I took a look at the Wikipedia definition and realized that it was pretty inaccurate and outdated. Reframing is a common practice in psychotherapy and counseling as a technique to provide a different perspective in the mind of the client. The process of reframing constitutes the following:
- assessing if the current mental concept, belief or value is useful in the present context
- provide a possible perspective
To reframe it so that it “hits the nail on the head”, you need to reframe it at the level that presented the problem.
“She hates me because I’m just an office boy” -> reframe this at the level of belief.
[So I should hate you too if you're an office boy]
“He never does anything except complain” -> reframe this at the level of behavior.
[Gee... seems like you do exactly the same thing he does]
The reframe also needs some fuel. To reframe effectively use state-based reframing. However, reframing appears to be primarily linguistic in nature. In order to create the effect of reframing where language is limited or impossible, anchoring might have to be used instead.
Also, see “Sleight of Mouth” patterns by Robert Dilts.
