Framestorm® YOUR WAY to a more flexible mindset

Expand your perspective. Flip your brain. Learn how to systematically and playfully brainstorm at the level of interpretation and mindset turning the brain into an ally when experiencing challenges. Anette Prehn facilitates powerful Framestorm processes courses in English and Danish.

Framestorm® YOUR WAY to a more flexible mindset

Expand your perspective. Flip your brain. Learn how to systematically and playfully brainstorm at the level of interpretation and mindset turning the brain into an ally when experiencing challenges. Anette Prehn facilitates powerful Framestorm processes courses in English and Danish.

FLIP - the upcoming book

"FLIP" is an offshoot of the playful, experimental approach to practical plasticity that has guided Anette Prehn's work since 2005. She has developed the trademarked method Framestorm® which helps to grow the human "reframing muscle", i.e. the ability to identify a wider range of meaningful perspectives than the ones we habitually apply to situations. 

Knowing how to Framestorm - and understanding the 10 underlying neurological principles - is key to embracing diversity with genuine respect of one another (and not just as yet another box to be ticked). It is also key to emotion regulation and seeing opportunities and gifts during difficult times.

"FLIP" aims to be your manual for life: an invaluable companion to help you thrive and find meaning in the many changes, future fog and friction of the 21st century. It consists of 3 steps, 5 fingers and 50 perspectives.

"This book contains a revolutionary method to seeing relationships and challenges from new angles. With her Framestorm® method, Anette Prehn takes the reader by the hand precisely where you are stuck in a rigid position, where your thoughts run in circles and you can't see any possibilities. The book conveys in an easily accessible and refreshing way how the brain works. It contains lots of good points and cases - and deserves to become a bestseller with its clever, logical and sympathetic guidance."

Marianne Breds Geoffroy, specialist in psychiatry (PhD)

"A comprehensive Woodchucks Guidebook on relationships, self-perception, and not least, how one can flip—reinterpret—reality to fare better in the workplace and in private life."

From the 5-star review by Ulla Bechsgaard from Jyllands-Posten

So far, "FLIP" has been published in Danish. Anette Prehn is open to connect with international publishers re this title Feel free to reach out!

The Five Fingers of Framestorm® 

  • Thumb: The gifts
  • Index finger: The values
  • Middle finger: In someone else's shoes
  • Ring finger: Humour
  • Little finger: Learning

In 2012, the peer-reviewed NeuroLeadership Journal published Anette Prehn’s article on Framestorm®.

Framestorm is a registered method to nurture a more flexible mindset based on core neurological principles, such as “self-directed neuroplasticity”, “Neurons that fire together, wire together”, “confirmation bias” and “priming”. Anette Prehn’s ability to bring such terms down to earth and help them live on in people’s lives is broadly acknowledged.

First, Framestorm!

We all know what a brainstorm is. But do you know what a Framestorm® is? Typically, brainstorms take place at the level of behaviour and products. We brainstorm on new solutions, products, strategies etc. If we had a film crew following us, they’d be able to capture the results of our brainstorm.

A Framestorm® is different. It invites the Framestormer to reframe, i.e. reinterpret, a challenging situation by following a structure called ABC: 

1. Ask calibrating questions

2. Begin the Framestorm

3. Choose your reframings (1-2 favourites)

Step 2 is nurtured by “The Five Fingers of Framestorm” (illustrated by a hand) which offers a total of 50 perspectives.

You’d typically choose 3-4 perspectives and keep reframing via them. The method thus also teaches you to: stay focused, attentive and calm while “trusting the emptiness”, i.e. trusting that more reframings will arise in you even when you feel completely blank for a while.

You have to come up with at least 15 reframings at preferably 30 or more. You’ve succeeded with your Framestorm, once you notice that your take on a situation/person/task/yourself is substantially more nuanced than before. In other words: when the amygdala stays calm when you think about the matter.  

Can you expect to suddenly transform a challenge … making it go away? No! Is a Framestorm a remote control make your problems all easy? No! But a Framestorm holds the potential of radically transforming your perception of the problem thus increasing your personal freedom and inner strength when dealing with challenges and coping with life as such.

The cognitive flexibility that Framestorm nurtures is considered one of the most needed human abilities in the 21st century. It also correlates with commercial success. 

WHAT PEERS SAY ABOUT FRAMESTORM®

“Framestorm is an elegant reframing method that activates potent processes in the brain. This article is very nicely done. With its wealth of examples of useful reframings, it expands the practical armamentarium that people have available to reframe and thus offers significant help to readers. The literature review is impressive. Very few people writing for business are capable of doing such a complete literature review.”

Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., who coined the term “self-directed neuroplasticity”

“A revolutionary method to view relations and challenges from new angles”.

Marianne Breds Geoffroy, specialist in psychiatry (PhD)

FLIP, which is the textbook of the Framestorm course, is an intelligent and exceptionally useful proposal for a ‘manual’ for an old brain in a modern world. Read it and make your brain your ally”.

Imran Rashid, specialist doctor, author 

The Framestorm method with ‘The Five Fingers’ give you dexterity in paving new pathways in your brain.”

