Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Here is another example of a reframe. In this reframe I change an inability to do something into a choice to attempt it or attempt something else (for a while).

Here is another post on reframing things – changing a situation by merely changing the words we use to describe it.

I growing older by the day. I am now in my (early, mind you early) fifties. Twenty years ago I could sit in front of a computer and write hundreds of lines of intricate, complex C code.

I can’t do that anymore.

I guess I am too old to do that anymore. I guess I tire too easily and cannot keep going. I guess I am too lazy to force myself to concentrate that much for that long a time.

I don’t like these statements about myself. Let’s try a reframe:

I stopped trying to do that.

Ah, this sounds better, much better. I don’t transform complex algorithms into working C code any longer because I stopped trying to do that.

There are several ways that this “stopped trying” manifests itself in my life. This first interpretation is that I grew frustrated with writing code and so I stopped the frustration by stopping the effort. I couldn’t do it; I hated the failure, so I stopped trying. There is something from my childhood that causes me to hate this interpretation. I don’t fail; I certainly don’t quit because I am failing. Instead, I push even harder until I succeed. Stopping trying is a terrible thing.

Then there is another interpretation, and I like this second interpretation much more. It is that I stopped trying because I decided to do something else. This is true for me as I decided to spend my spare time writing in English about subjects of interest instead of writing in C. I switched to talking to people instead of talking to a computer (compile actually).

There are times when I decide to go back to writing code for a computer. I spent many hours doing that last spring as I worked on my son’s computer science homework assignments. I found that great fun to go into a new language (Python), a new development system, a new way of thinking about problems, a new way of making a user interface, a new…well, I hope you have the picture. It was all new, exciting, and yet a return to what I used to do but had stopped trying to do … for a while.

I guess that is another benefit of this reframe. I can change the reframe to:

I stopped trying to do that, but I can go back to trying to do that if I wish.

I like the sound of that.