I mentioned last week that Reframing is a powerful tool for seeing ourselves or a situation from a different perspective. I chose the two pictures above to illustrate the point further. If you were only able to see the photo on the left, you’d have no way of knowing that you were looking into the mouth of a pelican or a urinal! [Sorry ladies for T.M.I.]
Do you feel uninspired when telling others what you do for work? Chance it’s one of two reasons: It’s either a lousy business, or the story you tell about that business just sucks.
So, here’s a liberating truth: You can frame your story and the message it sends. This is mega powerful for several reasons:
- It reinforces the good you want to create in the world.
- It motivates you to be more optimistic.
- It creates far more engagement which leads to far better results.
If you are considering reframing a business story, here are a few things you need to consider:
- Start with changing your self talk.
- Find the truth.
- Make it inspirational.
Start with changing your self talk
Change always starts with what you tell yourself. You create your outer world from your internal world based on the stories you’ve told yourself to believe. By uncovering the stories you continuously tell yourself, by challenging them and by assigning a different meaning to them, you have the power to create a whole new life for yourself.
Find the truth
If any company has survived, it must do something really well. Find two or three things about your company that is fact-based, and wrap it into your new story line. Throw in a statistic or two to remind others that you’ve done your homework, but don’t emphasize this as it takes away from the soul of what you do.
Make it inspirational
Don’t tell others what the company does – tell them about the results they deliver. Use plain language sprinkled with a few provocative adjectives to tell them how the business is making the world a better place. I know, if you are a cynic, you just felt your BS meter turn up. But let’s own it; sanitation workers make the world a better place. I’ve never heard any sanitation worker say it aloud, but I believe it about them.
Push yourself with this – and you will love going out to social functions or even down to Starbucks because you’ll love [again] what you do and even why you do it.
The next newsletter will drill down on how to change the most important story you’ll ever tell – yours.