Page 170 - Effective Communication Skills Mastery Bible 4 Books in 1 Boxset by Tuhovsky, Ian

The fight with their logical mind in such a situation would

be a rather futile attempt. Your friend, explaining to you what

exactly they meant by saying their business isn’t taking off,

would find a lot of reasonable arguments supporting this

metaphor and possibly start feeling even worse. “…Oh, I’m so

hopeless! Can’t even take care of my own business!” Even if
you were brilliant with rhetoric and turned down all of these

self-deprecating arguments one by one, they would probably

find new ones. More or less accurate, but quite true for their

logical mind.

By referring to a metaphor itself, you bypass your

interlocutor’s conscious mind and refer to their

subconscious. The world of metaphors is created

subconsciously and usually has no direct connection with the

real issue it presents. Thanks to this, there is almost no risk
that the so-called “inner critic” (internal voice) will start

messing around in this person’s head, making them feel even

worse. It is impossible to discuss with a metaphor!

Move Inside the Metaphor

What does “moving across the metaphor” mean? This is the
process of taking a particular metaphor literally and referring

to it as if it was not a metaphor, but a normal, logical

expression.

Let’s discuss it on the example of our friend’s business “not

taking off.” Knowing how beneficial referring to a metaphor

usually is, instead of asking for specific reasons for not taking
off, you could ask, “Are you sure that you accelerated your

plane to the maximum speed before trying to take off?”, or,

“How long is the airstrip?” You can also ask, “In that case,