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1000 words On metaphor

I had the pleasure of speaking at a conference yesterday, which was the realisation of a 3 year goal, big thank you’s to Richmond Events and the amazing team for the opportunity.

I chose to introduce the delegates to a couple of Clean Language questions and offer them a tiny toe dip into the world of metaphor and symbolic modelling.

what’s the metaphor stuff for?

While there was lots of lovely chatter and hubbub during the exercises, one of the delegates beckoned me over and asked “but what’s the metaphor stuff for?” and I realised that I wasn’t explaining how metaphoric exploration, almost invariably, leads to an “Ah Ha!” moment.

Having experienced these moments myself and witnessed them in my clients, I had fallen into the trap of assumed knowledge, so this morning I have had a deep dive into what’s happening in our brains during the “Ah Ha!” and why metaphor exploration is so good at triggering it.

Here’s a quick human generated bullet list summary of why metaphors are important:

  1. Our culture is so steeped in metaphor that we accept it as a mode of communication without question… (Did you just accept steeped there?)
  2. We use metaphor to understand almost everything. We relate new or difficult things to cognitively comfortable things to speed up and aid our understanding.
  3. The metaphors we choose govern our approach to problems or goals. (“I’ve got a mountain to climb” vs “It’s a walk in the park”)
  4. Nearly all of our metaphoric thinking is sub (if not un) conscious.

Interesting, but I ask you again “What’s the metaphor stuff for?”…

Imagine a filing system full of folders of clay models, (this is a brain). As we grow up or events happen we take a new piece of clay, mould it into something that makes sense at the time (these are the metaphors) and put it in a folder, (these are the behaviours).

When we encounter something, we sift through the folders, find the model that closest fits the new encounter and pull out the relevant folder.

Experience -> unconscious decision -> behaviour.

When we, through coaching or facilitation, drag our metaphors up into conscious focus, we can take the clay back into our hands, reshape it, and thus change our behaviour.

Again… Interesting, but “What’s the metaphor stuff for?”…

During the process of reshaping the clay we have swapped what is in the conscious and subconscious realms. While we’re playing with the clay, changes are happening in direct correlation with the problem or goal we started with.

It is as we do the “metaphor stuff” that the “Ah Ha!” moment arises.

By creating a gentle focus on the “real world” problem or goal at the start of a session, deepening our understanding of the issue, and then finding out what that’s “like” (which folder/clay model) we allow the conscious/subconscious switch to happen. 

So the new way of thinking or behaving we have made by playing with the clay, is applied to the real world situation.

In my head I am hopefully hearing an “Ah Ha!” from you, dear reader.

If that’s not you right now, let’s try the science route:

Research by cognitive neuroscientists, including John Kounios and Mark Beeman, suggests that insight is preceded by a period of unconscious processing, and it’s my firm belief that by exploring our personal metaphors we can make conscious the unconscious processing and give it a turbo boost.

Their studies using EEG have found that insight moments are often marked by a burst of gamma-band oscillations, particularly in the right hemisphere. This spike in neural synchronization appears to reflect the moment when disparate pieces of information suddenly integrate.

In support of this, they conducted functional imaging (fMRI) studies which implicated several key brain areas in insight. The right temporal lobe, which is associated with holistic processing and creative thought, often shows heightened activity during insight moments. Additionally, regions such as the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate are believed to help regulate attention and resolve conflicts, supporting the sudden clarity of thought.

The “Ah Ha!” moment is when the neural network is suddenly reorganised, new connections  are formed and previously dormant pathways light up, furthermore, we often experience a dopamine dump as our emotional connection with the issue alters. 

By creating the combination of activity in the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and dopamine neurotransmitters, we are effectively cementing the new cognitive pathway as the preferred course of action. Not only are we ready for change, we’re excited for it.

Does that give you an “Ah Ha!”? 

It certainly does for me, so I’d like to thank that wonderful, curious delegate for bringing me the insight that I need to explain exactly what all the metaphor stuff is for.