I thought for Episode 600 it would be nice to sort of honor a guy who has helped me reframe quite a few things in my life, he doesn’t know it because he’s helped millions do the same. His name is Scott Adams. He is currently battling a pretty bad Cancer scare and send him good thoughts all the time, but I felt like this is as good a time as any to let his guidance reframe our thoughts this week.
I was listening to him on Coffee with Scott Adams the other day where he was talking about his book “Reframe your Brain”. He basically said the idea of reframe isn’t initially going to blow your mind like the initial thought isn’t very sexy but when you actually start to use it you begin to see the value and that’s when it will change your life. So, He gave a really goo example. He said imagine if every time you had a challenge or an obstacle come up in your life, imagine if instead of freaking out or saying how you can’t handle this or any of the other things we tell ourselves, what if instead we took a breath and said hmmm, this is a puzzle, I have a puzzle to solve here. Your brain loves solving puzzles, it’s what it’s designed to do and now instead of going high and right you’re simply giving it a puzzle that it can and will solve. Every time. That’s what it is beautifully designed to do.
SO you see, that concept didn’t make you gasp. It’s not a fireworks moment. But the more I think about this concept, the more I realize how much harder I make things when I panic. Panicking is never the answer. Unfortunately that has been my go to in the past.
I remember recently I hadn’t published an episode that was supposed to go out the next morning. We were traveling and we got home later than we were supposed to so it’s 3 in the morning and I’m working on an episode that is supposed to publish at 5 am so in 2 hours. And low and behold, My Spotify Creators board is having a problem. I am starting to panic and I have all these thoughts going on about missing an episode deadline and I haven’t missed one for 5 years and is this the beginning of the end, Im not techy, I will never figure this out, you know helpful thoughts, fortunately my husband is sitting right next to me and he is someone who never panics and is always very logical and calm. So he sees my panic and he says ok, calm down, have you reached out to customer support, I look at him like he’s insane, it’s 3 am there’s so customer support at 3 am. He’s like have you checked? And I just look at him like, no it’s 3 am, and so he says well just check, now, I had been working on this problem for about an hour when he calmly steps in. So I’m like OKKKKK, I’ll check! In my mind this is a ridiculous waste of time, as I am sending my problem over on the support chat line….thinking there’s no one……and then all of a sudden there’s an immediate response to the support chat line, how can I help you Heidi? I kid you not, within 5 minutes the problem was fixed. Of course there was no celebratory dance from my kind calm husband, he was just happy I’m sure that we could turn out the light and finally get to sleep. Being calm won the day. He has approached every challenge calmly since I met him. Of course he is a pilot and that is the only way we would want our pilots to respond, but it taught me a valuable lesson, panic never works. Scott Adams is on to something when he talks about reframing how your mind sees problems. When I was busy panicking my brain just sent all kinds of worst case scenarios because that’s the input I was soliciting. But when you calmly look at it as a puzzle that needs to be put together, the brain gets to work on solving it, it even enjoys the process because puzzles are fun, problems and panic are not.
Your brain hears problem and slams on the stress brakes, cortisol rises, maybe you doom scroll on webMD, you know, freak out mode……but when it hears “puzzle” it’s like “ooh I love puzzles”. And gets to work on solving the puzzle. So if your kid is having a meltdown at bedtime, instead of thinking “I am in no mood for this tantrum, or I cannot handle this right now” say to yourself “hmmmm puzzle, how do we get teeth brushed and lights out with WW111??” Huh let’s make it a timed game, who gets it all done first and is in bed with the lights out the fastest, I timing you! New game invented and bedtime www3 avoided. It’s worth a shot. And you can use it with any “so called problem” that pops up.
It’s a brilliant one word reframe that just makes me love Scott Adams even more than I already do.
Why it works: your brain is a pattern-recognition machine. Puzzles are patterns waiting to click. Problems are threats. Flipping the label, flips the response.
My challenge to you this week is the next time life hands you a problem, don’t call it a problem. Call it a puzzle. Share this with 3 people who might have a problem this week. I love you guys! I’ll talk to you in a few days!