Kjeld Fredens, specialist doctor and brain researcher

A powerful example of playful intelligence! Anette Prehn, who has spent the majority of her career thinking about and researching the science of reframing, has developed a model called “Framestorm,” to help put reframing techniques into everyday life. In order to become a better reframer, whenever one spots old frames intertwined with unhealthy emotions, Anette advocates initiating a Framestorm to disrupt the old neural connections and forge new ones … The key to Framestorming is to “just keep going,” no matter how outlandish the frames are that your imagination is creating. Anette puts it well: “When the reframing brainstorm begins, the individual gently and playfully pauses the neural connection that has always fired and redirects attention to constructive alternatives that induce resourcefulness.”

Anthony T. DeBenedet, M.D., author of “Playful Intelligence”

YOUR MINDSET MATTERS

A Framestorm is initiated when you realise that your mindset matters and that your current interpretation of a situation or a relationship can make your coping significantly more complex. A Framestorm helps you tweak your perception of a situation by first pausing your current frame, then gently and playfully viewing the situation/relation from all sorts of new angles while staying calm inside. By doing this, you teach your brain – and the brain’s threat response amygdala – that it is able to look at the situation/relation and co-exist with it, without experiencing an amygdala hijack. After the exploration of new meaning, you zoom in on 1-2 reframings that seem most helpful at this stage. A Framestorm® is a 360 degrees mindset brainstorm.

Framestorm before you brainstorm!

Anette Prehn often facilitates Framestorms that end up with the Framestormers having identified 70 or even 100 new ways of looking at the situation. This is a mind-blowing experience, and a LEGO senior manager recently likened the process to drinking champagne. Even when you plan to brainstorm on a topic the traditional way (i.e. brainstorm on what could possibly happen or be produced) it makes sense to first Framestorm.

This will help you get an overview of your current thinking and its consequences and open up your mindset to constructively dealing with the topic at hand.

What course participants and organizers say about FRAMESTORM®

“Some truly great days for our members. Anette Prehn’s work in creating understanding for others and for what happens around us is so important – and she has done it to 5 big stars. Anette masters conveying complex matters in a very special way, making it engaging, and one is really motivated for the significant benefits – both at work and at home. The participants wrote in the evaluations, among other things: ‘Probably the best course I have participated in with benefits that can be applied both professionally and personally’ and ‘It is one of the best courses I have attended for a long time. And it was excellent that it was spread out over several days, keeping you engaged. I think many could greatly benefit from this course.”

Briddi Escherich, consultant and course organizer, Finansforbundet

“After the Framestorm course with Anette Prehn, I feel vaccinated against rigidity. I can tease my brain in a new way, so it continues to evolve.”

Morten Kragh-Sørensen, Agree Consulting, negotiation expert

This course should be available to everyone! In the course, I received help to change an interpretation that has been enormously limiting and inhibiting in my life. No matter how much I wished it to be different, I was stuck in a draining frame that locked my behavior and limited my options for action. With the help of Anette Prehn’s Framestorm method, I was able to fully navigate the situation and view it from new and different angles. The questioning framework and techniques of Framestorm forced my brain gymnastics onto new paths that I would not have explored otherwise. Guided by my value compass, I could freely and actively change perspective, so instead of a draining frame, I obtained a resourceful frame on the same situation. The situation is unchanged, but my interpretation of it has moved to a new place, which creates value and agency for me. Anette’s keen attention and sense for what unfolds in the space create safe conditions for learning and development. Framestorm is a powerful tool that brings great relief!

Susanne Kolind, Director

“It is essential to learn to Framestorm. It’s as simple as that.”

Thomas Vigild, teacher and game designer

It has been absolutely fantastic and a complete life transformation for me to participate in the Framestorm course.”.

Lisbeth Bender, executive business coach

I have acquired tools to quickly and securely navigate all around the ‘elephant’ and adopt new forward-looking strategies, which unleashes energy in my daily leadership role. The value in my everyday life is simply that, through the techniques learned, I manage to view challenges from different perspectives – swiftly – and can ‘share’ this positive energy, which fosters followership in the organization.

Henrik Gehrt, major, head of the National Supply Service, Ministry of Defence

The method consists of three “ABC” steps

  • Ask calibrating questions
  • Begin the Framestorm
  • Choose your favourite reframings (1-2)

In Since 2012, Anette Prehn has ordered the 50 potent Framestorm questions into a structure called The Five Fingers of Framestorm™ making them easy to recall and use in everyday life.

In 2013, Anette Prehn published the online course “Master Your Mindset and Brain – Framestorm Your Way to Success in Business” on the Udemy.com platform. It is a masterclass for the students who have already taken her basic, free 2012 course on “The Neuroscience of Reframing – And How to Do It”. The students give the masterclass on Framestorm 4,5 out of 5 stars. 

Anette Prehn has furthermore written about Framestorm in her three latest books (the BRAINSMART-trilogy), including the book BrainSmart Leadership. And it the book FLIP which is entirely about the Framestorm method, its neurological principles and specific uses. 

Framestorm is a registered method and Anette Prehn’s organisation is the only one allowed to teach the Framestorm® method to others and facilitate it.

Feel free to contact Anette Prehn via info@hjernesmart.dk