Let’s start with the bad news.

No matter how hard you work, no matter how well prepared you are, not everything in life is going to go your way. And when things don’t pan out the way you were hoping for, the result, inevitably, is suffering. Disappointment, frustration and self-doubt are feelings we all become intimately acquainted with as we navigate life.

Now for the good news.

By learning to reframe the way we think about suffering, it’s possible to leverage setbacks into rich opportunities for growth, gaining deep insights and learning lessons that can transform our lives. The pain these setbacks cause us can become the fuel that propels us to change for the better.

The theme of suffering emerges often in philosophy, which is hardly surprising given how tightly is woven into the fabric of human experience. Although different philosophers have approached the problem in radically different ways, a common thread tends to emerge; happiness and fulfilment don’t lie in futile efforts to avoid suffering, but rather in learning how to extract value from it.

Reframing is the tool that allows us to do this.

By changing the way we think about a setback – whether it be financial, professional, or personal – we change our emotional response to it. It’s hard to overstate the significance of this. Our emotions drive our behaviours, so by learning how to deliberately guide our emotional responses we can set ourselves on a path of positive action.

Let’s take a practical example. Imagine you are passed over for a promotion you wholeheartedly believe you deserve. Once the shock wears off, there are two paths you can take. The first path involves giving in to the negative emotions that naturally arise, allowing yourself to indulge in anger towards your boss’s poor judgement, or assuming that favouritism is at play. This path leads to inaction at best, destructive behaviour at worst. 

Alternatively, you can make a conscious decision to reframe the situation as an opportunity to grow, both professionally and emotionally. You might view it as a nudge to learn new skills that will help your career, or to look for a new company that will actually value your efforts. Even just reframing the situation into an opportunity to become more emotionally resilient can completely change the way you experience it.

When we reframe in this way, a few things start to happen.

First, the emotional sting of the setback is reduced. Second, instead of pointlessly fixating on the perceived injustice of the situation, we start to think about positive steps that can be taken. Finally, we become filled with motivation to act.

Getting into the habit of reframing negative events as opportunities isn’t easy, but it helps to remember three things: our thoughts influence our emotions, our emotions determine our actions, and – most importantly – our thoughts can be controlled.

The magic of reframing lies in its ability to turn any situation, no matter how dismal it seems, into an opportunity for growth. It allows us to transmute failures into victories by gaining hard-earned insights that we might miss if we’re too busy complaining about how unfair things are.

Reframing can add meaning to the bleakest of situations, with almost unfathomably powerful results. In Man’s Search For Meaning, Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl writes that concentration camp prisoners who were able to find some kind of meaning in their experience were more likely to survive. Few of us will ever face suffering of that magnitude, but reframing can be used by anyone in the face of adversity.

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu poetically summed up the power of reframing over 2,000 years ago.

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

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