This is a concept that I’ve recently been ingraining in my brain: Positive Reframing.

Reframing is the concept of looking at, presenting, or thinking in a new or different way. When an event occurs that may effect you negatively, Reframe your perception to focus on the bright side. What you’re essentially doing is refraining your mind from complaining and going through that negative spiral, and instead focusing on and enhancing the positive effect that that moment or event has given you.

The reason why I’m bringing this up is because after actually implementing this concept in my day-to-day life, I’ve started to notice that some people surrounding me have trained themselves to naturally perceive situations negatively. Their brain goes through hoops to ensure that they find something negative about a situation, and ensure that they are heard loud and clear by their peers. Some of these people prefer to complain and be in an endless state of resistance, instead of accepting the situation for what it is. Without knowing it, these people enjoy playing the “victim role”.

Let’s use the example of missing your bus. This situation could cause you to be late for work, which means you’re late for your morning meeting. It’s easy to see how one can perceive this negatively.

In any situation, you wanna focus on how you can Reframe it in a positive manner: What good came out of this? What’s the bright side? Focus on what you can do instead of what you can’t. What you can do is text your boss to let him know that you’ll be late. What you can’t do is telepathically inform the bus driver of your arrival, forcing him to drive in reverse back to you.

Instead of endlessly cursing at the universe for making you late for the bus and potentially getting stuck in that negative mood, Reframe it and focus on what you can do with the extra time.

“Well, now I actually have time to eat a proper breakfast!”

A few more Reframes:

Asked a girl/guy out and got “rejected”? Reframe: You were too awesome for that person. Did a company decide not to go forward with you after an interview? Reframe: The recruiter knew you were gonna hate working there in the long run and didn’t wanna waste your time.

Did you forget to wear pants for a 20 minute presentation in front of 500 people? Reframe: Perfect, you can now guarantee that they’ll give you their full attention.

There are countless ways to Reframe a situation. That doesn’t mean that you want to be this delusional, socially-unaware human being that lacks the ability to sympathize with another person, though being a little bit delusional doesn’t hurt either.

Follow me @Marwanalshafei where I spark rainbows within people’s subconscious and make the world go round n’ round.