The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Metaphor’

Lewis Carroll – Your Invisible Mentor

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is really about learning from our mistakes, firing the imagination and making the impossible possible.

In the fantasy, Alice chases after a white rabbit sporting a waistcoat and tumbles down a rabbit hole into a world of wonder, one that’s very dissimilar to the one she came from. The silliness of Alice in Wonderland makes you laugh and makes the book very appealing.

As Carroll takes Alice from one adventure to another I see a bit of Alice inside myself where I make the same mistakes more than once until I finally get it. In the land of make believe, where animals can talk, Alice’s size fluctuates, up and down like a yo-yo until she finally figures out how to control it by nibbling on a piece of mushroom. More than once, she offends and frightens, by telling the mouse and birds about her cat Dinah who loves to catch mice and chase birds.

While reading Alice in Wonderland I was reminded of the poem Autobiography in Five Short Chapters by Portia Nelson. The poem makes you laugh, but you are laughing at yourself because you can relate to it. Someone walks down a street and falls into a pothole, and he does it again even though he clearly sees the pothole, he walks down the street again sees the pothole and walks around it until one day he decides, what the heck, I will walk down another street. It’s a part of the human condition and a metaphor for life. Falling into the pothole is a metaphor for the mistakes we make in life.

Five Great Ideas

1. Communicate in simple, clear language to avoid misunderstandings
2. Don’t take things personally (One of the four agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz)
3. If you have a destination, does it really matter how you get there? How about you enjoy the journey instead?
4. Manage your emotions – never lose your temper
5. Think before you speak

So, how can you apply the simple concepts in Alice in Wonderland? Think of a challenge that you are currently facing:

If you were standing on the shoulders of a giant, how differently would you view the challenge? And, if you could shrink the challenge, or break it down into smaller chunks, what difference would it make in resolving it? The way you view the world depends on where you are positioned, and Alice in Wonderland opens you up to many possibilities. Transform the impossibilities in your life to possibilities!

Even if you have read Alice in Wonderland when you were a child, I recommend that you read it through adult lens. What metaphors are used that relate to you life? What lessons can you learn from this timeless classic?

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Review of The Book Of Five Rings: The Classic Guide To Strategy, Miyamoto Musahi

I reviewed Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategyfor my newsletter Ambeck Edge in November 2005, and I re-read the Summareview (Hybrid book review and summary) today and still find it very useful. We often forget things we know because they are not in the forefront of our consciousness, so we need reminders. I smile as I write this blog post because Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s quote “Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again,” comes to mind.

The Book Of Five Rings written in 1645 is about the “Way of Strategy,” which is using certain techniques to take down the enemy. Because of when the book was written, you have to be aware of the imagery and language used – enemy, weapon, combat, sword, cutting and so on. Once you get beyond that, and use those words as metaphors, a lot can be gleaned from the book.

To adapt the book to our time, an enemy could be a metaphor for competitor. The Book Of Five Rings emphasizes the importance of practicing and mastering your art – becoming adept at what you do. Your strategy should either be decisive or fluid. You have a fluid strategy when you have obstacles in your way. Musahi outlines Principles of the Way of Strategy. Though the principles are over three and a half centuries old, they are still applicable.

• Do not think dishonestly
• The Way is in training
• Become acquainted with every art
• Know the Ways of all professions
• Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters
• Develop intuitive judgment and understanding for everything
• Perceive those things which cannot be seen
• Pay attention even to trifles
• Do nothing which is of no use

From the book, I found the following to be insightful nuggets:

• Lay your plans with true measure and then perform the work according to plan, thus you pass through life
• The strategist makes small things into big things. The principle of strategy is having one thing, to know ten thousand things
• Everything is difficult at first
• If you do not look at things on a large scale it will be difficult for you to master strategy
• Do what you have to do, even if it means doing it alone
• Discern your competitor’s capability and know your strong points
• Do not show your hand. Do not let everybody know what you’re doing
• If your strategy doesn’t work change it. When you’re in a deadlock change your technique. Abandon efforts that do not work, think of your situation in a fresh spirit
• Whenever we have become preoccupied with small details, we must suddenly change into a large spirit, interchanging large with small

Five Great Ideas

1. You must train day and night to make quick decisions. In strategy it is necessary to treat training as a part of normal life with your spirit unchanging
2. There is timing in everything. Timing in Strategy cannot be mastered without a great deal of practice
3. In strategy, it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things
4. The Way to Understanding is through experience
5. People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This not true void. It is bewilderment.When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear way, there is the true void (By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist; that is the void)

If you can get past some of the disturbing imagery you could gain a lot from The Book Of Five Rings. This is a book where you can take its concepst and apply them to your work and life. I recommend The Book of Five Rings.