“Engaging the book as a listener forced me to consider the
awesome power of metaphor, and how thoroughly it defeats
our attempts to contain it.”
Kathleen Norris, The Cloister WalkI
n previous chapters we have explored how thinking
patterns, e.g., visual, auditory, and feelings, influence the
way we communicate and consequently the effect we
have on our listeners. We have also considered how the
meaning of our communication can go through a process of
deletion, distortion, or generalization before it emerges as
conversation with ourselves and others. The quality of this
conversation has an impact on our experience. There is so
much more going on in our thinking of which we are often
unaware. NLP provides us with ways of accessing and utilizing
much more of our thinking than if we only work with the
conscious mind. One of the ways in which we can draw on this
greater resource is through metaphor.
Metaphor is the essence of thought, for example we may
think of life as “a bed of roses,” work as “a battle,” our leisure
time as “a feast of entertainment.” One of my clients recently
described himself as being “between a rock and a hard place.”
Whatever the metaphor, it emerges in the words and
expressions we use and influences our own and others'Metaphor is the essence of
thought