Helloo0O Ladies
and Gentlemen!
Welcome back to
Graceland Ontario, your one stop location for success
advice from the greats. Today we’re going to talk about St. Patrick’s Day and
the brilliance of the metaphor.
So, today, as
you probably know, is St. Patrick’s Day. Even in Canada everyone has a great time, partying and
drinking far more than they should.
But there’s
more than that and green ribbons to the legend of ol’ St. Pat.
St. Patrick was
born in Roman Britain but kidnapped to Ireland where he supposedly escaped through the
instructions of God through a dream. He studied to be a priest in Gaul and returned to convert the mainly
polytheistic Irish to Christianity. After some years in practice, he
passed on.
But his
teachings never did.
Originally the
colour of St. Patrick (and generally of Ireland) was blue but, even as early as the seventeenth century,
that turned to green because of the shamrock, St. Pat’s foremost choice to
teach with.
You see, he’d
find a three leaf clover to explain the holy trinity. The clover was green, so
became the colour of the day.
But the
brilliance comes through his use of metaphor. Clearly a shamrock has nothing to
do with the holy trinity, but associating something as common as it with what
he wanted to persuade people towards, Catholicism, made it easier for his teachings to pierce the old Irish. Even more brilliantly, the shamrock had been used in the prior circulating religions and so was already a religious symbol. You see,
people are less likely to fight something they know, like a shamrock in ancient
Ireland, than they are a new concept, like an
unheard of religion. Instead of coming out with the old “you’re all sinners
destined to burn in hell!” line, he gently persuaded them through things they
knew. And now, for centuries past, people’ve broken the lent fast to feast in
St. Pat’s name.
Learn from St.
Pat: there’re plenty of things people know, use all the time, and trust that
can be likened to your idea. There are things they’ll understand when you talk
to them long before they’ll get your dream. Now the idea is not to lose your
dream, it’s just to turn it into a metaphor, like the shamrock to the cross, to
get people to understand something easier. You don’t have a very long time to
get a point across in a pitch. The quicker you get them to understand it
through metaphors and similar events or ideas, the more likely you’ll win their
support.
Have a
fantastic St. Patrick’s Day and good luck persuading!
Alex H.
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