My Mom worked with purpose and passion and, without knowing the concept of ‘framing’. Framing is a technique for choosing and using words to create a different image of something, to build passion and energy for work or health-promoting behaviors. With framing- ‘I want to go to the gym to build bones and strengthen my brain for the long run’ versus ‘I have to go to the gym to sweat and hurt…’, we can consciously generate new meaning and value to our work and other tasks of daily living. My Mom embodied Charles’ Revson’s- of Revlon- reframing of lipstick as ‘hope in a tube’.
For my Mom, framing up work made it fun.

My Mother was in the business of therapy, of nurturing, of taking care of other women and raising their self-esteem particularly on days when they felt down. Able to quickly make a cut-to-the-chase diagnosis of how a woman felt and what she needed to feel better, my Mom was a wizard at prescribing the appropriate treatment that kept her clients coming back to invest more time and more money with her. A lover of people, she was a natural at keeping in contact to make sure her clients were following through with their treatment plans. She kept in touch via what now seem like archaic means often enlisting me as her assistant to lick stamps and attach them to handwritten postcards. This dedication was natural to her. It resulted in her promotion to leader of a region, a new role that enabled her to travel quarterly to her much-beloved New York City, what was then a good six hour commute by the slow train. And even that she loved. For her, it was her freedom, her identity separate from that of mother and wife, her identity as a nurturer and successful professional- and all of this in a Boston suburb where most of the mothers played golf or bridge and where other kids wondered aloud why my Mother had to work, unable to ‘frame’ it up that she didn’t have to work-she loved to help people!

I know, it sounds like my mother was a therapist or a physician or some type of helping professional. But, in truth, my Mother was armed with her high school degree and a decade of years as a ‘secretary’ in D.C. during World War II, in New York City during my Dad’s college years, and in Boston during his start-up years in the banking industry (yes, ‘secretary’ was the job title back then and one about which she and other women like herself felt mighty proud as it paid the rent and then some).

No, rather than a doctor or therapist, options not available to her back then, my Mom was in the cosmetics industry. After the stay-at-home years, she was ready to leap back into the world of work outside of the home. She landed a job selling cosmetics at our local Jordan Marsh-which we now know as Macy’s- and took sales to record levels. She was so good at what she did that she was recruited from one company to another, landing, after only a few years, as regional lead for the then top-selling line of skin care and face color.

For nearly fifteen years, as soon as my brother and I were old enough to fend for ourselves during the after-school hours, my Mom worked for cosmetics companies, first as a counter sales person and then, due to her keen ability to make her clients want to return to her to buy expensive creams and paint-for-the-face, as a manager of a national line. In the first role, my mom was amazing at greeting other women, at starting up conversations that were genuine, at diagnosing their skin type and prescribing the right stuff, at genuinely caring and remembering her clients and their problems. I can still remember the client cards- remember this was way before personal computers. This was when each client had a large index card on which my mother had recorded their personal info, their purchases and contact info. I remember vividly her copious notes- one daughter named … born on…, two cats named…, husband named…, loves tennis… or whatever info my Mom had learned with her natural ability to engage people in dialogue. And while all of this appears in current books on best sales techniques, for my mom, this was natural.

My Mom sold cosmetics and then managed a region of a company that had the highest sales despite charging the highest prices. While her titles reflected sales and management roles, in my Mom’s mind’s eye, she was a nurturer, a talk therapist, a solution-provider who genuinely cared that her clients use the prescribed products to look and feel better. To my Mom, it was all about framing- she provided ‘hope in a tube’ – without even knowing that mantra or what ‘framing’ was. Instead she lived it.

How about you- what do you do?
How do you see yourself- and how could you recalibrate that view with words that describe the value of what you do?

Are you a sales person or are you a solution-provider who makes the lives of others easier?

Are you a parent or are you a nurturer providing respite to kids who are facing down the identity-rocking years of teenagedom or young adulthood?

Are you a child taking care of aging parents or are you a caregiver devoted to ensuring that your parent lives final days with dignity and love?

Are you a receptionist or are you the ambassador for your company who greets them at the reception desk as the first point-of-contact for people who venture into your facility?

When we use framing, or should I say re-framing, to picture what we do for work or during the daily double, we can build a new sense of meaning, of contribution, of pride for what we do without changing our roles. With framing, we can create- or recreate the passion for our work, our roles and the activities of living.

Try it today- each time you face a task or a role, frame it up with meaning to do it on purpose and with passion. Now raking those pesky leaves that seem to have multiplied on your lawn while you slept is an act of love, taking care of Mother Earth and the patch of green that is yours. Facing down those loads of laundry is now a wax-on-wax-off meditative practice that, when accompanied by music, is an opportunity to take care of those pieces of clothing that enable you to portray your self in the outer world, an opportunity to extend their wear and your investment, an opportunity to dance and stretch while you fold and sort.

Choose your words to change your view of your life. Use framing to re-view who you are and what you do and build your desire and passion for going for a bone-building walk or a leaf-raking dance in your yard or a laundry-folding samba in your laundry room. Off I go- hooked up to my mobile music device- for a dance with Springsteen and the E Street Band in my garage gym after a stopover at the laundry room to stretch while sorting and tossing last week’s gym clothes that enabled me to build bones into the washing machine that is my friend!

Looking forward and moving ahead,
Pam