Today’s world is competitive and loads every action, in every field, with great expectations and therefore great pressure. Everyone tries to give their best in important moments, but when the pressure rises, the quality of our work tends to decrease. This mechanism has very little to do with talent: it is our way of thinking that affects the result, because thoughts and emotions are what determines a person’s actions.
Above all, we need to learn to let go of our fear and worry, in order to ensure that they don’t interfere with the work that we can, and must, do! It is for this reason that we need to be able to change context, meaning to rethink, with full awareness, the situation that we find ourselves in and learn to tackle it with a different approach.
This type of thinking can be explained using a metaphor: when we start our car engine and the radio comes on automatically, on low volume. The song that plays is a bit like the voice in your head. We can decide whether to turn up the volume and listen to it, then when we recognise the song that is playing we realise that we don’t like it. At this point we have a choice: keep listening to the song, or listen to the negative thoughts in our head, or look for another radio station, or even switch on the Bluetooth and listen to our favourite playlist.
Warning: changing the context does not mean pretending that everything is positive and perfect; it means finding another way of looking at a trying situation to make it more manageable. The new meaning that we are able to give to that situation will lead to improved behaviour on our part and therefore improved results.
Reframing is a quick, efficient technique that works for all people and all situations, but it does not come naturally: it takes practice to make the best use of it.
