Reframing beliefs: write a new one you can actually believe

Reframing a belief means writing a more accurate and more helpful alternative to a belief that's been holding you back, and then rating how strongly you hold it. The technique is known as cognitive restructuring, and it comes from Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy and David Burns's 1980 book Feeling Good. The secret is believability: a new belief you'd rate at six out of ten will change how you behave, whereas one you'd rate at two will simply be ignored.

Why don't positive affirmations work for most of us?

You've probably seen the advice to stand in front of the mirror each morning and tell yourself "I am confident, I am successful, I am enough." It sounds lovely, and for some people it may even help.

For a lot of us, though, a small voice at the back of the mind pipes up straight away with "No, you're not." If you start from "I'm terrible at presenting" and leap straight to "I'm a world-class speaker", you'll probably score it a two out of ten, and it'll stay at two however many times you say it. Your mind simply won't buy it, and so nothing much changes.

That can be disheartening, but it doesn't mean your beliefs are fixed. It just means the new belief needs to be one you can genuinely accept.

Where does reframing come from?

The technique at the heart of this tool is cognitive restructuring, which sits at the centre of Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy, developed from the 1960s. The idea is to catch an unhelpful belief, test it against the evidence, and replace it with one that fits the facts better.

David Burns brought this to millions of readers with Feeling Good in 1980. His lists of "cognitive distortions", such as all-or-nothing thinking and mind reading, gave people words for the traps their thinking kept falling into, which made those traps much easier to spot.

Reframing also has a long history in NLP. Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who founded NLP, wrote a whole book on the subject in 1982, simply called Reframing, about how changing the frame around an event changes what it means to us. Both traditions arrive at the same encouraging conclusion: the meaning you give to something is not set in stone, and you have more say in it than you might think.

How does Reframing Beliefs work in PiViva?

Reframing Beliefs is the second half of the work you start in Limiting Beliefs. You take each belief you've written there and write a new one alongside it.

Then you rate how strongly the new belief sits with you, from one to ten. Every rating you give is saved, so over time you can watch the belief move, and you don't have to rely on your memory of how you felt three months ago, which is rarely as reliable as we'd like.

The aim is a belief that's true and slightly kinder. Something like "I've presented badly before, and I've also presented well, and I get better when I prepare properly" will probably score around six. A six that you genuinely believe will change how you prepare for Thursday's meeting, while a ten that you don't believe tends to change very little at all.

Once you have it, say the new belief to yourself whenever the old one shows up. It feels a little odd at first, and it gets easier with practice.

What if the new belief still feels false?

Then make it a little more modest and a little more specific, and keep adjusting it until you'd honestly score it at least a five. There's no prize for ambition here, and a smaller step you believe is worth far more than a giant leap you don't.

After that, start gathering evidence for it. Do one small thing that the new belief predicts, such as speaking once in the meeting or sending the email you've been putting off. Each little piece of evidence makes the new belief easier to hold, and before long it may start to feel like the truth.

Rate it again in a month and see how far it has moved. If you'd like to think it through with someone, Viv can see your belief work and talk it over with you, and a coach from the PiViva Coach Directory can help you test it properly. There's also a guided audio, "Reframing the story you tell yourself", narrated by Jo Whitfield on the Latte shelf in Listen, which many people find a gentle way to begin.