I pick my 10-year-old son up from school the other day, and he gets in the car and he says “Oh Mum, there’s been this incident at school between two of the kids and they’re both in trouble., They’ve both had to go off and see the principal.”  

And the long and the short of it was, one of the kids had, (they’d been playing online games), and one of them had emailed the other one, and they were grumpy about something that had happened.  

And so this one said to that one, “I hate you.”  

Right, nice, ok, they’re 10-year old’s. 

And then this one, in reply to that email said some really horrible, horrible, nasty things, (which I’m not even going to repeat), they’re just nasty.  

Anyway, when this one sent that email, he had opened it on his computer, and the teacher had been walking around the classroom and actually saw some of this email and of course, inquired about what was going on, found out, and both kids ended up at the principal’s office.  

So I was saying to my son, Harvey, “so how bad was the email?”  

And this is what Harvey said.  

He said, “Mum, is the difference between killing an ant, and killing a human.”  

Now, I’m driving along, and you know, I’m like, oh, fruit, wow.  

What I get is the magnitude of the difference between the email that said, “I hate you” and the response that this other guy came back with right.  

Now, again I don’t know what all the detail was, although I do know a little bit, all I know is that it was that much worse.  

So even though I don’t need to know any other detail, by him sharing that analogy, it’s like it brought the difference in magnitude to light.  

And I get that saying, “I hate you”, it was a really mild email in comparison to what the other one was, which I get struggle on many fronts to find how that kid has been able to say that.  

But anyway, that’s another story. 

But I loved the analogy and the power that it gave to really make something and make a point really, really clear.  

So where do you use analogies in what you do? 

Even in your everyday life, in your work life as a professional.   

Because they can be super powerful to try and even just get a small portion of a point across, so somebody can better understand the value of the message that you’re delivering, or the value of the conversation that you’re having or the meaning you’re trying to make.  

So where could you do something like that?  

Like I said, this was a 10-year-old about the difference between killing an ant and killing a human.  

You know, I mean, not very pleasant, but I know that you get the drift. 

Because after all, You are Valuable