Create Better Understanding Through Metaphor in Your Life

The book Made to Stick explains how metaphors stick in our mind more effectively than dry explanations.  I often work with people using metaphor in my phone coaching practice.  Not only are metaphors more memorable, but they also help us understand our own thoughts in ways that our minds cannot process without them.

“Its like a train blazing down the tracks!”  “Its like I hit a wall.”  “Its like I’m stuck in a dark grey fog.”

Someone might be referring to their confusion in relationship as “stuck in the dark grey fog.”  In coaching we might explore what that grey fog is like.  A client could elaborate: Its dark, its heavy, I can’t see my hand in front of my face.

As they continue elaborating, it might dawn on them that the fog is coming from the lack of expectations set about the relationship.  In my experience, the use of metaphor is often more effective in helping clients reach these sorts of “ah ha” moments than a more dry description, such as “I’m confused.”  There’s so much more to work with when the description of the same thing is “Its like being stuck in the fog.”

Metaphors are physical, like our body, while abstractions are mental, like, well, our minds.  Our emotions are part of the older, more physical systems of our brain, better invoked by sensory images than abstract concept.  When trying to work with emotions, as we often are in coaching, these concrete sensory images are much better for connecting with what the client is feeling.

Our minds think in metaphors.   Talking in metaphors is something that can be foriegn to people, especially in the context of working with a professsional, so people often find coaching a unique insight into their own minds.

Discover The Power of Gratitude

Carrie came to her coaching session feeling distressed about her eating habits. She has a problem with compulsive binging. She has worked hard and created a great strategies for dealing with her problem, but she still loses control on occasion.

The most awful part of the binging is how hopeless and alone she feels. She tells herself that she’s a freak — inhuman, and that no one would understand.

In the coaching session we explored many different perspectives that she could take about her eating. We explored a couple of perspectives that helped her feel better after the fact, but weren’t very helpful in the moment.

Eventually she came up with a perspective that resonated with her. She loves understanding and helping people. She focused on the connection that her eating disorder provides her: it helps her connect with other people who feel similarly. And in this way, it helps her feel part of a larger whole instead of being isolated.

She found a genuine gratitude for the gift of human connection that her hardship has given her, and we explored ways in which she can remind herself and take actions to bring this light into her life when she’s feeling dark.

How to Gain Insight With Experience

Paradoxes have historically baffled me, because when I thought about them in my teens, they seemed so obvious. I could give a logical explanation for any supposedly deep paradox that I heard.

Something I’ve learned, at this point in life, is that experience and knowledge help me understand notions that I was completely oblivious to in my teen years.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I still don’t know what I don’t know.

My strategy in the now for being as enlightened as possible, is to leave room for what I don’t know. I am aware that there is much more to life than I am aware of, so I draw my conclusions lightly.

What is something that you both know and don’t know?

Your Secrets are Exposed

There is the tale of the emperor who has no clothes. Human beings are smart and intuitive, and we often see through the metaphorical clothes that we are wearing.

When I admit things that are hard to admit or that I’m embarrassed about to my husband, he usually responds that he already knew anyway.

Which reminds me that anyone else who is paying attention probably already knows too. Sorry about that ego.

Its another lesson I learned at Effective Influence. I was so scared to voice negative opinions of people, so the leaders encouraged me to let it rip. The lesson above is what I learned. People already knew. And they didn’t have harsh judgments about me because of it.

Grant it, that was in a crowd of people who are very emotionally aware, and my husband knows me incredibly well, but I think in general people know way more about my thoughts and feeling than I give them credit for.

Appreciate your friends and fellow humans for the wonderfully intuitive and insightful beings that they are. We see through each other’s facades, and still generally treat each other with respect.

How To Make Something Beautiful

When I took art lessons many years ago, my mentor taught me about highlights.  I’d spend forty hours of painstaking work on a pastel chalk drawing, creating a rich and solid foundation.   Then what turned the art from normal to beautiful were those last quick two second lines at the end.  The highlights.

You need a massive iceberg to have a tip of the iceberg rise above the water.  Once you’ve put your time in and created that iceberg, you can bestow its crown.

Iceberg

When you make something beautiful, go all the way and add those highlights!  Add the icing to the cake, use the nice paper for your lengthy report, and tuck the sheets just right when you make the bed.

How to Make Yourself Happier by Working Less Hard

The pursuits we partake in take on lives of their own.

I call this Ideological Materialism. It can be playing soccer, belly dancing, yoga, solving math puzzles, or knitting. With most things we do in life, there is always room for improvement.

When I started taking belly dance lessons, I began to feel bad about myself, because I wasn’t practicing at home. The teacher says that it’s important to practice at home in order to improve.

Belly Dance Class

The thing is, I do improve at belly dancing by attending classes once a week, without practicing. Practicing at home just increases the rate at which I improve. However, the more I practice the faster the rate at which I improve. This is where the pressure comes in, from both my belly dancing teacher and myself, to practice as much as possible.

Unless I choose to devote all of my energy to learning how to belly dance, there is always room for more improvement, by more energy devoted to learning how to belly dance.

