35 pages • 1 hour read
Craig GroeschelWinning the War in Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “The Reframe Principle”
Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary
Using a personal story about his wife having a different view of him after getting new glasses, Groeschel introduces the idea of cognitive bias. Just like a lens shapes and frames the way we see the world, we have mental tendencies which bias us—often unconsciously—toward seeing the world in a particular way. Groeschel suggests that this might be fairly common in his readers’ experience, even if they don’t realize it: “I wonder how often you see what you expect instead of what’s really there—reality the way reality really is” (117).
Groeschel admits that he is a “control freak”; most of what happens in our lives is outside of our control, he says, but the way we think about those circumstances is not. “You cannot control what’s happened or what will happen,” he says, “but you can control how you perceive it” (120). This requires us to reframe our thought patterns, replacing old cognitive biases with new habits of the mind. This is not easily done, but Groeschel recommends an initial set of practices for when we are reacting to a situation. These practices include staying calm, studying the situation, identifying our automatic responses to it, and then trying to assess those automatic responses in light of objective evidence about what is actually going on. Following this process, a person should be able to judge whether their automatic responses match the truth of the situation, or whether a cognitive bias might be working behind the scenes. This is the first step of what he calls “the Reframe Principle”: “Reframe your mind, restore your perspective” (113).
The exercise at the end of Chapter 7 is devoted to a practice of self-reflection to ascertain the cognitive biases in expectations. It differs from most of the other exercises in encouraging readers to seek outside counsel in addition to their own reflections.
Part 3, Chapter 8 Summary
Following the active, in-the-moment reframing practices advised at the end of Chapter 7, Chapter 8 begins with the necessity of reframing the past as well as the present. When we examine the past in light of our relationship with God, we tend to thank God for the things he has done for us. Groeschel, however, suggests that it might be just as powerful—if not more so—to thank God for what he didn’t do. Groeschel illustrates this point with a story from his youth, detailing an injury that destroyed his promising future in baseball. As a result, Groeschel switched to tennis and got a full scholarship to college; it was at this college that he found faith in Christ and met his future wife: “And why did that happen?” Groeschel asks. “Because of what God didn’t do” (130).
A second example follows: Groeschel’s church was pushed into having to use a video sermon while his son was being born, but from that experience, the church was able to develop a wide-reaching video ministry. Groeschel observes that some of the most significant results in his life came from situations he didn’t plan—further, even from situations he had prayed to avoid—and thus he has learned to thank God for the things God didn’t do: “Instead of feeling like a victim of random circumstances in a chaotic world, you see that you have a God who has protected you, often from yourself, in ways you didn’t realize” (133).
Part 3, Chapter 9 Summary
The next step after reframing the past—thanking God for what he didn’t do—is to look for what Groeschel calls “collateral goodness.” This means intentionally looking for God’s goodness in our everyday lives. This practice creates a cognitive bias toward perceiving God’s benevolence: “If you look for the bad, you will find the bad. If you look for what’s negative, you will find plenty to be negative about. […] On the other hand, if you look for God’s goodness, you will see it” (135).
This idea is based on the principle that we tend to find what we’re looking for. Groeschel uses examples from the natural world, observing that vultures, which look for rotting meat, tend to find it, while hummingbirds, which seek out beautiful flowers and sweet nectar, find that instead. The act of intentionally seeking out what you hope to find in life is what Groeschel calls “preframing the future”: “What situations do you know you will be walking into? “What would be the most positive, life-building, God-honoring, mutually edifying way for you to approach that moment? Preframe it. With God’s help you can choose the frame through which you will step into that situation” (144-45).
Part 3, Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Groeschel again emphasizes self-reflection, this time in the context of changing the way we think about the past, present, and future. Chapters 7 and 8, in particular, rely on practices of self-reflection. In the former, Groeschel asks his readers to put their past experiences under the microscope. Instead of focusing on past traumas, the book invites us to consider the ways God protected us from other things that didn’t happen, or even the ways in which God used apparently negative events to bring about positive results. In Chapter 8, the focus of self-reflection is turned toward the present moment. Groeschel advises his readers to assess their reactions to situations as they happen, taking a few moments to remain calm and to discern the ideas and emotions that drive their responses.
In this section of the book, another major theme emerges: Groeschel’s advice to maintain a broader perspective. The roots of this broader perspective are the presence of God and a focus on his loving character. While earlier chapters also touched on these themes, they appear with special force in Chapters 7-9. Groeschel notes repeatedly how easy it is to get caught up in the emotions that accompany our habituated responses to the circumstances around us. Part of the solution is to focus on God instead. By remembering God’s presence, we become grounded in something beyond the ups and downs of our present circumstances.
Using a broader perspective is particularly important when it comes to the future. While we can assess the past and present with some measure of self-reflection, there is nothing yet known about our future upon which we can reflect. Therefore, as Chapter 9 argues, our preparation for the future should be grounded in our broader perspective of God’s unchanging love. Self-reflection and a broader perspective work together to help us meet the demands of our changing circumstances in all seasons of life.
Neuroscience again plays a significant role in these chapters, especially in the idea of cognitive bias. Groeschel uses neuroscience to show how we expect experiences and emotions from life, and because of the effects of cognitive bias, we often find what we’re subconsciously looking for. One of the main factors in reshaping our perspective, then, is to form habits which reorient our expectations. By building habits of expectation based on the goodness of God, Groeschel suggests that we can establish a cognitive bias toward seeing the grace, mercy, and providence of God in our circumstances.
