When I’m not contributing to this site I’m a leadership expert, personal coach and speaker. One concept that I use with my clients is the idea of re-framing. Re-framing refers to the idea of changing your perspective of a situation in order to change your feelings towards it. For instance you could look at losing your job as a failure or an opportunity to start your own business.

I thought I would write about a few cool ways to re-frame a peanut allergy in an effort to encourage open and active discussion (which is of course the #1 way to prevent a reaction!). This isn’t so much for parents, I know you can never shut up about your kid’s allergy, but more for your kids or those reading with an allergy. I know as a kid I often had a hard time telling others about my allergy. This examples in this article are geared towards teens, but the concepts they illustrate can be applied to all ages.

The Jack Bauer Re-Frame: I remember watching an episode of the show 24 (season 2 I believe) during a scene when the star (who is essentially superman) is clinically dead and brought back to life using Epinephrine. For the first time I really understood the power of the epipen and started to realize how often it is mentioned in medical shows such as ER. Perhaps it was that Jack Bauer’s life was saved with it or that I finally realize how amazing the medicine was, but this was the turning point when I took pride in my Epipen. Perhaps a similar re-frame could help in your life.

Meeting the cute waitress: For years when I ate out I wouldn’t mention my allergy to the waitress. Perhaps I felt it was dorky or more likely I didn’t want to trouble them. A waitress friend yelled at me for this explaining how worried she would be as my server and this all completely changed. I realized that by telling my waitress about my allergy she was actually much friendlier to me than the rest of my table (perhaps it is a woman’s natural motherly tendancies coming out caring about me). Now when I tell someone about my allergy I usually make a joke along the lines of so try not to kill me ok? Since I’ve started this I’ve had a few more dates and a lot safer food all because I changed my perspective.

Please post your comments below as to how you plan to re-frame situations in your life. It will help others who may not be as creative as you!

Live Peanut Free,

Dan.