watch tHe skies

I’m off on holiday this week so I thought I’d leave you with some comedy exam answers. Hit more to enjoy and I’ll see you next week… (more…)

So Britney Spears, former child superstar turned bubblegum pop minx turned mum of two turned slightly skanky mum of two has shaved her hair, much to the amusement of Heat readers and the delight of paparazzi who can hear cash tills ringing.

And if that isn’t bad enough, the Hairdresser is selling her hair and the can of Red Bull that she was drinking. Let’s put aside the fact that instead of laughing at her that perhaps it was a cry for help. Anyway I’m not a psychotherapist, but this whole event did remind me of an excellent book by Chuck Palahniuk “Survivor”, a great read should you need a new book, and an interesting view of what it is to become a celebrity in modern times.

And finally I’d like to make the observation that all of these celebrities that go nuts seem to have one thing in common - Red Bull. I read somewhere that before being admitted in to rehab, Robbie Williams was drinking twenty cans a day. TWENTY? Given that each can of Red Bull has THREE times the caffeine of a can of coke, which itself has something like twice the caffeine of a cup of coffee, Robbie was consuming something like 120 cups of coffee a day, or 5 an hour, which you clearly can do 24-7 as with that much caffeine in your system sleep isn’t an option! This, combined with the taurine, a compound that is supposed to make you more alert, has the potential to (according to this site) “cause anxiety, irritability, high sensitivity to noise and self-mutilisation tendencies”! What did Britney do after shaving her hair? Get a tattoo! What does Robbie have? Lots of tattoos, possibly TWENTY times the tattoos that Britney has, because he drinks twenty times the Red Bull!

So there you have it, some might conclude that Red Bull is the cause of madness in these celebs. I am now off to do further statistical analysis of the correlation between madness, tattoos and obscenely dangerous energy drinks.

Google rapport and you will find a bunch of stuff on how to get a connection to someone’s unconscious mind. The idea is that if you can get “in rapport” with someone, their unconscious is paying attention which gives you a much more attentive audience. This is a key part of NLP and coaching, and is highly documented.

However, as with all things that have a possible persuasion opportunity, salesmen and sales trainers have gotten hold of the idea and massaged it in to a set of techniques to help sell anything to anyone. Common “tricks” that I have been taught on sales courses include “matching and mirroring” the customer’s movements and posture. The idea is that people like people like them, and if you mirror them then at an unconscious level you establish a connection based on sameness. Once in rapport in this way, the customer will begin to “follow” your movements and posture, the pace and lead concept. It’s great except that really it just isn’t as easy as that. It’s creepy if done badly, and even if done well tends to be annoying.

When I first started coaching and practicing I really got caught up in this idea, trying to match and mirror all aspects of the person, even trying it out in meetings with other people to see if I could lead them. I had some success but something just didn’t feel right about it. So I started looking to see what people were doing when they got in to rapport with me without me doing anything. Friends, family, work colleagues, and I soon noticed something interesting. It seemed that rapport is the by product of being GENUINELY interested in the other person. And it’s quick too - a smile is all it takes, and the signs are there for those who care to listen to themselves - for me it’s a warm feeling and a slight sensation that time has slowed a little and everything else has quietened down.

How to be genuinely interested in someone
This takes some practice, obviously there are people that do this naturally, but if you already do this, then you will find it easy to develop even deeper rapport with the people around you.

When you see someone to test this on, take these steps
1. Go quiet on the inside, for some this as easy as a “sssh” to themselves, or putting their tongue to rest gently on the back of your top front teeth.
2. Allow yourself a little smile, internal or external (or both!)
3. If it’s someone you know, remind yourself what is great about them - why you like them
4. Whether it’s someone you know or not, allow yourself to wonder what is special about them - what learning they have that could enrich your life, what amazing stories to tell, what makes them happy
5. Accept them exactly as they are, when someone doesn’t feel from you a need for them to change, their defenses drop a little

Practice this and quickly you will find your interactions with people to be stronger and deeper, and I personally find that accepting people just as they are significantly drops my own stress levels, and leaves others really enjoying their time with you. Rapport isn’t a mechanism to influence people, it’s the side effect of the dialogue that you get on many levels when you take time to enjoy your encounter with another human being.

This also has the side effect of making the other person feel good, so get out there and spread the love!

Today I am doing lots of driving. Despite leaving very early this morning in an effort to avoid the rush-hour traffic for my 9am meeting I got snarled on the M1, M40, M25 and M4. Although I never actually stopped, If I can get out and walk quicker I consider that stationary.

Anyway my mind wandered back to this week’s Top Gear. I know little about cars but as the show is mostly about fooling around, automotive knowledge is not a hurdle to enjoying it. James May talked about applying the Bernouilli Principle to motorway maintenance, and I found this very interesting. For those wondering what the Bernoulli Effect is, you are unlikely to gain startling scientific revelations here - go and google it, but from the depths of my residual A-level knowledge, it’s about how pressure is a constant in a system, and when a fluid passed through a smaller area, the speed has to increase to  maintain the constant. May then suggested that rather than slowing everyone down when there is a lane or two out on a motorway, that the speed should be increased in line with Bernouilli’s theory (which seems on first glance to make sense in relation to the flow of vehicles or other materials when considered from a macro perspective). This would mean than if one lane is out we need to travel at 140mph, rising to 210mph if there are two lanes out as is often the case in the evenings, or during rush hour on the M1. This of course presupposes that we all drive Bugatti Veyrons, but this aside I think that he has a good point.

