Computer vs. Tree: New Metaphors, More Resilience

I have discovered that changing our metaphors can greatly increase our confidence, joy, and resilience.

That may seem like a strange claim to make.

So let me explain.

Metaphors are framing images  we use to understand a concept better.

They are common in literature.

For instance, a poet might compare the moon to a silver goddess.

Or an author might compare the windows of a supposedly haunted house to creepy, malevolent eyes.

In both these instances, we know the moon isn’t really a silver goddess, and houses (haunted or not) don’t have creepy, malevolent eyes.

However, these metaphors can help us better grasp the image and mood the author desires to convey.

We use metaphors in everyday life, too.

For instance, we might say that someone has a heart of gold or that life is a journey.

Or we might say life is a battle.

In the first example, we know that someone can’t really have a heart made of gold.

And we don’t really think that life is a literal journey in which we set out with a backpack and map to find some destination.

Yet, saying someone has a heart of gold conveys something about the beauty of their behavior.

And saying that life is a journey helps us remember, perhaps, that life is a process which entails stops, detours, beautiful scenery, and surprising encounters, among other things.

On the other hand, suggesting that life is a battle implies that we encounter a lot of strife or conflict in life.

Metaphors are framing and meaning-making tools.

They help us frame our experiences in a certain way to understand them more clearly.

And the way we frame our view of the world and ourselves helps us make meaning. Sometimes the meaning we make is helpful, and sometimes it is not so helpful.

For example, I want to explore to two metaphors we often use to think about ourselves.

And I also want to show how these metaphors affect our confidence, joy, and resilience.

The first metaphor is a computer.

We are surrounded by computers and machines in contemporary society. (I will focus on computers.) And while we know we aren’t computers, we often unconsciously start to view ourselves like one.*

When we view ourselves as computers, we expect perfection of ourselves.

After all, we expect perfection from computers, and when they don’t deliver the appropriate outputs, we view them as broken.

In other words, performance for computers is a black and white affair: they either get it right, or they don’t.

So if we think we are computers (consciously or not), we will inevitably view our performance in a black and white matter: either we get something right or we don’t.

And if we keep getting things wrong, we might feel like we are defective or broken.

In fact, when we think we are computers, it can lead us to develop something psychology researcher and professor Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset.

If we have a fixed mindset, we believe that our current level of intelligence, talents, and abilities is fixed and that it cannot change.

Therefore, when we fail, we feel doomed and like we can never improve and that we are worthless.

As you can imagine, this kind of thinking can encourage hopelessness, but it can also encourage perfectionism.

After all, if we believe that success black or white and our worth depends on whether we are successful or not, this naturally encourages perfectionism.

You can probably imagine that attitudes like black and white thinking, hopelessness, and perfectionism greatly decrease our confidence, joy, and resilience.

For example, mistakes and failures are a normal part of life and do not determine our worth as a person.

However, if we think we are computers, mistakes and failures signal to us that we are worthless. This destroys our confidence and joy.

And such beliefs can make it almost impossible to cultivate resilience, a trait that allows us to bounce back from adversity.

We need an alternative metaphor. And luckily we have one: a tree.

Tree as Metaphor

You are not a computer; you are a tree.

Trees have a type of internal power that drives them to life, growth, and the full expression of their biological powers.

In fact, barring any destructive external interference like a fungus or pest or storm or tree loggers, trees have everything they need inside of them to become exactly what they are supposed to be.

They certainly don’t need to act perfectly all the time. And they don’t have to deliver appropriate outputs on the spot.

Their only job is to develop, cultivate, and express the worth they already have inside of them.

The same thing is true about you and me, too.

We have a special human superpowers inside of us, too. It is our human powers of love, reason, and imagination.

And every other virtue like creativity, curiosity, courage, hope, gratitude, and kindness flows from these virtues. You can read more about this here:
How to Flourish by Cultivating Virtues.

By the way, philosophers and religions have spoken about virtues for thousands of years.

But modern psychological research also confirms them, which you can read about here.

And like a tree is always in the process of cultivating and expressing its powers, we are always in the process of cultivating and expressing these powers.

The more we understand this, the more we develop a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset.

When we have a growth  mindset, we realize that traits like our intelligence, talent, or virtues are never fixed. They can be strengthened and increased through our habits and the way we view ourselves (our metaphors!)

And as you can imagine, adopting a growth mindset helps us become more resilient.

That’s because the more we realize we are like a tree, and we adopt a growth mindset, the more we realize that failures, mistakes, and other adversity are just temporary setbacks in our growth process.

In fact, we also probably learn to view failures and mistakes as learning tools in our growth process, rather than an indication that we lack worth or are broken.

A Concluding Thought

Friend, you are a tree, not a computer.

It’s time to change our metaphors.

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You might also like these posts:

Four Basic Truths that Help to Cultivate Resilience

(^This post has an extended discussion of the tree metaphor.)

Why Resilience Matters for Everyone

I started thinking about the tree metaphor years ago when I read New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, which is from a religious, specifically Catholic Christian, perspective.

The second book is a helpful book by Carol Dweck on the growth mindset.

You can find these books at your local bookstore. Or you can buy from a family-owned bookstore like Fabled Forest, where I like to buy my books.

You can also get these books from your local library or Amazon.

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*By the way, the phrases, “We are like a computer”  or “We are like a tree” are technically similes. A simile is a comparative image similar to a metaphor, but it introduces the word “like” or “as” into the comparison. Metaphors don’t use like or as.

For the sake of simplicity, I am going to refer to both metaphors and similes as metaphors in this post. You can read more about metaphors here: Examples of Metaphors in Literature.