What is our relationship to us? Reframing reframing navigate setbacks.

If someone tells you to ‘look on the bright side’ or something similar, however well intentioned, no doubt your first response is to tell them where to stuff it, and it wont be somewhere pleasant. 

While ‘look on the bright side’ has probably picked up a bad reputation as notoriously unhelpful, it does highlight the challenge with reframing things. While there will be a bright side, at times, especially when things aren’t going to plan, it can be immensely difficult to see one. That reframing can even seem to disregard the depths of difficulty and despair we may be facing in that moment.

Yet, living the life we want, achieving what is important to us, often means overcoming setbacks and failures; it means continuing despite the difficulty. Reframing is an invaluable skill in that process.

So what gets in the way of us reframing difficulty, to learn and to move forward? 

What are the words and feelings we notice when things do not go as planned? 

Failure, setback, mistake…

What feelings do we often associate with these words? 

Not good enough, unworthiness, shame…

How easy is it to step back, to reframe, to learn when we feel unworthy, shame, and not good enough? 

What can we do to help us step back, to see the other side?

How would we support a child learning to walk or a friend who is doing their best outside their comfort zone?

How would we apply that approach to ourselves? 

One approach, common in performance psychology is positive self-talk. 

Again, it is easier said than done to just say ‘I need to talk to myself more positively. I need to encourage myself more, celebrate my wins more, acknowledge difficulty and praise still showing up.’

What can get in the way of reframing in the moment when it feels like we’ve failed, at least for me, is all the negative self-beliefs that ‘failure’ validates. 

And so reframing falls to the wayside of seemingly strengthened negative self-beliefs. 

It makes sense, reframing is hardest when our feeling of inadequacy is greatest. 

So how can we better prepare for this? What other, truer beliefs can we curate to better serve us? 

At its heart, reframing is a skill whose practice, and success, really depend on our relationship to us. 

How we see things is no doubt shaped by how we see ourselves, our relationship to us. So to reframe those moments where we want to respond to setback and to move forward, we first have to reframe our relationship to ourselves. 

It is almost impossible to live the life we want and not experience challenge and vulnerability, which both make it likely that we may also experience setbacks. 

What is the relationship we need with ourselves — that self-talk is really trying to nurture — to pursue the life we want? 

We can’t simply wake up and have a newfound relationship with ourselves. So what are the practical things we can do each day that remind us of our resourcefulness, our value beyond outcome, and that enable us to objectively step back from moments when things don’t go to plan? 

So based on that relationship, what practices can we incorporate to help us cultivate it? 

Our relationship to us shapes how we relate to almost everything else. 

What would it be like if we all had the relationship with ourselves we needed to live the life we really wanted?