This lead me to think about what motorway driving might look like in the future. Once autopilot is a reality (can’t be far away), cars could travel at much higher speeds and with less space in between, increasing the safe density of traffic. However to work effectively I guess the traffic in any area would need to develop a “hive mind” perhaps all connected wirelessly to a flow control processor for each traffic area. Cool! Imagine hurtling at 200mph around a city, without being in control of the car? It would be like taking Alton Tower’s Nemesis to work every day…:)

So now I’ve completed my NLP practitioner course I thought I’d document my experiences and views on whether the course was worthwhile… (more…)

The site will be quiet this weekend as I attend the final module of my NLP Practitioner course - watch this space monday for my thoughts on whether it was a worthy investment.

In the meantime I leave you with an update to my what’s on my iPod page - thoughts on some other good albums (Above & Beyond and Space Manoeuvers), as well as the aural marmite that is Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Enjoy, and have a good weekend

Jen and I decided to make this our Valentine movie. We were originally going to do Music & Lyrics, but this looked like a blast so we gave it a go.

The movie tells the story of Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), ace cop in the London Metropolitan Police force, who is reassigned to the sleepy Gloucestershire village of Sandford. Here, Angel soon gets stuck in to the local crime (or lack thereof), but things soon become suspicious when, one by one, people start to suffer horrendous “accidents”, which soon set Angel’s spidey-sense tingling, as he takes it upon himself to investigate, with the hindrance of his new partner, the partially-brained Danny (Nick Frost). The investigation is tough as he gets to grips with the odd collection of villagers, and soon Angel begins to question his own sanity, as did the policeman he replaced, who lost his mind with fatal consequences…

The first thing of note is how great the cast is, a wide selection of well-known faces make cameo or greater roles, from Steve Coogan to Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton and Edward Woodward, all give entertainingly quirky performances, which work brilliantly against Pegg’s straightlaced Angel. On top of this some top-class direction keeps the story moving at pace, and there was only perhaps once in the movie when I thought that it could have been edited more tightly. This is a minor comment really because the script is so loaded with gags of every kind that I was really too busy laughing to notice such things. And much of the laughing was the genuine belly laughs that are hard to come by, particularly with such regularity in a movie. Many times I was still chuckling about a previous gag when the next joke came along, a sign of a very funny movie. Loads of references to the movies that it parodies \ homages, it competently manages to take off everything from Midsomer Murders to Die Hard and everything in between.

In the thick of this, it’s Pegg and Frost who really make this movie work, as genuinely likeable and completely unbelievable action heroes, such that even though we aren’t supposed to take the film seriously, we were still cheering them to the end.

If you haven’t got it by now - I loved this movie, and if I could go watch it again today I would, because I’m sure that I would still laugh more at this on the second, third or fourth viewing than I would most so-called comedies that arrive on the big screen. As far as I’m concerned, if you can only go see one movie this year, see Hot Fuzz. Spiderman and Pirates will no doubt take more at the box office, but they won’t be as entertaining as this.

Steve K, creator of the excellent www.digitallard.co.uk has created a new blog over at www.stevekinsey.com, so if you are in to gadgets, movies, web stuff and HD (grr yes he has it and I don’t) head over and say hello. Be sure to come back mind, I only write this stuff for you, you know…

After a long day yesterday travelling to and from the big smoke, I had a couple of glasses of red wine last night, and as a result I feel very groggy today. There was a time when I could have several pints in the evening and still be in fifth gear for work the next day. Not any more, I wonder if I am developing an allergy to alcohol…?

So as a result, today’s post is a little disjointed and takes the form of a set of unconnected ramblings and thoughts that I’ve had over the last few days.

First class highest risk?
So my trip to London yesterday was made more comfortable by going first class. To be honest I usually go first class - the seats are considerably more comfortable, you are guaranteed one with a table, the first class lounge has free coffee, papers and a TV, and actually it’s not that much more expensive than going cattle, and no screaming kids.

It did occur to me that first class is at the front of the train, as indeed it is on aeroplanes too. So it seems that in the event of a crash, first class bites it first? Perhaps those that have paid more should be at the back of the plane (or the middle of a train as you are just as likely to be smashed in to as you are to smash in to someone). After all that extra cash should pay for the extra chance of survival don’t you think? Perhaps the first class carriage should be made from Black Box material for extra safety.

Apple sanctuary
I nipped in to the Apple shop on Regents Street to worship at the shrine of iPod, and I just wonder why it is that the place is full of people on their Macs? After all they don’t surve coffee or even have tables to sit at, so why not head to Starbucks and get yourself a macchiato?

I’ve not been in the Apple shop for a while and I must say I was blown away by the sheer volume of iPod gadgets and widgets available now. Some of the speaker docks that Altec Lansing are doing are fantastic, though none of them seem to cater for us people who sanely keep their ipods in protective skins.

I notice that they have done away with the lecture area and replaced it with an “iPod bar”, to help people too dim to work out how “menu - play - pause - skip” works. Blimey, how exactly did we invent dna fingerprinting?

Stealth price rises
And on the subject of Starbucks, when did it become acceptable to charge £3.50 for a coffee? sure I like Starbucks - the ambience, the paninis, the fact that they sell Innocent Smoothies, but you can now only get 3 coffees for the price of a CD? Surely very odd. Oh and why do people think that buying a “skinny” bun makes any difference to their waistline when there’s about 500 calories in a large hot chocolate with whipped cream?

Spooks’ doors
My trip to London yesterday involved a meeting with government types in their building. We had to go through rotating secure doors like in Spooks, which made my day. I wonder if you can get UPVC versions for home?

That will do for now. Maybe more later once I have had a cup of tea and maybe a sleep in the toilet cubicles…

I’ve added a page to the site to document what music I’m currently listening to. As I type this it is probably out of date, however I will endeavour to keep it relatively fresh so you can find out what is currently cool to listen to. Feel free to comment on my taste in music as you see fit!