I am sitting in a Fairfield Inn breakfast room in Framingham, MA. Half the people are normal sized humans eating large servings of eggs, sausages links, and bagels.
The other half are clearly runners here for the Boston Marathon that occurs tomorrow. They look five to eight pounds short of being classified as emaciated (you have to be fast to qualify for this marathon) and eat bananas.
But the entire room just changed as a woman in her late sixties wearing running clothes walked into room. About twenty years older than the other runners, this woman had a big smile on her face and said to two younger woman sitting next to me, “have fun tomorrow!” or her way to the buffet.
I could tell her words made an impact. “Fun” was not in their immediate vocabulary as these two women prepared for the race tomorrow. They were in last-minute planning mode and seemingly apprehensive what the race might hold. But the woman who had framed tomorrow as a “fun” experience was smiling and clearly looking forward to the experience.
This is the power of the frame we place around any experience.
This is why – if at all possible – we should identify and find the “fun” every experience on our calendar can potentially provide.
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