Metaphors Can Die!

A colleague asked me how I use metaphors in change work. As I described how I elicit and mirror metaphors, I rather casually gave him an example: 

You’ve said you want to be able to distinguish between falling into excitement--which carries passion and commitment, or falling into yearning--where you’re stuck in envy and unable to move forward.

Let's say I asked you what falling into excitement is like and you said, "It’s like flying, like a bird in migration that knows, that follows its instincts."

Then I might ask, "Tell me more about that bird, and where you are in the picture."

And you might respond, "I'm flying, following the bird, and it’s an eagle."

I then explained if he were my client, of course, his metaphor might be very different and it would be important to honor that, because a metaphor is only potent if it’s alive for the person wanting the change. 

“But as soon as you mentioned eliciting a metaphor,” he said, “I thought of flying!”

In his next email he wrote, “Thanks for an enlightening conversation. There is a subtle excitement in me... like the feeling I feel just before flying in a dream... a warm light that tries to burst from my chest... pulling me forward... a child's spirit... a wisdom unmistakably ancient... an eagle turning its smiling eye back at me... knowingly flapping its wings.. leaving a soothing breeze in its wake... I will follow it.”   

Unwittingly, I’d used a metaphor that was alive for him. But metaphors can be dead if they have no figurative value. Someone who sails might say, for example, “It’s like being on a sailboat in a heavy wind,” but continue the discussion in everyday language because the sailing image is literal and therefore dead as a metaphor. If the same person says “It’s like I’m balancing on top of a huge ice skate going very fast” this is probably a live metaphor. 

Listen for combinations of words that don’t fit known patterns of meaning – these are more likely to engage right-brain processes, and live on, as the eagle did for my friend.