Metaphors are incredibly powerful persuasive tools. If you’re telling somebody else what to do, or even suggesting a course of action, there’s usually going to be resistance. But as soon as you fire up a metaphor, all conscious resistance goes out the window. So, what is a metaphor? It can be a story, it can […]
Metaphor Magic
Stories have long been used to convey wisdom, impart warnings, and entertain. They can also be powerfully persuasive. I used to work for this company, and every Wednesday morning we had these meetings. Like other meetings, they didn’t really contain any information that couldn’t have been sent out via memo. I got the suspicion that […]
Get Some!
Once upon a time, there was a simple chemical. Then some lightening, or an act of God turned this simple chemical into a life form. This life form had one objective – make copies of itself. In order to do that, it had to extract resources from its environment. Of course, it wasn’t the only […]
Where Does NLP Come From?
Plenty of people think that politicians are “trained” in NLP and are using some kind of super secret wicked powerful manipulation to woo the voters. That’s how they get away with such ridiculous shenanigans that would quickly land you are I in the clink. But are they really using NLP? Yes, and no. See, NLP […]
Be Careful What You Pick Up
Once there was this hiker, out for an afternoon stroll. He was up hiking in the mountains, and was moving along a pretty good clip. He got up over the tree line, and noticed that the temperature had dropped considerably. He zipped up his jacket, went for a while longer, and then decided to head […]
You Don’t Need Permission For Anything
If you listen to the Sex Pistols’ version of “Substitute,” originally by The Who, you can hear Johnny Rotten in the background saying, “You don’t need permission for anything!” allegedly referring to that fact that they didn’t get “official” permission from The Who to cover the song. I remember a kid, I learned that if […]
Follow Your Bliss
Joseph Campbell, the studier of mythology from around the world, had this to say when asked what the best life strategy is: “Follow your bliss.” See, he had studied mythology and discovered that pretty much all stories from all cultures followed the same basic premise. The “reluctant hero” would be living a pretty boring life, […]
Create Success Like A Sex Crazed Caveman
I love reading books about evolution, and primitive behavior. I always like reading how scientists are figuring out what we did back in the day and how it relates to how we behave today. See, humans change very, very slowly. Most of our instincts, desires, and natural born skills center around a hunter / gatherer […]
Movies, Milton and Storytelling Magic
Ever hear of the old Greek idea of catharsis? It’s the notion that by watching some characters in a story play something out on stage (or in books or movies) we kind of get a sense of “release” by vicariously experiencing at least some of the emotions they’re going through. Girls like sappy romance movies […]
The Metaphor Metaphor
Most people are surprised when they find out how much of our everyday language is filled with metaphors. To get a bit technical, words themselves are metaphors, for the ideas the words represent. Just like the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, one of the widely learned metaphors in human history, the word “dog” […]