Leaders choose two metaphorical frames of reference for their place in the world. They choose to act as a fish swimming upstream against a current of negativity and falsehood. Leaders see their role in life as acting out of positiveness and truthfulness while also seeing themselves as a river continually moving and adjusting to the environments they encounter and often changing the life paths of those they meet.

Non-leaders choose the opposite metaphorical frames of reference to justify their tyrannical place in the world. They choose to act as a dead fish floating down stream and perpetuating the negative and false treatment they were forced to endure. Non-leaders also act as they live in the equivalent of a swamp where death is the end and nothing changes except their lives are ended here as well as those they exploit for selfish gain.