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Video Description
What you call a fixed attitude is often just a habit of arranging the facts. This lecture from Academy of Ideas refuses to let that habit have the last word. Using cognitive reframing, it shows how to reselect the meaning of your life without denying what happened. Drawing on William James, it lays out a concrete experiment: write down who you want to become, contrast that with staying the same, and rewrite the story of your past so it points forward. James’ conclusion still lands: we can alter our lives by altering our attitudes of mind.
Full Video Transcript
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more
experiments you make, the better. There is perhaps no task we can set before ourselves
that offers greater rewards than striving for mastery of the world within. For no matter what
has happened to us thus far, nor what may befall us in the future, greater inner harmony can only
improve our well-being. This task is also unique in that it requires no additional resources to begin,
no help from others and it can be worked towards at any place and at any time as we saw in our
previous video all that is required is a willingness to experiment and a knowledge of
some of the tools we have at our disposal in this video and several to follow we will explore a
variety of these tools and we will look at how to integrate them into life experiments that can help
us unlock a more flourishing state of mind the first tool we are going to examine is cognitive
reframing cognitive reframing is a method for self-induced thought change it can be used for
many purposes such as minimizing the impact of intrusive thoughts correcting the faulty beliefs
that give rise to irrational fears or even escaping the downward pull of depressive ruminations
when implemented successfully cognitive reframing shifts us away from thought patterns that make us
suffer to those more conducive to a good life in this video we are going to explore how we can use
cognitive reframing to restructure our attitude. For our attitude is very often what keeps us
locked in a stagnant life of suffering, and our attitude is one element of the world within
that can be modified to a remarkable degree. If we are to have any hope of achieving this
type of transformation, we need to accept that our current attitude is not a singularly accurate
product of our life thus far. It is easy to overlook this fact and to believe that a poor
attitude on our part is justified by what we have had to endure. A difficult upbringing,
mistreatment by others, or plain bad luck can easily convince us that our attitude,
while perhaps not ideal, is based on the reality of our situation.
This belief, however, overlooks two important considerations. Firstly, humans are susceptible
to all sorts of biases, prone to self-deception, and capable of the greatest delusions. But
But even if we were to grant that much of what’s sculpted our attitude is based in
fact, and not on our distorted view of these facts, this brings up the following set of
questions.
Which facts?
Why those facts?
And why not others?
For as William James put it, the world is a blooming buzzing confusion, and for order
to emerge, whether it be the order of a scientific theory, or the order that creates our sense
of self and our attitude toward life, we must be selective about which facts we focus on,
ones we diminish and which ones we completely ignore or as arthur kessler explains without the
hard little bits of marble which are called facts or data one cannot compose a mosaic what matters
however are not so much of the individual bits but the successive patterns into which you arrange
them then break them up and rearrange them our past may be the source material from which the
foundation of our attitude was built but this material can be sculpted in many ways and
cognitive reframing can help us achieve this feat. For to reframe is simply to create new
patterns of self-order by changing the way we perceive the facts of our life and by changing
the way we string these facts together. To reframe means to change the conceptual and
or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to which a situation is experienced and to
place it in another frame which fits the facts of the same concrete situation equally well
or even better, and thereby changes its entire meaning.
The mechanism involved here is not immediately obvious, especially if we bear in mind that
there is change, while the situation itself may remain quite unchanged and, indeed, even
unchangeable.
What turns out to be changed as a result of reframing is the meaning attributed to the
situation, and therefore its consequences, but not its concrete facts.
We are now going to look at how we can integrate cognitive reframing into a life experiment
that can help us cultivate a more empowered attitude.
The first step in this experiment is to begin with the end in mind.
We should ask ourselves the following questions.
Who would we like to be, what do we value, and what do we want out of life?
We should write out our answers, as this exercise and the ones to follow will be more effective
if we put pen to paper.
With our end in mind, we then need to ask if there is anything about ourselves or this
world that absolutely precludes this possibility.
If no insurmountable barriers exist, then we have formed what the psychologist William
James called a living option.
With our living option in mind, the next step is to make use of an exercise called mental
contrasting.
This entails writing out how we see our life unfolding if we remain as we are now, in contrast
to how our life will become if we move toward the ideal of our living option.
This exercise will not only increase our awareness of the necessity of change and the good that
will befall us if we do change, but it will also create a heightened emotional state,
which can make the next step of this experiment more effective.
For as Michael Mahoney writes in Human Change Processes, it is in the crucibles of personally
meaningful intense emotions that patterns of experiencing may be most powerfully rescaffolded.
Or as Arnold Bennett put it, There can be no knowledge without emotion.
We may be aware of the truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.
For the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.
With the experience of our soul supporting us, we will be psychologically primed to reinterpret
our past in a way that justifies a more empowered attitude.
One exercise that can help us in this regard is to write out a brief life narrative, which
frames the events of our past in such a way that at the end of the narrative we are firmly
planted on the path of our living option.
This exercise, in other words, uses our desired future to reshape our conception of the past
in the recognition that,
What an individual seeks to become determines what he remembers of his has-been.
In this sense, the future determines the past.
An example can clarify the process of reframing.
Perhaps we are an individual who has spent years drifting through life, accomplishing
little to be proud of and trapped in an attitude of apathy and despondency.
To escape from this state of mind we do not need to deny our past, but we do need to look
at it from a different angle.
Instead of seeing our years as wasted, we can focus on what experiencing life in this
form has taught us.
We have learned the danger of drifting, the necessity of a more active approach, and the
ease with which the years can pass us by.
This experience could be interpreted as the spark of necessity that lit the fuse of a
a more empowered existence, and these wasted years, could be reinterpreted as setting the
stage for redemption.
“…the process of revising a life story is not one of denying facts,” wrote Michael
Mahoney, diminishing the reality of past suffering or, to put it graphically, blowing
sunshine up the ass.
It is, however, an exploration of alternative interpretations and evaluations.
As we strive to re-sculpt the foundation of our attitude with cognitive reframing, we
We need to recognize that such change will not be accomplished in a single sitting.
It takes time to cultivate the new thought patterns that support a more empowered view
of life and for this reason, we should consider developing a journaling habit.
With this habit in place, each day we have an opportunity to challenge the thought patterns
holding us back and to write out more empowering interpretations of life.
Many great figures, both past and present, have found such a habit to be of great value.
Francis Bacon, the 16th century English polymath, was so fond of this personal form of correspondence
that he proclaimed,
Let diaries, therefore, be brought in use.
Tom Morris in his book True Success points out that when we consistently use a journal
we are
interpreting to ourselves the directions of our lives, our pasts, present and futures,
small details and big developments.
We are attaining clarity about our own hearts, arriving at self-knowledge as well as knowledge
of the world.
Our goals for work, for family life, and for personal development naturally grow out of
this knowledge as a powerful byproduct of our habits of articulation.
If we are persistent in our use of writing to challenge who we think we are and where
we think we are going, slowly but surely we will alter the way we view the world, and
we will give birth to a new attitude.
If we are truly successful in our endeavor, this process of cognitive reframing can be
equivalent to a change of our gods.
as the Roman poet Virgil wrote, we make our destiny by our choice of the gods. And the same
can be said with regards to our choice of attitude. Our attitude determines our destiny. It tells us
what is possible and what is not. But unlike the gods who can seem out of reach to us mere mortals,
our attitude can change. And as William James wrote, the greatest discovery of my generation
is the fact that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
Source: Academy of Ideas