Being able to “outframe” somebody is a crucial skill. How to outframe? Easy, just step back to a broader meta level. Understanding the difference between structure and content will help.
One of the biggest and most important distinctions you learn when studying NLP is content language vs. structure language.
The difference is very profound, and very subtle. Because you’re using language to describe language, it’s also very hypnotic and trancy.
Consider this sentence:
“Yesterday I went to Bob’s Burrito shop and ate a carne asada burrito on a flour tortilla with extra spicey bean dip.”
Now, unless you’re hungry, and you happen to like carne asada burritos, you’ll likely lose interest by the time you finish hearing or reading that sentence.
But consider this. The same sentence, but stripped of the content, with ONLY structure:
“Recently, I went to this amazing place where I had a wonderful experience.”
Now, when somebody is reading or listening to that, you won’t be forced to imagine my content. You can use whatever content you’d like.
The interesting thing about human behavior is that we are structure driven, but we generally only focus on content. We think content is the reason we do things, but structure is the underlying driver of our actions.
Which means when you understand the basic structure of human experience and thought, you can take any “content” based objection or limitation that anybody comes up with (or your own) and flip it around, using content reframes.
Meaning you can allow them to keep the structure, while you covertly put in different content.
Your content.
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