[Neurons] 2021 Neurons #26 HAVING FUN WITH METAPHORS

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2021 Neurons #26

May 17, 2021

How Metaphors are Meta-States #6

 

 

HAVING FUN WITH METAPHORS      

 

 

"The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities.

Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation

which God forgot inside one of his creatures when he made him."

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

 

Metaphors verge on magic because you are using one thing-something you know
pretty well to stand for and represent a way to understand something else.
When you think and speak metaphorically, you wave a magic wand as it were
over one thing so that now you see it through the lens of another thing.
It's like magic. 

#1: "With all the work I have to do, I'm struggling just to keep my head
above the water."  #2: "So how long have you been dog paddling?  If you're
tired of treading water, take my hand and I'll pull you into the boat."

 

As you are now playing with the metaphor, both of you can have fun as you
expose the metaphor and play around identifying a more empowering metaphor.
Of course, to have fun with metaphors, you have to first sensitize your ears
so that you can hear them and recognize them.  That's probably the biggest
challenge since thinking and speaking in metaphors occurs mostly at an
unconscious level.  I recall reading that someone once told Tony Robbins
that he was "carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders."  Tony's
reply was, "Why don't you set the world down and move on."

 

Amazingly, metaphors are often used in complaining about problems.  When we
have problems that we don't fully understand and that we don't know how to
solve, we so often revert to metaphors.

                             "I'm at the end of my rope."    "I'm drowning
in paperwork."

                                   "It's a war zone at work."   "I'm up
against a brick wall and can't get through."

"Our marriage is on the rocks."  "She's going to be the death of me yet."

 

Once you have tuned your ears to detect metaphors, the critical question to
answer is, "What is being compared to what?"  In "I'm drowning in paperwork"
- the target subject is paperwork and the source domain you are using to
understand it is drowning.         That evokes a picture of lots and lots of
paperwork, papers so high that you are trying to swim but cannot but you are
doing down under it all where you won't be able to breathe.  Now we're ready
to play with the metaphor.  You might look at a wastebasket and say,
"There's your life vest!"  "Or maybe it is a drain ... you could use it to
drain the pool." 

 

"All he ever offers me are half backed ideas."  "Great!  Now you know how to
solve the problem. Give him some time off so he can more thoroughly bake his
thoughts."  If he complains that that will not work, then be
ever-so-much-more playful.  "Maybe he doesn't have enough heat in the oven
of his mind.  What could you do so as to encourage him to increase the
heat?"  Or, "Do you think that he has a big enough oven to bake his
thoughts?  Maybe he needs to expand the oven so he can put some fully grown
up ideas into it."

 

"I just feel like withdrawing into my shell and never coming out again."
Sometimes what you'll want to do first is a pattern interrupt- something
that jars the person awake, something that surprises the person so that she
becomes fully conscious to what she just said.  "Is the shell nicely
decorated on the inside?"  "Why don't we all come over and have a party
inside your shell?"

 

When you meta-state with a metaphor, you bring something known and set it
over what is less well-known or something that's problematic and in doing
that, the metaphor becomes a frame.  Then along with it comes various
implications, beliefs, and assumptions.  Because of this structure,
metaphors can do a lot more to you and within you than you might ever
suspect.  And sometimes, just sometimes, a single metaphor can completely
revolutionize your life.  If you don't believe me, take the blue pill and
believe whatever you want to believe.  Take the red pill and you can begin
to discover how deep the rabbit hole goes. 

 

Marriage is like a ship stuck on the rocks.  Being in relationship with a
partner (marriage) is the target domain and a ship stuck on the rocks so it
cannot move is the source domain.  You know about ships stuck on the rocks.
You are now using that as the frame to bring to "marriage" to understand the
problems that you're having.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

 

Books can be purchased at www.neurosemantics.com 

Many other PDF books can be purchased at "The Shop" on
www.neurosemantics.com 

 

131688 NeuroSemantics ThinkingMetaphoricalyCover FRONT

 

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