watch tHe skies

Since we came back from Holiday, Ben has been suffering from a cold. Well actually he suffered for a week, during which time Jen and I seemed untouched by the virus, which was fortunate as the little man was very poorly, struggling to breathe through his nose, which constantly ran, coughing, not sleeping well, generally grumpy. After a week or so he recovered and seemed pretty bright.

However unknown to Jen and I, the cold had incubated and mutated within baby to become a giant nasty monster of a cold, which Jen then caught, and passed to me. Now Ben seems to have recaught the mutant virus and the whole house is infected with fits of sneezing, coughing, lack of sleep and all round grumpiness.

My concern is how we break this vicious circle of illness before it mutates in to a living breathing monster that rampages through our village, destroying newsagents and chipshops and anything else that crosses its path. Perhaps there is no hope. Or perhaps it will wither and die and we can get back to our normal lives and not each have to carry around a box of tissues with us everywhere we go.

On the plus side, Ben is now crawling like a good’un and climbing up furniture. Adding a third dimension to his world seems to have taken it’s toll though, he is forever bumping in to stuff, pulling stuff on top of himself and falling over. Still, it’s funny to watch.

This weekend I got to fulfil one of my ambitions and that was to do some Rally driving. For my birthday, Jenny bought me a half day session at Prestwold Hall, north of Loughborough. Here they have an old airfield where you can drive, amongst others, Ferraris, Aston Martins, Lamborghinis and an assortment of rally cars.

So it was an early start on saturday morning to pile up the M1 to the venue, don my crash helmet and see what they had to offer. (more…)

As the reality of the UK smoking ban comes in to focus, more and more people are thinking seriously about giving up. It’s one thing I guess to nip outside of the restaurant for a quick drag between courses, but it’s another to be seperated from your lovely pint to stand in the rain outside a grotty old pub.

For me as a non-smoker I welcome the ban. It will mean that my clothes don’t smell like an ashtray after a night at the pub, however the lonely feeling I get sometimes in restaurants when all of my friends are standing outside sparking up, leaving me reading the blurb on the back of the bottle of Merlot, will likely be extended to every trip to a public house.

So I am pleased that I have my first smoking gig. Shortly I will be helping someone give up the evil weed using my newly certified Jedi powers. There is no one-way to “cure” a smoker. Richard Bandler - the Yoda of NLP does it in about ten minutes using a lot of trance, metaphors and swishing. I’ve seen Paul McKenna (probably the Obi Wan Kenobi of NLP in UK circles) do it with negative anchors and compulsion blowout, plus there’s probably a load of other stuff they can’t show on tv.

However I’ve found my own way and I’m ready to unleash it on the public. As previously discussed, I’ve done a load of research, spoken to some people already in the field about their own methods, and combined a whole bunch of techniques and ideas in to my own session that I’m looking forward to testing. Jenny is still waiting to see some “magic” before she believes that NLP actually works (I’m banned from doing any on her in case I mind control her like Derren Brown, I did point out that if I could do that, wouldn’t I already have her dancing around like a chicken? She wouldn’t believe me), and I would imagine that helping someone quit smoking would be magic enough, unless her map of the world adjusts to say it was just co-incidence…

So following my initial smugness on the finding a fiver situation, I watched many many people suffering in countries less fortunate than ours on Comic Relief, and Jenny and I decided to donate our fiver, plus a bunch of other fivers, to helping other people.

Go on, help them raise as much as possible…

Last weekend I was in Nottingham, walking through the city centre when my attention was brought to a fiver on the ground. I was some way away, yet I knew it was a fiver and wondered who would pick it up. After all, it was a saturday afternoon, full of shoppers all, and between me spotting it and actually reaching its resting place, more than a dozen people walked past it or stepped on it. Yet, it was still there when I got to it, and so duly picked it up and put it in my pocket.

