Mindset for Success: How To Reframe Negative Thoughts

Learning how to reframe negative thoughts begins with taking a long hard look at our Perspectives, Stories and “Brules”.

In the first mindset for success article I share how our perspective flavours everything. At the end of it, I asked you to do some internal reflection to identify and make a list of your Brules – those rubbish stories in your mind that hold you back. If you haven’t done that exercise yet, read about it here and come back to this as your next step to building a mindset for success!

Most of the time, Brules are not true, we just believe they are. And when we believe the stories in our heads about what we “can’t” do – those stories come true, don’t they?

So we need to reframe the Brules and internal stories in a way that help us move forward instead of keeping us stuck. Because you could have an amazing day/month/year in store, but if you approach it with a negative mindset, guess what happens? Exactly what you expected.

In this article, I want to walk you through some mindset hacks that will enable you to reframe negative thoughts so that you can move forward instead of holding yourself back.

Hindering Frames & Helpful Frames

What I do is think of my internal stories in a frame. A red frame for the stories that hinder and a green frame for the ones that help.

As you look at your list of stories and brules, you’ll realise some of them are really stuck and hard to budge. Those are in the red frame. Sometimes the red frame is there for our safety so we don’t put ourselves at risk. But often, they are hindering us.

One of the biggest red frames, the biggest brules I had as a newbie practitioner was around working with general practitioners.

My background was in cancer research and pathology, so I spent a lot of time in hospitals and I was used to the medical model. When I first started out as a naturopathic practitioner, I was leery about talking to doctors.

I’d heard lots of stories, either through my qualification or just in society, about:

• be careful not everybody’s going to like you
• the doctors you talk to might not necessarily agree with what you have to say

Have you ever felt like that?

Red Frames

When I was a laboratory scientist, I felt very confident about talking to specialists about any detail to do with their pathology results. I helped patients get things done, I talked to them – all that stuff.

But once I started as a naturopathic practitioner – suddenly there was this big red frame around it. I couldn’t talk to any of them because I was sure they wouldn’t take me seriously. Did I need to justify myself and my qualification? They would all hate me and I could never work with a general practitioner.

The thing is, in my local community as a naturopathic practitioner, I was surrounded by clients who were also patients at the GP clinic across the road. And they were so enamored of their GP. They absolutely loved that she listened to them and loved that she took on board some of the different types of tests that I asked about and the different types of lifestyle advice I was giving.

I had to get past this red frame. I had to shift this red frame a little bit and start to consider what stories were going to help me. What conversations were going to help me to shift this red frame into maybe an orange frame.

Getting Out Of Your Own Way

So, I actually got out of my own way. I went over to the GP clinic and introduced myself to the medical receptionist.

She was very busy but I was persistent.  I was like, “Look, I know that we treat the same people and I’d love to talk to the doctor. Do you have a staff meeting next week? I’d love to discuss what I  do with you because I know we’re treating similar people.”

This was after I’d tried about 14 other practitioners where I was showing up in a really different way. So, I showed up with my really red frame going, “Will you be my referral partner? I used to be in pathology.” Feeling like I needed to convince them to work with me.

See, you show up in a really different way when you have these red frames. But when you start to question the way you show up, you realise it can be a little bit more maneuverable.

What Are Your Red Frames?

So what I want you to do is figure out what your brules in red frames are. It might be something like:

• working with other practitioners
• professionals in the medical field
• money in your practice
• different suppliers
• various ways of doing practice

Write those down in a “Red Frame” list.

Because if you continue to buy into those red frames, your Green Frame results may not appear.

So, what happened for me is that I went to the clinic and introduced myself. I did get that lunchtime meeting and met six general practitioners there. And four of them became my best referral partners, one in particular.

They were amazing! I was able to create a professional relationship with them where I could send letters, they would send letters to me. We were actually in a  collaborative care model for our local community.

Focus on What You CAN Do (Not What You Can’t)

Notice I said “four out of six.” I didn’t focus on the two out of six that didn’t work out. I focused on the four out of six that did.

The green frame I created around it was that WE were there for our community. There were so many things we did together for particularly the chronic conditions we were treating that I wouldn’t have been able to do had I held onto that red frame really hard.

What frames do you have around events or people in your world as a practitioner online that are more important than the actual event or person themselves?

The frame that I had around all GPs and all specialists was more important at that time (for those 18 months) than the actual people themselves. The flow-on effects of that were when I actually started to question and looked at it a different way, then took an inspired action towards shifting – there was something else available on the other side.

