📅 Thought for today:
‘Counterpoint is difficult. I have been doing it since the beginning of my career. But it is not just taking any opposite. It is finding the right opposite.’
— Robert Wilson
#thoughtfortoday #counterpoint #reframe #negative #positive #opposite
I am thinking counterpoint, not in the musical sense of the word, but in the contrasting perspective sense.
Coaches (and hypnotherapists, and therapists) talk about reframing – taking care with the words we use to describe something (e.g. a problem becomes a challenge). Sometimes we do this in quite extreme ways.
One of my therapy tutors encouraged us to as, “What is good about this?”
Even in quite extreme circumstances – such as bereavement. Before you jump on this, there is a nuance and experienced process at play – we’re not walking up to someone who has recently lost someone close and asking the question.
Often there is a benefit, advantage or opportunity in the challenges we meet.
In life, we are often confronted with things that we emotionally react to, negatively, and often because they are unexpected rather than “bad”.
It wasn’t my personal shock this week that made me think this – it was a trainee’s comment about “the difficulty I experience with doing X is a great place to focus and learn more.”
For some people, the difficulty would be something to avoid.
As in the quote by Wilson, it is not any opposite, it is the right opposite that is required.
