This is the second part of the interview with Antonio Meza. In the first part we talk about Antonio’s life story and his career as an NLP (neurolinguistic programming) trainer and coach. We looked at the combination of NLP and graphic facilitation and how to record sessions using an iPad. In the second part Antonio gives you an introduction into symbolic thinking.

Everyone uses symbolic thinking and we don’t have to learn it. For example a person with hanging shoulders and a sad face would be seen as not resourceful while a person on top of the mountain in superman posture would be seen as very energetic. Here it doesn’t matter whether it is a real person or a stick figure drawing.

Symbolic thinking describes the process of creating an internal representation of a situation, scene or thought. We use all of our senses to imagine a situation and create our own internal representation. Every person is different so that everyone creates his own emotional reaction about the scene.

Understanding the concepts of symbolic thinking makes you a better graphic recorder as you can use those metaphors to tell more engaging stories even about the most boring topics. Just ask what the topic means for the people in your story and find the right metaphor.