Reframing my approach to things that pop up in normal life is how I get through my days with buoyancy and mindfulness.
This applies to the smallest of things and most trivial of daily occurrences. I often have the daily struggle of making my bed in the mornings. The problem is that it takes up all of two are three minutes of my “valuable” time, even that is too much friction. My approach for reframing it is to think of making the bed as payment of gratitude for being lucky enough to have a warm bed to sleep in every night. Moreover, I am doing a service to my future self in that the bed will be looking perfect for sleeping in that night. I take a similar approach when it comes to doing a lot of chores like washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, or house maintenance in general.
Reframing played a big part to mould my stubbornness with regards to studying during school and university. I used to not pay too much attention into how I was doing at school. I never did poorly, but my attention was often transfixed elsewhere. My mindset was firmly in the “do enough to get by” camp. Towards the latter years of high school and especially university, this changed rather abruptly towards “do well enough to give myself choices of what I could do in future.” My education transformed from a chore into something that could give me choices in the future. Instead of loathing exams, I began to enjoy them. They were an opportunity to give myself a future with more options, and were no longer just something I had to do just because.
A common thread that underlies my thinking around reframing is serving your future self. Immediate satisfaction and feedback is something that has been conditioned into many thanks to the technology. There is, however, a more sustainable satisfaction to be derived with serving your future self.