Confidence is a prom dress at a cocktail party

Hello,

I’ve become increasingly fascinated by metaphor over the last several years — in particular, by metaphors’ ability to spark meaningful conversations and a deeper understanding of the self.

“Self-understanding requires an unending negotiation of the meaning of your experience to yourself” write linguists and philosophers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their book ‘Metaphors We Live By’. They argue that metaphors are critical to our understanding of the world around us.

🔸 Here’s an exercise: 🔸 

Try wandering for metaphors, or for unlikely comparisons, for confidence. Don’t overthink it. Just finish the sentence:

Confidence is… the prize at the top of a mountain

Confidence is.. a prom dress at a cocktail party

Confidence is… a sock continuing to do its job, despite the hole in its heel.

Confidence is…

Confidence is…

One student in a past writing workshop imagined confidence as a grand white horse that she was actively starving — If the horse were strong, it might whisk her away and she would lose control. It was much safer to keep confidence weak.

—

Confidence is simply a ‘feeling’. It’s the feeling of self-assurance in one’s own skills and abilities. Kids Health defines it as a “quiet inner knowledge that you’re capable”. But these definitions don’t leave a lot to grasp onto or talk about. And the subject of confidence is undoubtedly tricky!

Where does this quiet inner knowledge come from? How do you know that it’s there? How do you feel about nurturing that inner voice? What happens in your body when you speak about your skills and achievements?

When you wander for your own metaphors for confidence, you’re really doing the creative work of expressing how you feel. If you were to then play with stretching your metaphors out (to borrow a prompt from Marie Howe), you’d begin to notice the richness and reflective room that’s underneath this creativity.

If confidence is the prize at the top of the mountain, then it can only ever be something that is earned through hard work and perseverance. Is that true for confidence? And from there, our conversation would begin.

Metaphor & Renewal
6-Week Poetry Workshop Writing Workshop

Starting on Monday, join me for a transformative writing workshop where you'll explore metaphors for life, time, longing, confidence, fear, and trust. We’ll begin each class by wandering for metaphors and discussing what we find.

In the second half of each class, you’ll have a chance to stretch your reflections into a poem — capturing your experience now, to be returned to later whenever it’s needed.

Open to just 6 participants. No Experience with poetry writing is necessary to participate.

DETAILS:
Mondays, October 30th – December 4th 2023
from 1-3pm PST
$250 CAD + GST (if price is a barrier but you’d like to participate, email me [email protected]. I have one 50% off spot available)

Questions? Email [email protected]

thank you for your support,
Christine Bissonnette

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