Now put that frame on the wall, in an art gallery, or in a restaurant, anywhere you want. Try different
lighting on the painting. Watch other people look at the painting, then move on:
Now, how does the situation feel? Is it still as stressful? The feelings should have dampened notice-
ably. Try again, repeat this process and it should further reduce the effect.
Effectively what is happening is our minds are treating the memory more like “just a picture.” It helps
detach us emotionally from a memory, and by way of NLP tricks our brain into dampening any links to
the emotions the memory may refer to.
Try NLP framing technique on someone else. Just read out the steps above and ask them afterwards
how they feel about the emotion. Next we’ll look at how framing can be used in an interesting way to
achieve an entirely different result, in the NLP technique positive framing.
Positive Framing
Positive framing is the same NLP process as negative framing, just it goes the other way round. So in-
stead of being a normal memory moving into a dulled, framed memory, you can take a normal memo-
ry and amplify it into a strong, vivid memory.
Why would anyone want to do that? There are several reasons that I can think of for now:
- You may have a very nice memory of someone or something that you want to amplify.
- You may have an uncertain memory of a person, so you could use positive framing to investigate
your feelings about that person.