You’re the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but you aren’t enjoying the tilt. With a little construction imagery, you can repair your foundation and lighten your load.
I respectfully acknowledge that this video was recorded on the traditional territory of Mi’kmaq people.
For more information on transforming negative emotions with the LDT™ process – Locate, Describe & Transform™ – check out theEATprogram.com.
Overview of The Emotions Metaphor "The Leaning Tower"
NOTE: The introduction is the same for each of the four intensities of the The Leaning Tower metaphor. If you have already read it, you may want to click to skip.
Hello, my name is Karen and in this series I help you Locate, Describe & Transform™ (LDT™) the emotions that interfere with you making your best decisions. Each week I explore a new metaphor, always looking at it at four levels of emotional intensity: Extreme; High; Medium; and Low.
If you want more information on the process I use, you can check out the short overview video.
This week’s metaphor is THE LEANING TOWER.
Four Emotion Intensities with Four Leaning Tower of Pisa Images
I’m focusing on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, looking specifically about things that you might be leaning toward or leaning away from, and how stable you are. We’re working with four different views of the same tower, and from four different distances.
- You are the tower, but in extreme intensity, your perspective is right up beside it. So your perspective might be leaning one way or another because you don’t have a big picture.
- In high intensity, there’s a bit more space. You’re seeing yourself a bit more objectively, and you’re very clearly seeing the lean that exists in your thinking or in your behaviours.
- In medium intensity, we have a more distant view still, and you can’t quite see the lean from a distance. It doesn’t seem like it’s quite so bad whatever direction you’re leaning in.
- From low intensity, there barely seems to be any lean at all, and you have a pretty faraway view of yourself and your circumstances to the emotional intensity.
The Complexity Cards
We add a complexity card, so
- The extreme intensity comes with a complexity of six.
- The high intensity comes with the complexity of seven.
- The medium intensity comes with the complexity of eight.
- The low intensity comes with the complexity of six.
Pinocchio: The Character from The Whimsical Tarot Deck
The randomly chosen whimsical tarot card is the Devil, and this is a fairy tale, Pinocchio, and the puppet master who’s controlling Pinocchio’s strings. Pinocchio is a living, breathing puppet made from wood that wants to become a real child. He often gets carried away by bad company. He’s prone to lying, and when he lies, his nose becomes longer. Pinocchio wants to have fun and is constantly rejecting any sense of responsibility.
So the puppet master controls the strings that move Pinocchio, and the Devil in tarot cards represents the limits we set for ourselves: the chains that we bind ourselves with; the mental weapons we use against ourselves to keep from getting ahead. So we’re basically holding ourselves hostage. We’re refusing to let go of fear. We’re holding on to desires. We’re showing a lack of initiative.
So we’re the puppet masters of ourselves. We’re the ones keeping our strings attached to limitation. So as we explore the scenes and the complexity cards, ask yourself, what have you bound yourself to? What are you leaning toward or leaning away from out of fear or negative emotions? And what’s the healthiest way to free yourself?
The Leaning Tower: Extreme Intensity Emotions
In this extreme intensity video, we’re seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa up close. We see people walking around, going about their business below, and the camera pans, so it goes upward and sees the whole tower. You cannot help but notice and feel the lean from this visual.
The issue is that you’re wrapped up in the stress or conflict, so you don’t have a big picture view. You don’t know which way you’re leaning toward or away. You can’t tell if it’s a positive or negative: you just feel the lean. The medium complexity says there are other things you need to consider or other people who are involved, but it’s manageable.
Transformation Example
What I want to do is straighten out the tower. Your transformations could be completely different. As long as they feel healthy in your body, then work with your transformations. For me, I’m actually feeling the pressure. I’m feeling my whole body lean, and I’m feeling it in a sense of dizziness and extra tension in my body as I try to move myself upright.
I’m aware of the lean, I don’t want the lean, so I’m actually just going to imagine a structure, a tube, if you will, that’s slightly wider than me, the tower, coming down, being lowered by a crane over me, straightening me out. Then I’m going to imagine backhoes and dirt and rock coming in underneath and straightening out my foundation.
Before I imagine that tube lifting back off of me, I want to make sure my foundation is solid. I’m still feeling a lean – there seems to be a gap in the centre [of the new foundation], so I’m going to imagine that the form makes sure I’m straight, and that the foundation gets built solidly with the help of this external equipment.
You Don't Have To Do It Alone
This is an example in a transformation that says you don’t have to do it alone. Use your imagination to cut those ties to your limitations to stop being that puppet.
As this form that surrounded me gradually moves away from me, I feel strong, I feel solid, I imagine all the mechanical equipment just vanishing. I feel myself straightened out, not having any particular lean, and I’m now able to look at what I’ve been afraid of, what I’ve refused to try, refused to allow myself to dream of and work toward, from a more solid, upright perspective.
Now, a real world implication of this is that I didn’t get myself straightened out alone. I had others who were willing to help me to straighten out, who were able to identify, or help me identify, that I was leaning too much toward something, and were willing to help me in a way that I needed and wanted support.
In your own life, if you’re feeling that you’re leaning too much toward or away from something, and that it’s because of fear or negative emotions, it might mean, if your transformation is like mine, that you look around to the people around you and ask for their support.
Closing
I’m using the Leaning Tower of Pisa for all emotional intensities; your imagery could be completely different. If you find yourself leaning towards something or leaning away from something, look to:
- Locate in your body where your strongest emotion is.
- Describe it with your own imagery
- Transform that imagery so that you can straighten out that lean and make your healthiest decisions.