June: Let’s Talk About Framing

My post about June is coming a few weeks late but not for a shortage of things to talk about. June 3rd marked the fourth anniversary of my original “Let’s Talk About Race” presentation. My oldest son turned six. And, I made lot of powerful connections that I hope will enable my activism to grow further. Unfortunately, though, I started writing this article very late. And for the sake of making sure I don’t miss my goal of publishing one article per month, I’ll focus on the one realization that blessed me the most in June. Let’s talk about framing.

Early in June I saw something about Denzel Washington and his children. I remember feeling smacked by the realization, “Denzel is just a normal man in the eyes of his children.” For several days, I couldn’t get that thought out of my head. It led me to realize that most people talk about greatness like it is something only certain people get to experience. Acknowledging that your idols and icons are just normal people to someone else opens you to believing that greatness might already exists inside of you. Something I’ve been grappling with lately is the dichotomy of my own existence at home versus at work. At home, I usually feel very normal and mundane—oftentimes, it’s easier to succumb to my present-day limitations than it is to believe I could be more kind, more gentle, more patient. But then at work I feel like a celebrity, and the support I glean from absolute strangers enlivens me to feel less daunted by my own personal growth. In previous articles, I talk about how the reality you experience is dependent on the perspective you choose. Similarly, the greatness that you experience in life is largely dependent on how you frame the situations you find yourself in. Or even further: the feasibility of your dreams correlates to how much you believe they are possible. I used to think of greatness as a measure of something within you, but this way of thinking will trick you into thinking you can only be as great as you were yesterday. Now though, I understand that greatness is a reflection of the decisions you make and how you utilize the aspects of your self that make you unique. This framework alleviates me from allowing  yesterday’s failures to limit or stunt tomorrow’s dreams.

In June, I realized a new framework for thinking about creativity. I can’t remember what spurred this idea, but the following line of thought enables me to manage and prioritize my mental health practices with more confidence and assurance. When you do strenuous exercise, micro-tears and toxins build up in your physical muscles creating the experience of soreness. If you succumb to the soreness and don’t use those muscles, the pain might last for a full week. Doing a low-intensity exercise, though, increases blood flow expediting healing, removing toxins, and possibly reduces your recover time to only two or three days. Similarly, when you have a strenuous mental workout—a rough day at work, an argument at home, a long spell of anxiety—the mental tension and negativity and stress build up in your mind like the micro-tears in your muscles. Creativity is like the low-intensity exercise that flushes out the mental garbage allowing your thoughts and moods and emotions to flow more freely. Being creative—finding ways to express your inner truths and desires in a manner that pleases you, taking time to do things explicitly because you want to instead because you need or have to—is like doing maintenance for your mind enabling you to think and process information more effectively. This speaks to the value of having hobbies as well as the danger of not taking time for yourself. Being creative takes many forms for me—painting and drawing are obvious options, but so is photography, cooking, finding new ways to move my body, writing this article. If you frame “creativity” as only being for artists, you’d be allowing valueless words to prevent you from experiencing your own magic.

Reframing how I think about meditation has also proven to be particularly powerful and productive. Most people think of meditation as a journey that ends in enlightenment, that it takes hours and hours of practice, and that you’re failing if you can’t completely still your thoughts. Your mind is a tool that your soul uses to make sense of your worldly experiences, and it helps to think of your awareness or focus as a muscle that can be trained. In such a framework, meditation can be viewed as a way of increasing how much control you have over your mind. From toddlers trying not to throw a tantrum to executives trying to make decisions to athletes trying not to be distracted, anyone can benefit from having more control over their mind. Just as there are countless ways to train a bicep or a calf muscle, there are infinitely many ways of doing meditation. Sometimes I meditate for 30 minutes at a time in a quiet room with no distractions. Other times I sit on the beach for an hour with people walking and seagulls squawking around me. And most frequently, I meditate for just a few moments by focusing on my breathing as I walk from meeting to meeting at work. While I don’t claim to be anywhere close to enlightenment, I’ve made notable strides in my ability to control my mind’s focus, and that has led to profound changes in my life.

Being able to consider an idea or a concept from multiple angles as a means of shifting my perspective to find one that empowers me is one of the skills I most attribute my life’s success to. Be careful about how you frame your thoughts, be careful with the words you use as you explain your own experiences to yourself, or risk allowing poor word choice to cause you to miss out on your own personal growth and greatness.

The meeting invite at work with my manager + co-workers days after learning George Floyd’s name.