Let's say you have inherited a painting from your grandmother. Although it has sentimental value, it's kind of old-fashioned and not to your taste. Chances are, if you had it reframed in a modern frame that you like it would be much more appealing and you'd be happy to hang it in your home.
The exercise of reframing works the same with experiences and situations.
The word "waiting" immediately makes me feel frustrated, stressed, impatient and fed-up. As you know, we've been doing a lot of waiting in the last 20 months and it's pretty much all we're doing for the next 5 weeks. I have really been struggling the past few days, feeling very down and frustrated and dreading the empty weeks stretching out ahead of us in our empty home as we wait to leave.
However, the word "resting" makes me feel nurtured, relaxed and calm. So I've made an effort to think of this time as a time of resting before the busy weeks ahead of us when we will be building our new life in NZ, rather than as a time of waiting.
It has made a huge difference to how I feel!! Rather than having the constant feeling of impatience and frustration that I felt while I thought of it as waiting, I now feel much calmer and relaxed as I think of it as resting. I feel like I'm doing something positive rather than something negative. Of course I am still scheduling some things to look forward to and things that need doing and winding up loose ends, but in between activities I'm enjoying relaxing and resting - rather than trying to fill waiting time.
What a difference reframing makes.
By the way, one of the ways I'm amusing myself while resting is Pinterest - check out my boards here.