Jenny was delighted - finding a fiver on the floor is pretty rare, but I was more puzzled than elated - I couldn’t understand why so many people had walked past it, and why I noticed it. I’m not particularly stingy, I do notice money on the ground but i won’t usually stop and pick up a penny, maybe a pound, but not all lost money. Although I can accept that some of the people who walked by were preoccupied, and perhaps one was too wealthy to be bothered by Five English Pounds, that would still leave a fairly high percentage of people that were looking where they were going and quite happy to benefit from the wonders gained in exchange for five free pounds… (more…)

So now I’m a certified NLP practitioner, my next step to who knows where is a coaching qualification. I start in a couple of weeks and I’ll be doing a Level 7 Diploma in Leadership Mentoring and Executive Coaching. Level 7 what you ask? Well Level 7 of the UK National Qualification Framework, which means it’s a Masters level qualification in coaching. It’s going to be hard work and I will have to put a lot of coaching hours in, but it will be worth it, and hey you can never have too many Masters’ qualifications, can you?

How? Hmm yes interesting one that, because although I have an idea where this will take me, it’s not set in stone, as a minimum it will make me a better boss, and if \ when I go it alone it makes me a hireable executive coach. I used my Jedi mind tricks to get the company to pay and support the course so it will also be a valuable distraction from my day job.

I’m really looking forward to the course, it’s not particularly NLP, although there will be some aspects to it, this is more about learning a framework within which I can work with people to help them enhance their performance, identify areas for improvement and make positive change in their professional and personal lives. I hope that it will give me more tools in my toolbox to go with all the whizz-bang NLP stuff like phobia and compulsion cures that are so much fun.

The other thing I’m looking forward to is meeting some new people with similar views and ambitions. The NLP Prac was a real eye opener for me, because the nature of the course was working together to support personal change, I went through some quite personal journeys with (initially at least) complete strangers on that course, and I feel I’ve made some very good friends, and although the course has only been finished for a month, I’m already missing their company and the thought that I won’t see them all on a monthly basis. I don’t expect this course to be quite so ‘connecting’ but I’m open to meeting and learning from a new group of people.. increasingly I find that the courses I attend are less about the content and more about how I can enrich my map of the world by meeting more interesting people and learning from their life experiences.

Whoa that got a little open and trippy towards the end. Think I had better get a cup of British tea down me and stiffen my upper lip before I run out of my office and hug someone…

Picture it. Ebay. 1 minute to go and Frogs Into Princes is sitting at a very attractive £14, so I prepared to bid. And yet, across the gulf of the web, wallets immeasurably superior to mine regarded this book with envious eyes, and quickly, and boldly, they drew their plans against me…

My bid for £20 was overshadowed by a the winning bidder getting it for £40….! Forty quid for a second hand transcript of a 1970s lecture on neuro-linguistic programming..! And so I am still bookless AND i’ve wasted a week watching an auction on ebay… Grrr.

On the plus side I’ve found a great forum for discussing all things N, L & P with people who know way more than I do. However, unlike most forums, those with the knowledge seem keen to impart it on request without belittling comments. If you are interested in NLP, maybe considering doing a course or have some questions, head over to www.nlpconnections.com and say hello, you might well see me there too.

So I am starting to get bored with Lost. It has become clear to me that they are just stringing us along now, and that quite frankly, I’m not sure that anyone really cares about what happens to the survivors of the ill-fated Oceanic 815. What began as a show shrouded in mystery and wonder is now the pass the parcel at the end of the party - the one you know has nothing of real interest or value hidden between each layer of wrapping paper.

So we now have 3 or 4 episodes on the Sky+ and neither Jenny or myself have shown any interest in catching up, we get more enjoyment from 5 minutes of 24 than from an entire episode of people mincing about a strange island. I wonder how much of the change in our view is related to the fact that being on Sky now, nobody we know talks about it any more….? Pity really considering how much Sky must have paid to show it, and that Ugly Betty is way more entertaining.