Are Your Metaphors Keeping You Down or Lifting You Up

How’s it going?

Is your team moving forward?

Or are they stuck, or even worse, headed in the wrong direction?

Did you notice that each of the above questions contained a metaphor related to navigating through space? 

In her amazing book Mind in Motion, Barbara Tversky argues that the human mind evolved to help us move through the world, in a very literal sense. 

It’s optimized to help us chase rewards (food, shelter, sex, etc.) and avoid punishments (danger, pain, discomfort, dog poo on the grass, etc.) in the physical world. 

Our world has evolved — for many of us, it’s more important to find our way around documents and spreadsheets and databases than locate water in the desert or follow the spoor of the wounded eland.

But our minds haven’t evolved — and so we manage the abstractions and complexities of modern life with the same mind that’s mostly interested in where the ripe figs are and if that mama bear thinks we’re threatening her cups.

Which is to say, we use metaphors. 

And because they’re so encoded in our language, we generally don’t notice them. 

For kicks, here are some more:

Are things looking up?

Did that meeting take a sharp left turn because the marketing manager is way out in left field?

Sounds like a pretty big mountain to scale.

What Metaphors Tell Us

The movement metaphors we use can tell us a lot about how we’re thinking about and relating to the challenges in our lives. 

That’s because our metaphors will determine, often unconsciously, exactly how we act.

Is that challenge an albatross around your team’s neck or a train wreck?

Is your product launch a mating dance or a military campaign?

Are you rowing a boat against the current or sailing on the open seas?

Is your team a bucket brigade, or too many cooks in the kitchen?

The Roots of Metaphor

You don’t pick metaphors randomly — your mind are not slot machines that can as easily come up with cherries as bells or horseshoes. 

Your mind selects metaphors that it thinks will be most effective in dealing with the situation, based on its core expectations. Core expectations are your answers to questions such as: “What is the world like? What are other people like? What are the rules that give me the best change of surviving this situation?”

Notice that I said “surviving” rather than “succeeding.” Most minds prioritize getting out of situations alive above achieving goals. 

Which makes sense.

If you fail to get to the fruit today, you can try again tomorrow. But if you accidentally piss off Mama Bear on your way to the orchard, you may never eat fruit again. 

This bias toward survival is a really useful default if you live in a world full of present physical dangers. 

But if most of your stressors are psychological (performance anxiety, relationship troubles, relentless perfectionism), then metaphors that privilege safety can interfere with achievement. 

Be a Language Archeologist

So I invite you to start noticing your language. The actual words and phrases you use when talking about important things. 

Be an archeologist. Excavate the assumptions underlying your metaphors, and ask yourself: “How do these assumptions orient me to seek success or avoid failure? How do they interact with my priorities, goals, and values? Do I want to upgrade this operating system that runs my life?

If you discover that your metaphors aren’t orienting you to take effective action in pursuit of your mission, congratulations! You’ve just learned something hugely important.

Now your conscious mind can start chatting with the metaphor-making subconscious. You can tell your mind what this particular situation is really like: “I’m an eagle rising on thermals” rather than “I’m Sam Gamgee climbing Mount Doom with Frodo on my back and Gollum on my ass.”

In that example, orienting your subconscious toward thermals means that it will be looking for how things can be easier, freer, more joyful. For how the environment is always conspiring to lift you up. 

You may find that certain metaphors hold on, no matter how your conscious mind tries to replace them. That’s OK — you’ve just discovered a core expectation; one that your mind is unwilling to give up at the moment. 

Working with a neuro-scientifically literate coach or mentor, you can identify and unlearn those expectations. And replace them with upgraded ones that can help you navigate the world as it is, rather than the world your subconscious mind has been creating in your head. 

Leading with Metaphors

This concept is crucial for leaders. 

First, one of your most important jobs is to set the metaphor that will serve as the guiding context for your team’s striving. If you don’t do this proactively and with intention, some other (inferior) metaphor may be driving their decisions and actions. 

Second, in your role as developer of your team, you can start listening for their empowering and disempowering metaphors. Sometimes the slightest shift in meaning can lead to a giant change in behavior. As the (movement-based) saying goes, “Tiny hinges swing big doors.”

What Now?

Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to pay attention to your language in conversations and meetings, especially the ones about important and challenging work. 

Since it’s hard to do that while being fully present in those moments, I recommend recording yourself and then getting the recording transcribed. Ask AI to list all the subtle metaphors embedded in the language used. 

What do you notice? What metaphors are serving you? What metaphors could use a (metaphorical) upgrade?


Click here if you'd like to have a conversation with Howie or a member of his team about how to bring out the best in yourself and the people around you — if you’d like a little wind beneath your wings (yay, Bette!) while you're learning to fly (yay, Tom!).

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