For the past several newsletters, we've explored the ocean as a metaphor for change.
We learned that sometimes we have to get beyond the wave break. We learned that fighting every wave exhausts us. And we explored what it means to move into deeper water, where instead of being knocked down by every swell, we learn to navigate with it. But eventually we have to come back to shore. And that brings me to another image of transformation I’d like to explore in this series of four newsletters.
The smith and forge.
I’ve been thinking lately about the heat and pressure we all face during times of disruption and change, whether intentional or not. The terminology, imagery, and metaphors that came up for me are a smith and a forge. First, to level set us on the terminology and definitions:
Smith (Literal definition): A smith is a craftsperson who works with metal, traditionally shaping it through heating, hammering, bending, and other techniques. The word appears in terms such as blacksmith, silversmith, and goldsmith.
The Smith (for coaching metaphor): The person who takes material subjected to heat and pressure and intentionally works with it to create a new shape, purpose, or form.
Smithing (Literal definition): Smithing is the craft or process of working and shaping metal, particularly through techniques involving heat, force, tools, and skilled manipulation.
Smithing (for coaching metaphor): The intentional work of shaping something through heat, pressure, repeated effort, skill, and adjustment.
A blacksmith doesn't apply heat because the metal is defective. Heat is applied because something that was once rigid needs to become capable of taking a new shape. Our lives can work much the same way.
Forge (Literal definition): A forge is the furnace or hearth where metal is heated so that it becomes workable. The term can also refer more broadly to the workplace where a smith heats and shapes metal.
The Forge (for coaching metaphor): The environment in which heat makes something previously rigid capable of being reshaped.
Metaphorically, the forge is the disruption itself, or the period of transition created by it.
Forging (Literal definition): Forging is the process of shaping metal through force, often hammering or pressing, typically after the metal has been heated enough to become workable.
The word also has a useful everyday meaning: we speak of forging a path, forging relationships, forging an identity, or forging a future, creating something through purposeful effort
Forging (for coaching metaphor): Intentionally using the conditions of change, heat, pressure, resistance and repeated action, to shape what comes next.
The forge is the environment.
Forging is the process.
Smithing is the craft.
The smith is the person exercising agency.
Disruption creates the forge. → Heat makes change possible. → Pressure exposes what needs reshaping. → Forging is the work of transformation. → We become the smith, intentionally shaping what comes next. Join me for this and the next three newsletters as we explore this metaphor for our change journey.
Each of us are the smith in our own lives and story, shaping what we want to become going forward through the heat and pressure of the forge (disruption).
Career loss. Organizational change. A relationship ending. A health disruption. Retirement. Returning to school. Realizing the life or career we built no longer fits.
These experiences create heat and pressure.
Our instinct is often to escape that heat as quickly as possible: How do I get things back to normal?
But perhaps there is another question:
What has become possible to reshape precisely because normal has been disrupted?
The heat of disruption can expose assumptions we haven't questioned in years:
What do I actually want now?
What am I holding onto simply because it is familiar?
What part of my identity belonged to a role, organization, relationship, or previous chapter?
What matters enough to carry forward?
What might I finally be willing to change?
ARC connection
This is where Adaptability becomes especially important.
Adaptability isn't surrendering to circumstances. It is recognizing when circumstances have changed enough that our old approach may no longer serve us.
We don't control the temperature of every forge we enter.
But we can influence what we do once we're there.
Closing reflection
Instead of asking only:
"How do I get out of this?"
Try asking:
"What is this disruption making possible for me to reshape?"
That is where forging begins.
But heat alone doesn't create something stronger. Once the metal becomes malleable, something else enters the process:
Pressure.