NLP Email Training 24

Quote

“Every perception of truth is the discovery of an analogy.”
Henry David Thoreau

Life metaphors

Last week we already dealt with metaphors. This chapter is also about metaphors, specifically “life metaphors.” Apparently, metaphors are needed to give important experiences a framework. They give life meaning, support, and orientation. They play a key role when we set out to unravel the mystery of continuously convincing as well as negative functioning. When we discover the metaphors intertwined with our most important personal experiences, we can also change them and give our lives a new direction.

Every metaphor you adopt is accompanied by certain rules, ideas, and fixed notions. Imagine you hold the view that life is a constant struggle that ends with death. Such metaphors act like a filter and influence the unconscious beliefs you develop regarding other people, your opportunities in life, your professional activities, your aspirations, and life itself. They also affect the decision about how you should think, feel, and behave. Everyone has their own global metaphors, for example, for some, life is a battle, for others, it is a game.

The following exercise is intended to help you recognize your most significant life metaphors and change them if necessary.

Exercise for This Week

1) Think intensely about an important area of your life (work, life, love?) Do you view this area as a challenge, a gift, a game, a battle?

2) What do you associate with these terms (gift = joy, surprise?)

3) In which situations is your chosen metaphor advantageous for the area, and in which does it limit you?

4) Now try to counteract the limitations. You can do this, for example, by seeing life as a game instead of a battle. Imagine it and listen to yourself. Isn't life suddenly much more livable this way? As with all exercises, you need patience and a little perseverance for this one too. But constant repetition will soon lead to changes in your life!

Supplementary links

Text:
Model of salutogenesis >>>
In this text file, you will learn more about this interesting model.

Metaphor of the Week

Nature has placed humanity under the rule
of two sovereign forces, pain and pleasure?
they guide us in everything we do, say, and think:
Every attempt we make,
to throw off our yoke, serves only to illustrate and confirm this truth.
Jeremy Bentham
Living in Metaphors. Construction and Use of Linguistic Images

Book Recommendation

Authors: George Lakoff & Mark Johnson
A milestone in linguistics, this slim book by Lakoff/Johnson is certainly that, and at the same time an enrichment for every layperson. The prejudice that metaphors are only used by rhetoricians and literati is dispelled by the two authors, because the opposite is true: Metaphors are everywhere and everyone uses them almost daily. And it is not just figurative language, when people “ignite” for each other, arguments are “torn apart in the air,” etc. The authors show how these “images” are connected with others and thus entire areas – especially of abstract thinking – only gain shape through these images. And this often with far-reaching consequences, because those who think mainly in war and battle metaphors in business will ultimately behave that way.

Short Description:
Of course, we also offer real seminars with personal encounters. This starts with our free NLP evening seminars in various cities in Germany and goes up to entire twenty-day trainings: Practitioner, Master, Trainer, and Coach. More information at:

Here the book can be ordered: Now at Amazon

General information

Archive
We have created an archive with past lessons and links. There you will also find this lesson again as a webpage in HTML. There are always some email programs that display strange characters and do not receive clean emails in either our text or HTML format. Use the online archive to read the lessons in this case. Use the archive also if you are quickly looking for a link, have lost one of the previous lessons, or have not received a lesson.
HERE is the archive of past lessons.

Further NLP seminars
Living in Metaphors Book Cover
Unsubscribe

You are receiving this email because you or a friend of yours ordered it directly from me. If you no longer wish to receive the email training, please use the link provided at the very top above the logo to unsubscribe. There you can also change your email address.
You are receiving this email because you or a friend of yours ordered it directly from me. If you no longer wish to receive the email training, please use the link provided at the top above the logo to unsubscribe. There you can also change your email address.

info@landsiedel-seminare.de
Stephan Landsiedel