It’s Not Always About Having the Right “Tools”

Anyone who has worked with me in the past knows I’m a big fan of metaphors. There are a number of reasons for this, but primarily, I find that it can become difficult rather quickly to talk about thorny problems, and having a metaphor allows us to make it a little less personal. When things are a little less personal, we see more clearly.

Our culture loves metaphors also. There are a ton of metaphors embedded in the way we talk to one another every day that have become so familiar, we’ve ceased to understand them as metaphors.

Michael White, Australian social worker and co-founder of Narrative Therapy, highlighted some of these metaphors and the way they’ve impacted our thinking. He drew a link between the idea that people have a right to own property and to capitalize on that property (for instance, through mining or farming) and the idea that the self can be understood as a kind of owned property, which can also be mined for resources or cultivated so that it produces assets. We’re using the metaphor of mining the self when we talk about “digging deep” to find, for instance, strength or resilience. We’re using the metaphor of cultivation when we speak the language of “self growth” and hope our efforts “bear fruit.”

Building on Michael White’s understanding, the industrial and information ages have given us a whole new set of metaphors with which to talk about ourselves and our personal projects. About 80% of the clients who approach me for services are looking for “tools” to make the metaphorical machinery of the self run better. Some are also looking for “life hacks” to find a shortcut or creative way through life. The goal of a “hack” is usually to get around a system that doesn’t want us to have something. In the IT world, that something is often sensitive data, but in the world of self-improvement, the forbidden thing is something like hard won knowledge, or a particular achievement.

When we lose track of the fact that these are metaphors, we start taking them literally. When we take them literally, we stop questioning them altogether. We no longer question the idea that the answer for everything is a tool or a hack.

There have been many times when I’ve been able to offer a client a tool so that they can get unstuck, or do something a bit more easily. But just as often, we’re working with frameworks, maps, practices, rituals, systems, narratives, or theories. These things can help people experience different aspects of themselves, have fun, connect, rest, or notice different things. Yet the language of efficiency, achievement, and tools is so dominant, it’s all that most people know they can ask for.

If you’ve been accustomed to thinking in terms of tools, tips, and life hacks, some questions to consider:

• Where might these metaphors be limiting your sense of what’s possible? 
• What other metaphors might you find useful, and how would these changing your understanding or the way you navigate life? 
• What metaphors are prevalent in your field of work, and how do you think they came to be so popular?