Navigating changing times

“Global tidal wave of 70,000 job cuts,” announced the online news. “The tsunami of layoffs started in Europe …” Instantly I got the picture. It’s a metaphor that works. It describes a giant ripple effect of job loss caused by a seismic tremor in the global economy. It also describes the emotional impact felt or […]

Episode 92 The Dream Show: Metaphor magic

What do dreams of flying into power lines, feeling the ground shake, going round and round in circles, and meeting an old man close to death have in common? They’re all in this episode, they’re all metaphors for waking life situations, and I use these – and other dreams – to show you how to […]

What if?

A man dreamed he was crawling over a mosaic floor, checking for missing tiles. The job seemed endless. What if … he climbed the stairs and looked down on the mosaic floor instead of crawling over it? Would the missing tiles be easier to spot? We’ll come back to Mosaic Man and his dream later, […]

Quick, quick, slow

Here are some things I know about myself: I think at high speed, I generate ideas and solutions quickly, I talk fast, and I read slowly. Michael can read a whole book in the time it takes me to read a couple of chapters. But that’s nothing compared to Geoff, a friend, who reads books […]

Hot coffee, warm heart?

Can you distinguish a dream from reality? Test yourself on this one: John is reading resumes, deciding which candidate to employ for a position. He takes one resume, a sheath of pages attached to a heavy clipboard. “Serious,” he concludes. He takes a second resume, the same number of pages but this time attached to […]

Charlie’s bone

A dog, Charlie, sees a meaty bone tantalisingly just out of reach, on the grass, on the other side of a high wire fence. The aroma twitches his nose, moistens his mouth, and fixes his eyes to the tasty prize. The only problem is the fence between where he is now and where he wants […]