Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery
(Read the first one of this series here)
Stories are how we metabolize life situations. When we try to understand why something happened, the first thing that sprouts inside our head is an internal talk track. One internal story layers on top of another and—over time—they crystalize into mental models, or the default lens with which we view the world. Our brains are designed for survival and favor efficiency, so this process of solidifying repetitive thoughts into permanent shorthands is simply what our brains do. That’s how we learn and file away events for future reference.
Sometimes these stories and mental models can be adaptive and make us more resilient, but they can also be maladaptive and create psychological burdens that get in the way of thriving. Either way, all internal stories and mental models are subjective and never the complete picture.
Why habitual internal stories get in the way
It’s hard to know when our mind has become littered with maladaptive stories. We face three big challenges in clear seeing:
- We don’t realize we have a talk track. Because we’re so used to living with this incessant sound, it camouflages as if it’s a part of our insides.
- We wholeheartedly believe our stories. They are ever-present inside our head and we mistake this presence as the truth.
- Our stories act as psychological balms in our time of loss, so it’s even harder to disassociate from them when we’re in pain.
How metaphors can assist
Metaphors are when we refer to one thing by painting a picture of another. They help us bypass the habitual internal chatter and stories because:
- Image first, words later. With metaphors, we don’t get lost in words right away. We experience the experience we’re having in that moment and then create a mental image to capture how we feel. Only after we have an image, we use words.
- Words describe the image and not the event. When we finally use words, we describe the image of our experience and not the potentially charged event we’re dealing with.
- Nuanced, yet not exhaustive. Metaphors don’t try to slice, dice and explain every little thing. They can help us zoom in or out and extract a key flavor of the situation without getting lost in unhelpful details or spurring rumination. We try to get to the core of “what is” going on inside us. Also, we can be more nuanced with images because sometimes words fail us.
- The process is deliberate. The metaphorical images we create are deliberate (vs. habitual internal thoughts) and if one metaphor doesn’t resonate, we can adjust it till it does. This process itself offers clarity because we try to accurately see the experience we’re having.
My metaphor during this last round of injury was an ant working at the base of a massive tree, and believing that the world was entirely made of dirt. Through this metaphor I realized that there’s a lot I can’t know and will never know, so my stories and judgments about why I was dealt this blow will always be incomplete. There was comfort in simply letting go of the need to know definitively. Paradoxically, reminding myself of my profound smallness helped me move through this harsh experience faster.
I know I’ll keep using stories as healing balms to adapt to a new realities. I also know that I’ll keep another eye on the imperfection of those stories, and use deliberate metaphors to hold complexity and nuance, and pierce through my internal chatter.
“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.”— B.K.S. Iyengar, Yoga pioneer and teacher
