Love is … Do you remember that comic strip? It reminds me of childhood birthday cards. It appeared in the papers, just a single frame: a little naked girl and boy with a different one-line phrase about what love is. “Love is … the way to grow.”

“Love is… someone to scratch the itch you can’t reach.”

“Love is … being able to say you’re sorry.”

It was started in the 1960s by Kim Casali and still runs in some newspapers today. Clearly, love is a lot of things.

The topic today though isn’t love, it’s life. What’s it all about? Can you sum it up in just one sentence? As an experiment, grab a pen to write and finish this line: Life is …

And whatever you wrote, you’re right!

How we classify things is how we will see them. We will filter the evidence of our experiences to support our assertion, whether positive or negative, whether it is helping us or not.

What difference does it makes if we answer life is hard compared to life is an adventure or even life is a precious gift? Surely one statement can’t have much bearing?

Our answers might hold greater significance than we realise. How we perceive the world and relate to others, “our ordinary conceptual system, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature”, according to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, authors of Metaphors We Live By.

Metaphors don’t just pervade our language, but how we think and what we do.

If we believe life is a struggle, it’s no doubt due to some difficult past or current experience. Life has struggles, certainly. I’ve never met anyone who would say it has all been plain sailing (metaphor alert!). But if we hold “struggle” as our metaphor for life, we will always be ready for battle, looking for the next problem, feeling like we are constantly fighting unseen forces holding us down or back.

While it is useful to be prepared for hard times, if that is all we’re seeing, we will overlook the joy and abundance that there is.

The powerfully useful thing about our metaphorical thinking is that we can change it. You can choose how you want to look at life. It may take a bit of practice to make it habit, but if you don’t like your current answer, pick a better one.

Perhaps borrow from a classic.

Remember that “life’s a beach” bumper sticker? Not bad, especially if it’s a Bermuda beach: a beautiful gift of nature, a place for fun, frolicking, romance (and sunburn if you’re careless), a thing that changes with tides and the passage of time.

Even after a terrible storm when all the sand has been swept away, when it no longer resembles what you thought your beach would ever look like, it is still a beach. And slowly the sand gathers in again and will be restored: never the same but ever beautiful and full of potential.

Or, taste test Forrest Gump’s catchphrase (yes, there is a movie quote for everything!): “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

We don’t know what life will bring us, but hey, it’s all still chocolate (even if every so often it’s an orange crème — blech!). Or try this film for inspiration, Life Is Beautiful… (weeping just at the thought).

Choose a metaphor or a simile that sparkles and makes you feel alive — and then live it! If life is like a gift, then gratefully open it up every morning, allow yourself to be surprised, and use it!

Or if life is a dance, then take to the floor and boogie. Life is a song if you feel its rhythm in your bones and do what makes your heart sing. I believe, life is… an opportunity to choose how we want to live each day.

Julia Pitt is a trained success coach and certified NLP practitioner on the team at Benedict Associates. For further information contact Julia on 705-7488, www.juliapittcoaching.com.