Reframe

Thursday, April 24

When working with athletes on mental performance, we often talk about the feelings they get before a game. Things that come up often are feeling anxious and nervous.

One of the things we have them to is reframe the feeling. To look at it from a different lens. What if your nerves are just excitement? What if feeling anxious is the anticipation of you getting to go out and do the thing you’ve prepared for?

We frame emotions as a response your body has, but your feelings as how you frame your response to the emotion. ​Your knees could be tapping quickly as you sit at your locker before a game. It’s your body’s nerves getting ready to go, knowing performance is coming. You can “feel” that as being anxious or being excited. Same emotion, different feeling assigned to it.

But to reframe this situations in a helpful way allows athletes to perform better. They can see the emotions as a positive, not a negative. It all depends on how they look at it. And a better lens leads to a better response.

Maybe today you are in a situation you don’t want to be in. Maybe it’s a season of challenge, discomfort, adversity. And maybe you’ve been looking at it all wrong, which has caused you to not have the response you want. Today, choose to look at it with a new lens. Refresh your perspective. How could you view this in a more helpful way? How would that change your response in the midst of the day, event or season?

Perspective is everything. Perspective is a choice.
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Keep chopping wood. 🪵🪓

-Kevin