The Power of Metaphors

"When Pablo Picasso, the Spanish artist, was a schoolboy, he was terrible at math because whenever the teacher had him write a number on the chalkboard, he saw something different. The number four looked like a nose to him and he kept doodling until he filled in the rest of the face. The number 1 looked like a tree, 9 looked like a person walking against the wind, and 8 resembled an angel. Everyone else in the classroom saw numbers on the chalkboard; Picasso perceived a variety of different images. The connection between perspective and creative thinking has to do with habituation and over-familiarization. Where creative thinking is concerned, that is the irony of the skill: the more adept you are at something, the less likely you are to look at it in a different way." In this article, author Michael Michalko explores the power of metaphors.

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