly? Pre-framing can be used as a daily practice to set intentions for the day. Again, remember that pre-framing is deciding what you want a particular experience of an event to look like, feel like, etc. Perhaps you want to act in a way that’s more like Jesus and less like you right now. To walk in the Spirit with the fruits of the Spirit.
Maybe you look at your calendar and you see that you have a meeting today with your very contentious, hot-headed boss. You can pre-frame the story you want by saying things like, “In the meeting today with my boss, I’m going to remain calm and level-headed, no matter how they act. As long as it depends upon me, I’m going to bring peace and clarity to the conversation. I will not take personal offense to their attacks but will look for ways to understand them better. This meeting is going to be productive.” Now, notice this has everything to do with you, not your boss. You can’t make someone else behave a certain way. These are all about you. You also don’t have Obi Wan Kenobi skills to hypnotize your boss into compliance. “These are not the droids you are looking for.”
Here's another example. Now, I’m not saying I know anyone who needs to do this but…
If you tend to be someone who gets a little frustrated when you’re driving because the other people clearly don’t know how to drive, and then your frustration makes you act in ways that are definitely not like Jesus…if he’d had a car…you could pre-frame your driving experience like this before you ever put that car in drive: “I am the most kind, courteous, and helpful driver on the road.”
Let me tell you why this kind of pre-framing will work and will make your daily life so much better. If you remember, there is a small bundle of nerves at the base of your brainstem called the Reticular Activating System or RAS for short. The RAS takes what you are focusing on and creates a filter for it. Whatever you are ruminating on, whatever stories you’re believing, whatever you’re telling yourself, the RAS filters out all unnecessary information, keeping you from seeing anything else but that focus message. It’s going to prove that message true, stacking evidence from past experiences and scanning your present circumstances for reasons why this message can be proven to be true. It will filter out any other “past file” or present evidence that this message is not true.
The RAS then will encourage you to recreate what it believes to be true. “I will not take personal offense to their attacks but will look for ways to understand them better.” Your RAS is going to encourage, support, and allow you to appropriate the necessary tools to make this so. And then you will find that, indeed, the meeting was productive. Because your RAS is looking for that. Or imagine what might happen if you pre-frame your driving to the grocery store or to work with “I am the most kind, courteous, and helpful driver” message on your mind.
As you can imagine, your everyday life, every little thing in it from doing laundry, to dealing with the carpool pick up line, to interactions with difficult people, can radically change. The way you feel is created by the stories you tell yourself. And stories are just a string of thoughts put together about something. And you can change your thoughts, and radically change the way you are experiencing your life.
Friend, what comes to your mind? Where do you need to pre-frame your story in your daily life? What area of your life would you like to experience in a radically different way? You have the power to make that kind of change for yourself. That’s such a freeing thought, right? Maybe start there: “Today I’m going to radically change my life by pre-framing everything in my day. And it’s going to be good!” When you learn the tools that change the brain, then you can change every area of your life for the rest of your life. “Wait, what? I’m going to have to do this for the rest of my life?” Well, yes. As long as you are a human with a human brain, you will need to use all the brain-changing tools you have. But, today, you can start to pre-frame your stories. Try this and let me know what you find.
If you don’t have the tools necessary to appropriate what your RAS is encouraging you to do, I can help you. If you’d like to explore how Life Coaching would work for you, there’s a link in the show notes for a free 30-minute discovery call. I have a waitlist for next year, and there’s a spot with your name on it.
And don’t forget to get the free, downloadable Listener’s Guide that will help you in the process of pre-framing your daily stories. The link is in the show notes, as well.
Have a wonderful week, friends. See you next Wednesday for the next episode of Another Beautiful Life.
SHOW NOTES:
You can radically change your daily life by doing one thing every day. Pre-framing your experiences.
Imagine being able to be at peace and stay calm even if your contentious and hot-headed boss is yelling at you.
Imagine driving to work in bumper-to-bumper traffic while the other drivers beside you are texting on their phone, reading a book, or honking and cutting you off, but you just smile and let them, unfazed.
The way you experience your everyday life - every little thing in it from doing laundry, to dealing with the carpool pick up line, to interactions with difficult people – is up to you and in your power to change.
Let me show you how to pre-frame your stories and radically change your life.
Are you wondering how Life Coaching works? Would you like a free, 30-minute session? Click this link to set up a Consult Call: https://calendly.com/triciazodylifecoach/30min
Get the free, printable guide here: https://www.triciazody.com/guide
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