In my coaching practice I use the power of metaphor with my clients to help them unlock creativity by bringing together unusal ideas in unexpected ways. As taught in her coach training program by my mentor and sociologist Martha Beck, you can compare a pain point, or area of suffering in your life to anything that’s near you or dear to you. Don’t over think it. Just pick a sore spot and a random object and let your synapses fire and your brain re-wire.
For an example of this check out my recent post My Lack of Faith In Myself is Like Superhero Movies. Below is a poem inspired by the idea of comparison and extended metaphor as a way to explore our interior worlds.
There Is Just No Comparison
My relationship to myself is like a metaphor
Nothing has any meaning by itself
Only one aspect in relationship to another
A constant internal comparison
My childhood weighed against the now moment
Or against your childhood
Or against a childhood from the TV
My choices weighed against my innocent dreams
Or against your choices
Or against the choices they make on the TV
My identity weighed against my actual impact
My ego, slams like a meteor into my intentions and the resulting cataclysm is the end of all life on this planet. The planet is not earth
but my old belief structures, as the impact causes ruptures
Blinded by my possible futures, I end up needing sutures
Distracted by all the features, forgetting we are natural creatures
When I look in the mirror of reality is it like I’m staring back at myself, or am I there, staring back at myself?
I extend this metaphor, like a thief extends his fortunes at a jewelry store,
Stealing images to compare and contrast, like a meaning blast
So that maybe you’ll ignore, if it turns out my life is a mixed metaphor?
And not as glamorous as I what I thought before
When I drop all metaphors
And the making of meaning softens into the bliss of experiencing
And life starts living me, dispelling my notions that I am ever living it
And all becomes one
There is suddenly nothing to compare anything to
I am everything
This resurgence of emergence with no urgency inside of me
And the metaphor becomes, well, it’s like, it’s like, it is so, well…it is just…