And I actually ended up serving 7,000 of the local community with all of the cross-referrals, all the collaborative care we had. And we were able to serve them in a whole different way.

The Same Thing Goes For Things In Your Business

I also had a really red frame around somebody else looking at my money.

Do you worry about someone else looking at the money coming in and going out of your business? How it could be all wrong and you could be just found out for running your business in some really weird and wacky way?

This was a really big red frame for me. I had stacks of shoe boxes full of of receipts and stuff I wasn’t getting around to putting into that spreadsheet or the program I was using. Then I started to let go of that and question whether the behaviour was actually helping or hindering me.

Clearly, it was hindering me. So I thought about how could I change it into a green frame? Maybe it would be helpful to actually go and speak to a bookkeeper.

And you know what? That bookkeeper changed my life.

She took over everything that I needed.  She did those two years of my bookkeeping and caught me up in a way I could never have done before. And the value was that I could hand over all my things and run my financial side of things much more easily.

There are so many things that we avoid. And they’re stopping us because we’ve got a red frame around it. Whether it’s business, technology, opportunities, or collaborative.

When we have a red frame, it stops us from doing things that could be really helpful and beneficial. They’re holding us back.

What Are Your Red Frames?

Which areas of your business have red frames around them?

Which brules are you holding fast to that are holding you back?

Is it around (If you get cranky about any of these I talk about – write it down as a red frame):

• passive income streams?
• going online?
• the security of doing consultations online?
• changing from pen and paper to digital patient notes?
• it all being too hard?
• everything taking too much time?
• too techy for you?
• being wrong?

This list comes from all the things I struggled with. So if any of these ring true for you, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

One of the most common red frames I see is “I don’t know enough.” I had this, as well. There I sat, with multiple degrees behind me but I still felt like I didn’t know enough.

We’re always going to feel like we don’t know enough. And when you’ve got a hard, red frame around it – you show up really differently.

How to Reframe Negative Thoughts

A reframe of “I don’t know enough” is “I have the freshest information.” If you are a newbie practitioner, you absolutely have fresher information than anyone else does.

So a mindset reframe for you, just to start getting that red frame loosened up a little bit, is not that you don’t know enough. Rather, you have the freshest knowledge available.

Or, if you have been in business for a long time and you’re worried you’re getting left behind, your mindset reframe around that is that you have so much phenomenal experience that you could turn into something quite extraordinary for other practitioners coming in the next generation.

Or, maybe you feel like a tortoise, a tech dinosaur, or a “slow coach.” The thing about that is there’s something absolutely extraordinary in taking the time to do things right. Taking time to do things deliberately so that it doesn’t have to be done again.

No matter what you think is standing in your way, there is a way to reframe it.

Learn to find helpful ways to look at things that let you consider what’s holding you back and then take the action anyway.

Conversations, Habits, Meanings, Value

While you are writing down your frames, I want you to start to think about conversations you have in your head and with others. What conversations could you have that might be a bit difficult but will get you starting to think about the frames you are looking through?

For me, that conversation was to go across the road to that medical receptionist – as freaked out as I was with all of the stories in my head – and see what green frame I could hold up to have a new conversation.

What conversations could you have?

Are there habits you can create to help you reframe from things happening TO you to things happening FOR you?

What new meanings can you make?

How can you reframe the negative stories you tell yourself?

My absolute favourite mindset reframe is that if you are staying in your own lane, you are running your own race. There is no forward and no behind. Because there really is absolutely no behind in business. There is only where you need to be right now.

So if you think of yourself as a tortoise, you’re looking in other people’s lanes. And it’s not about them. It’s about you staying in your lane, doing you the best way you possibly can. So that the people who really need to hear the things they need to hear from you in your particular way can find you.

How can you reframe the value you offer in a way that is helpful instead of hindering?

It’s common to hold on tight to our red frames when we’re approached by someone we perceive might be more:

• knowledgeable
• scientific
• woo-woo
• relevant
• fast-paced
• futuristic
• whatever it happens to be

So ask yourself, how can you reframe the value you actually bring to be a green frame instead of red? Because dwelling on that perceived difference is only hindering you, not helping.

Take Action

I want you to start looking at how to reframe negative thoughts and stories you tell yourself and break through the Brules you are holding onto.

If you are having a hard time reframing the way you think and you’re noticing a lot of red frames, come join us in the Natupreneur Hub. We have this conversation about mindset all the times. This is just one of the tools that we use to learn to move forward through green frames instead of holding ourselves back.