For those of us who are driven to be the best we can be at everything we do, taking on a practice such as belly dance can quickly become an obsession and a chore. We often find ourselves saying “I should be doing more.” I should be practicing more. I should be more precise in my practice, I should slow it down, I should speed it up.

As we spiral into this obsessive thinking, we can lose track of where we started: “What is my doing this in service to?”

Have I chosen to become a yogi, or a belly dancing master? If so, why would I do that?

Ideological Materialism comes into play when we forget what we started for. This is a place where coaching can help a lot. As a coach, one of the fundamental questions I ask is “What do you truly want?”

So I asked myself that regarding belly dancing.

Looking at my values, a few that came to mind were: peace, fun, happiness, to feel engaged, for those who I love to flourish, learning, and to accomplish great things.

Would devoting all of my energy to becoming a master at belly dancing maximize my the sense of fulfillment I would get by living my values?

No, it would not.

Would belly dancing contribute some to my overall sense of living my values? Absolutely. Its fun. It makes me happy to feel my body moving in dance and to be practicing an art form. I feel engaged when I do it. I’m learning.

So as the master of myself, living my life to be my greatest possible self, I get to decide which things I do can best contribute to that.

For me, doing some belly dancing contributes. But not at the cost of doing other forms of exercise, and I need to spend energy on countless other things: taking care of my family, working on my business, and eating right to name a few.

So, what is right for me, according to the life I want to live, is not to practice belly dance until I become a master. For balancing belly dance with the other things in my life, in order to maximize my life satisfaction, once/week is a fine amount of time to spend belly dancing. Practicing more will not make me happier, or bring me more fulfillment.

This is cutting through Ideological Materialism. Realizing that meditation, or belly dance, or cross-country running, are not ends until themselves, but tools for helping you be the person you want to be.

When you remember that they’re tools, they lose their grip on you, and you can tell your teacher, and yourself, that the amount of practice you get from going to class once/week is plenty, and you really don’t need to practice anymore on your own at home.

Want to Only Need Willpower Half the Time?

There is a fascinating new diet, by James Johnson, M.D., called The UpDayDownDay Diet.  The theory is that by having a lot of willpower on alternate days which are called down days, you can relax and enjoy on the up days, eating what you want to.

What a fascinating concept.  Fully committing, and then fully relaxing, for peak results.  Sometimes its better not to compromise.  Sometimes its most effective for both enjoying life and for reaching your goals, to work as hard as you can, and relax as hard as you can.

Relax

Want People to Understand You? Here’s How!

Do people just not get you?

There is a psychological tool called the ladder of inference:

Ladder of Inference

In society today, we often interact with each other from the top of our ladders.  We’re taking actions and having beliefs that are based on conclusions, assumptions, and many layers above the basic data that we have.

It can be difficult to get ourselves, let alone have other people get us, when so much is left unsaid and acted upon.

For a practice this week, try asking yourself, “what data am I basing my perspective on?“  Use the above ladder, and work your way down one step at a time.   Look at your believes, your conclusions, your assumptions, the data you’re selecting from the pool, etc.   What do you discover?

As you become more in touch with the lower rungs of your ladder, you can share more of yourself, and interact with people on a deeper level, with more powerful communication.

Live Your Life as Art

I am an artist.  I’ve taken classical art lessons since I was 12.  I know what it’s like to be completely enraptured by a painting I’m creating.  Therefore I know in my bones that art is found in so many more places than on a canvas.  That same passion exists in cooking just the right meal, with the right smells and spices.  It exists in writing the most elegant computer code possible.  It exists in creating the perfect environment for one’s pet.

Lately it has taken over my life in the form of remodeling.  It started with one room, and has grown to an obsession with creating a home that is a work of art.  Hours and hours of focus on color, just like a painting, a plush burgundy and gold rug, a sky blue ceiling, amidst calming whites.  And just like a simple painting that took 40 hours to create, or simple computer code that took 100hrs, or a simple piano song that took 50hrs to memorize, my hours and hours of work have turned into a very simple, beautiful, piece of art.  A home.

Make your life and your surroundings into a work of art by pouring your passion into everything you do.

Persistence Pays

I’ve done a lot of personal growth work over these past couple of few years.  A Vipassana meditation retreat, Sophia Diaz workshops, NVC workshops, and coaching training to name a few.

All of these are invaluable, and they’re all helping me change and become more flexible in my thinking and in how I interact with the world.

The one I’m most aware of right now is coaching training.  As I’ve quoted before “if you’re not failing half the time, you’re not trying hard enough.”

Now that I’ve tried considering those big dreams: like having an enormous thriving business, I’m able to see more possibility of scenarios I might not have considered.

For example, I have had a difficult time with advertising.  I know that I help people achieve great things as a coach, but I’m just not good at selling myself.  The thought of advertising was horrifying not long ago.  Having practiced my trade and grown real confidence, and having practiced my vision and opening up to the fact that I do provide value, I am now embarking on a serious campaign, and I’m standing tall and doing a good job.