Wild Flowers in full Bloom

For Twelve days this Christmas we decided to publish twelve stories. These stories are metaphors told by participants on our NLP Practitioner Course as part of their weekend on Metaphor, Milton and Changing and Adapting.

Most of these people thought they couldn’t write a story, in fact some of them start the weekend muttering ‘I can’t do this’ – well enjoy........

Jemima has been learning the Mandarin language and finds it easier to   remember the textual letter and words. Mandarin also uses pictures as part of its language. It is the pictures that Jemima finds difficult to remember and how these relate to the Mandarin word.

Jemima enjoys playing games, reading and doesn’t watch much TV.

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Once upon a time, on a hot summer’s day a lady was walking through the woods when she noticed a variety of wild flowers in full bloom as she passed by a lake in the middle of the woods. The lady thought she had seen these flowers before, but couldn’t quite remember their names although they did appear to look very familiar.

When the lady got home, she decided to find out the names of the wild flowers by looking for them in a wild flower book she had. Slowly turning over the pages the lady found the pictures of the flowers she had seen and was able to find out their names written underneath the picture.

Some time later the lady went for the same walk, again walking through the woods and again came across a variety of wild flowers in full bloom as she passed the lake.  The lady remembered seeing the flowers before and again couldn’t remember the names of the flowers she was seeing.

The lady remembered looking for them in her wild flower book – and again, when she got home she slowly turned over the pages in the book until she found the pictures of the flowers she had seen.

The lady thought to herself “How can I remember the names to the wild flowers I keep seeing on my walk?”

There was no TV in the house and as games were such an important part of the entertainment of the household the lady decided to invite family and friends round to dinner and game of ‘iSpy Wild Flowers’ one evening.  

Using the same book of wild flowers the lady showed the pictures of the flowers she had been seeing on her walks and asked her friends to name the flower pictures in turn. Each of her family and friends read out the name of the flower in turn until they each knew the names of all the flowers on the walk.

Having played the game three times the lady suddenly realised that she was in fact able to identify the names of the flowers from pictures, herself.

This was particularly satisfying as she now knew the words for the pictures of the flowers she had been seeing.

The lady as with all good stories lived happily ever after.