The importance of reframing

One of the ways we can start off spirals of ill health and negative thinking is focusing on the negative. We can generally embody the whole “Woe is me” mindset because, let’s face it, some symptoms really do suck and no ones likes a limited life.

But when we focus on the negative we keep ourselves in the ill-health mindset, the one we are trying to shed, because the Super You that you are trying to work towards, well they don’t think like that do they? They’re too busy having their big expanded life to be thinking negatively. So neither should we.

So we want to turn these negative thoughts around. We want to be finding the gold in everything.

I don’t mean silver lining. I mean the real GOLD.

So I’ll give you some examples. Because I went through the years of food restrictions I have learnt so much more about food. I now love cooking. I now eat in a much more expanded interesting way than I ever did before. There is barely a food (other than meat) that I don’t like now. I have an appreciation of food that is just indescribable. I am so damn grateful for every slice of sourdough bread, every rarefied spice, every previously forbidden food I can eat that I have so much more joy now around food. I would never have had that before. I’m way more compassionate to others because of what I’ve been through, I have a deeper understanding and connection with other people’s suffering and so much more empathy which is so much more fulfilling. That is just a tiny fraction of the illness I went through and yet that restriction brought so many gifts.

So when you have a dip, a blip, a flare of whatever kind, first normalise it, know it will pass, and then reframe it. What is it giving you? There is always something. An opportunity to slow down. An opportunity to make some resolutions. Some learning, some growth, maybe you dodged a bullet somewhere by missing the thing you thought you wanted to go to, maybe its a time to reflect and go inward, a time for some self-care. There is always the gold but you have to change your filter in order to find it.

Image Bert Loeschner