Cliches – Clues to your model of the world?
Sources of wisdom – Clichés
Clichés are terms, phrases, or even ideas that capture or rather, once captured something valuable enough for them to repeated and used extensively. However, in the most part over use and common acceptance has led us to relegate them to the fringe. We hear then and dismiss them effectively losing any of the value they were once intended to pass on.
Take any cliché :
A stitch in time saves nine
Originally captured to set us a guide to repair clothes or sails quickly when we first notice a tear or a rip because we know that if you leave it the tear or rip gets worse and it’ll soon take 9 stitches not just the well timed 1 to fix it.
This cliché reflects a common success principle that works for many of us to achieve positive change by nudging things in a general direction or by resisting degradation of what we have that we enjoy now.
It’s relatively easy to see how the same good advice works in many different situations. A stitch in time ….
Doing something today in good time to make tomorrow easier or better ….
Saving a penny today means the job of getting rich tomorrow is smaller
Doing sit ups today means getting fit tomorrow is less of a job
Saying no to the cake or pudding today means getting slim is less of a job tomorrow
There are multiple applications of this simple principle encouraging us to do simple easy things today designed to make tomorrow easier or less onerous than it will otherwise be.
Of course, there’s a balance, today is full of stiches we could do now and if your mind is a what’s wrong what needs to be fixed slant then there will always be more than you could every do.
The principle is good but it still means how we use it counts and we have decide which situation receives our stitch
The English language contains hundreds of cliches
We could see them as part of an oral tradition that passes down advice and wisdom. advice and wisdom that may still be valid in your model of the world.
To make the most of them we need to see beyond the words, beyond the context of the cliché itself and look for the success principle that lurks beneath them.
Don’t cry over spilled milk
This not just about ‘not crying’ when things apparently go wrong it’s about telling us that when you feel like crying there are more important things to do than cry.
We might want to check our perspective is right and useful
We eight want to make plans to avoid spilling any more milk, it goes on and if you apply the cliché in its widest terms to your situation its usually easy to find the application that will help.
Cliches provide a stimulus for us to stop what we would do naturally and to consider other options. They can help us break up any stimulus response failure pattern or get us to look closer at cause and effect relationships.
All that glitters isn’t gold
Caught up in the positive future or opportunity we see we rush to make choices or decisions that are not in our best interest. Research shows younger women are more interested in bad boys and yet good boys tend to make better husbands.
This cliché says stop check that the glitter is real that it has relevance, that it is not hiding something more important that would be a valuable fact to notice.
Cliches help us see when we are not working optimally
Don’t get your knickers in a twist
This reminds us we can sometimes get worked up over the wrong things, it helps us remember that when this happens we may make poor choices and that the first job is to untwist the nickers if we are to be effective.
Cliches help us understand temporary mood swings
Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed
Waking up on the wrong side of the bed simply means we have the wrong view point. It implies we can choose our view point and even create it (by getting out of the right side of the bed).
With our wrong head on, we see things in a way that doesn’t suit us long term, perhaps we see the negative in everything rather than the positive that is also there. This cliché reminds us our perception and thinking can be changed by circumstances and if we let this happen it’s not necessarily going to end well. It reminds us that we our responsible for our mood and that we can and should take steps to make sure our best interests are served by which side of the bed we get out of.
We get more help from cliché with managing our reactions
Only time will tell
This cliché is covered effectively in our story of the White Horse.
When news arrives and it looks like bad news or, good news, the reality is we don’t yet know if this is true, it takes time to understand the real impact of anything. We have met so many self-employed, business, people who started their business because no one else would employ them or employ them fairly. Those pushed out of their jobs can recall the emotion of that awful day when they were sacked and lost their ‘’real job’.
And yet, ten years later, all of them looked back on that moment as the start of all their real success.
Model of the World and success principles
Even with these few examples we can see how cliches underpin some of our most effective success principles. Writing off cliches when you don’t really get them can cheat you out of lots of good ideas and advice. Some of these also let us see what we think or how we think and so provide clues into our own models of the world
There’s a list below if you want to have a quick run through and if any resonate for you today……
All for one, and one for all
Kiss and make up
He has his tail between his legs
Cat got your tongue?
Read between the lines
Just a matter of time
As old as the hills
Fit as a fiddle
A diamond in the rough
Opposites attract
Every cloud has a silver lining
Don’t cry over spilled milk
The calm before the storm
Laughter is the best medicine
Frightened to death
All is fair in love and war
All’s well that ends well
Haste makes waste
The writing’s on the wall
Time heals all wounds
What goes around comes around
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade
Sick to your guts
Start with a clean slate
You want an axe to grind
another day, another dollar
A penny saved is a penny earned
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
All’s fair in love and war
All’s well that ends well
It’ll be all right in the end
Avoid it (them) like the plague
Her bark is worse than her bite
Your barking up the wrong tree
Beggars can’t be choosers
It’s better to be late than never
It’s better to be safe than sorry
Stuck between a rock and a hard place
He’s a big fish in a small pond
The bigger they are the harder they fall
A bird in the hand is worth two in a bush
Birds of a feather flock together
Like a bull in a china shop
Burn the midnight oil
You can’t burn the candle at both ends
It’s the calm before the storm
It’s a can of worms
Don’t cross a bridge before you come to it
Curiosity killed the cat
The darkest hour is just before the dawn
The devil is in the details
Divide and conquer
Don’t burn your bridges
Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth
Don’t rock the boat
Every dog has its day
This will pass
You got to have eyes in the back of your head
If you always do what you always did then you’ll always get what you always got.
Put garbage in, get garbage out
Go against the grain …
It isn’t over till the fat lady sings
It takes one to know one
You can’t judge a book by its cover
It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie
Don’t let the cat out of the bag
Live like there’s no tomorrow
Make hay while the sun shines
There’s more than one way to skin a cat
No pain no gain
No time like the present
If not now when?
If not you who?
There’s no use crying over spilled milk
Just keep your nose to the grindstone
There’s not a hope in hell
He / she they are not playing with a full deck
It’s really not the end of the world
No not in my backyard
It’s not written in stone
That’s nothing to sneeze at
Nothing ventured nothing gained
You are they are – on thin ice
Once bitten, twice shy
One bad apple doesn’t spoil the bushel
There’s one born every minute
Out of sight, out of mind
Don’t jump out of the frying pan into the fire
We’re not out of the woods yet
You’re / we are out on a limb
It’s as plain as the nose on your face
They don’t play by the rules
If you play your cards right
Don’t pull your punches
Time to put the pedal to the metal
Don’t put the cart before the horse
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
It’s six of one, half a dozen of another
You are skating on thin ice
The squeaky wheel gets the oi
Still waters run deep
A stitch in time- saves 9
The straw that broke the camel’s back
Wake up smell the coffee
It’s time to throw in the towel
That’s water under the bridge
Weather the storm, it’ll pass
When the going gets tough, the tough get going
wrong side of the bed
You can run, but you can’t hide
You only live once
Cliches – Clues to your model of the world?