watch tHe skies

Well this weekend I’ve been doing some research in to NLP approaches to helping people quit smoking. It seems that there are many approaches, tools and techniques to doing so. So far I’ve found interesting approaches from Tad James, Terence Watts as well as tonne of Hypnotherapy scripts and courses, but as far as I can see there is no universal approach. I’m not looking for a solution, just strategies and some feedback or ideas from those that are regularly using NLP to do so. (more…)

Making people smile. Is there a cooler skill? Ok well yes being able to teleport or go invisible are definitely cooler, but are they more rewarding? Well perhaps if you are bank robber, but if you’re not a bank robber, is there a cooler skill than being able to make people smile? No, of course not.

Following on from my rapport article the other day, I decided to expand that idea in to something a little bigger and fit that concept in to an article about making people smile, which Matthew over at www.onekindact.com has kindly posted on the site. I won’t be reprinting it here so if you want to read my ramble for the day, head over to One Kind Act > The secret to making people smile and have a read. Whilst you are there have a look at the other articles, they may just brighten your day and inspire you do something nice for someone. Have a great weekend.

This week I’ve been going back through my NLP Practitioner notes and putting them in to an order that makes sense to me, whilst taking the opportunity to index them for ease of use. Now I’m regularly coaching it’s handy to have all of my notes in one place in some logical form.

I’m also revising the Meta-Model, an approach to questioning so powerful that I’ve seen it elicit major change in people without having to open up the “NLP toolbox”, and so it’s something that I am working on becoming really good at. During the course, one of our trainers, Peter Freeth, unveiled his take on questioning, The Unsticker. The idea is that the questions posed cause you to change your perspective on a problem in such a way that it doesnt actually matter what order they are asked in, just that they are asked. We’ve worked with this tool and it’s fascinating to see the responses despite the fact that each question takes no notice of the previous answer!

Anyway, it turns out that Peter has kindly put The Unsticker online, so you can pose your own question and be e-coached on the solution to it. If anything proves the fact that you have all the resources you need to make your own changes then this is it. Head over to http://www.ciauk.com/changemagic/unsticker.php and try it out. This works best with someone else posing you the question but of course you can use it solo if you like.

Peter Freeth can be found at www.excellerate.org, and has authored 4 books - NLP in Business, 6 Questions, NLP - Tools for Learning and Change Magic. All are available at www.ciauk.com.

Aaah the price of hestitancy. Excitedly spotted a copy of Richard Bandler & John Grinder’s Seminal NLP work “Frogs Into Princes” on Amazon marketplace for £20 at the weekend. This book has been out of print for a long time and is a fantastic reference book for NLPers. It usually goes for around £80 so I should have just bought it, but I was a little put off by the stated condition. Still this morning I decided to take the plunge and it was gone. Doh!

I guess these books don’t get reprinted because Bandler and Grinder aren’t talking anymore. Quite what caused this rift between the discoverers of NLP is shrouded in mystery, but the book, which is a fantastic reference for anyone interested in changework, remains elusive and means I must stick with my tatty old photocopy…

When Apple announced a 3 week delay to delivering my shiny new Apple TV I took the opportunity to creep away from the gadget monster and ponder it all. The conclusion I came to was that Apple TV wasn’t right for me.

I have tonne of Xvids and I really can’t be bothered to transcode them all - what I needed was an xvid media streamer. I decided upon the netgear EVA700, a swish new device that plays every format under the sun. And so it arrived and I set towards getting it set up. The first problem was getting the device to connect to the wireless network - it found it and accessed it ok but the device seems to ignore DHCP and make up its own address. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the menus from hell - I started to believe that netgear was an oxymoron.

I was also staggered to find that this netgear product won’t talk to the netgeat sc101 network storage box without a PC running a media server somewhere in the mix. Crazy. Still I persevered and soon xvids were streaming on to my TV, with good image and sound quality, excellent. I did have to abandon windows media 11 as the media server because, er, well, it sucks donkeys and can’t handle more than 2gig of shared media without crashing the PC. All our photos are similarly transmitted, although without thumbnails to guide you it is a bit tricky to find the image you want. But what I really wanted it for was the convenience of watching Xvids on the telly, and that it does nicely.

Aaah so relaxing, a week of peaceful relaxation with Ben and Jenny, long walks, a bit of sport and a few glasses of wine and my map of the world slips back in to alignment.

So I return to work to find that my boss hasn’t done any of the stuff I asked him to, and he’s bounced it all back to me plus some extra stuff that he forgot to do in the meantime. Oh well.

So off I go to get my passport renewed - not due until July but I need to go out to DC in April and US immigration won’t let you in without 6 months or more on your passport. So the UK passport service lets you fill in the renewal online and they send you a preprinted form to post back to them. So I opt to take it to the post office to use their expedited service, only to find that they won’t accept preprinted forms - if I want to use the expedited service I need to write it all out by hand - bureaucracy gone mad I tell you.

Then I get home to find that Amazon marketplace has been forgetting to email me about sales (I shift no longer required gadgetry and musicry on amazon) for the last month, meaning I have a bunch of dissatisfied customers to deal with - ok so most have spent like 3pounds on a CD single but I do pride myself on good customer service and this narks me.

Aah well that’s all my groans and moans off my chest so the blog can return to its happy normal self. Lots of stuff to talk about this week, including gadgetry and what happened to Apple TV, Borat, Lost and a lovely new article for www.onekindact.com. I’ve also renewed this site for another year so you’ll be pleased to know you have another 12 months of dirge to look forward to. So it’s good to be back, I’ve missed you!

It ends with a smile…