watch tHe skies

Well there’s been plenty of speculation so I thought I’d make an announcement. Yes it is true, i’ve applied for the position of England Football Manager. Given my qualifications and commitment to motivating our bunch of overpaid, undercommitted workshy fops in to actually qualifying for the next World Cup. I am firmly of the opinion that we as the inventors of the beautiful game should be able to beat Croatia with a team of only 3 goalkeepers wearing slippers, and so have decided to take it upon myself to lead the nation to glory in 2010.

My application letter is attached. I await their reply.

Dear Football Association.

I like you watched in horror as our 11 overpaid, underperforming chumps embarrassed themselves at Wembley last wednesday. The holy place of football was indeed desecrated by what can only be described as professional muppetry. As the inventors of the sport we should be proud to take apart any team at Wembley, especially Croatia, who only have barely enough population to fill the team bus.

So please accept this email as application for the vacant manager’s position. I have won exactly the same number of trophies as Steve McClaren, with the added bonus that I know my arse from my elbow when it comes to football.

My wage demands are reasonable indeed. You pay my expenses to all games (including the impending trip to Kazakhstan…. how on earth did we draw them?) and agree to jet my WAG and son to all games first class, and my time is yours. My backroom staff requirements are light. I simply require a platoon of Royal Marine Commandos to train the team and remind them why it is an honour to represent your country.

I am confident that this approach will return national pride and honour to the limp-wristed nonces that dare wear the hallowed three lions, and I am sure that this novel, yet traditional approach will put us back on the throne of world football where we belong. It might not be pretty, but we can’t all be Martin Keown.

Much love and kindness to all.

Matt

I seem to have been incredibly busy over the last few weeks, mostly down to work being very hectic, Ben becoming more and more aware of the fun he can have when I get home, and my latest project growing in scale significantly. So busy in fact that recently I’ve been struggling to keep awake long enough to actually get in to bed!

Phase 1 of my new project is almost ready. I won’t say complete, because the website is a starter for 10. It’s not perfect and I know it will be launched still with stuff to do, but I’m very pleased with it, as it’s almost all my own work (in terms of integrating the components, graphic design, writing the content), and I’m working with some additional support content with a friend of mine. For a while I’ve felt that this blog has had multiple personalities, that is, at times I’m writing coaching type blogs, and then at other times I’m chatting about what a barmy place the world is. They just don’t fit for me, and the coaching type blogs have grown out of all proportion. So I decided that they deserved their own site, a spin-off if you will. Leaving this site to be a vent for my meandering ramblings on life, the universe and gadgets. The process of planning this has spawned a way bigger project, some collaborative mini-projects and also further talk about opportunities to spread the word beyond the ”confines” of the internet. Unfortunately you guys will suffer my meanderings about the latter phases of the project once the site is live. 

The site will probably go live mid-december once I get back from my holiday.

So if you are a bit of an internet whizz and fancy casting your eyes over the new site, then let me know and I’ll point you at the beta site for feedback.

And yes I know what about phase 2? Well when you see phase 1 it will be fairly clear what phase 2 is…!

I’m currently reading a book called “Timeline Therapy and the basis of personality”, by Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall. It’s a practical how-to book to support the very useful NLP skill called timelines. Timeline therapy, something I have used very successfully to help people improve motivation and breaking habits, particularly smoking, is based on an understanding of how people code time, and how past experiences effect our personality today.

As the past is no longer true, that is we haven’t captured and retained the raw data, only our experience of the raw data, our personality today can actually based on false interpretations, and even if we did interpret the situation correctly we don’t have to be that person if we don’t want to, because the past isn’t happening now, and we can remember whatever we want to. Read the rest of this entry »

I was watching the X-Factor the other day and it, incredibly, got me thinking. Of all the thousands of people who applied for the show, most of whom sing worse than me, there have been some with real, genuine talent. Of the people who made the live show there are a few with amazing voices, and what is even more amazing is how they have gotten through their lives to this point without having made best use of that incredible talent.

And my thoughts strayed to other talents. I wonder how many people out there ever really get to grips with their strengths. To the point where they are making best use of their talents every single day? I genuinely believe that we all have talents, that we are all extraordinary in some way, and if the X-factor model is to be believed, then perhaps precious few of us are conscious of, and then able to make the most of the natural abilities that we have.

It seems amazing that people can live their whole lives without realising their potential, and making use of it, instead perhaps considering themselves to be unremarkable when indeed I certainly haven’t met anyone that I could possibly label in that way.

I’m hard at work with the new website project so no pearls of wisdom today. However I bought some instant coffee today that is “Irish Cream Flavoured”. “Cool” I thought. I made a cup and it does indeed smell of lovely irish coffee. Mmmm makes my office smell sooo good.

But it tastes just like normal coffee, and as I drink it my nose says Irish Cream and my tongue says coffee, so my brain interpolates and says “YUK!”

So from now on I am only drinking sensually congruent beverages. It’s my new rule.

A lot of people I coach come to me for coaching for something specific. For example:

• I want a better job
• I want my business profits to improve
• I want to lose weight
• I want to quit smoking

You get the theme. They want things. It would be fair to say that 99% of people who come to me for coaching have already prescribed the thing that they want.

Prescribed? What do you mean?

Well in my experience… it’s not the car \ job \ woman \ weightloss that people actually want.

They want the feelings that they attach to those things.

That’s right, feelings. Read the rest of this entry »

Hmm it seems hard to concentrate today with all of the things going on. My job is very busy indeed and on top of that the work on my coaching diploma is building up. The coaching diploma work itself is really interesting - I love reading in and around the subject, and I LOVE coaching, I am learning so much about myself, about other people, about how good, successful people get to be that way, it’s all so fascinating. Trouble is, my day to day job gets in the way!

I can’t remember who it was who said “if you do a job that you love then you’ll never work another day”, and it doesn’t really matter because there are certain things I do at work, at home, where time has no meaning, and I love doing them so much I forget to eat, drink, or stop for a comfort break until the emergency “overlimit” switch on my bladder picks up the batphone and calls my brain.

It seems really disappointing to me that somewhere out there I can’t just get paid to learn. That is, to learn whatever I want, no master, no demands, just go out and pick up a book, learn something, go and practice it, find someone who is brilliant at it, and learn some more from them. Of course if a job like that was available then everyone would want it, right? Wrong. Fortunately not everyone is me and for that at least I am thankful. I suspect my wife is too, she doesn’t need anyone else in the world not putting handles on wardrobe doors.

The next step is starting to take shape. I’ve drafted out my thoughts and I’m sharing them with a few friends, and then at some point my plans for world domination will make their way on to this blog. Don’t hold your breath though, 1) because it might not be as good as you think and 2) i’m not imposing any time limits. Good ideas become great applications with considerable sweat, toil and testing. At least, that’s my belief and I’m happy to be limited by it at this point.

Ok I probably shouldn’t blog about some things but hey they are relatively harmless. I spend most tuesdays now in long, painful meetings on super-important stuff that I could tell you about but would then have to kill you. The result is, I have to keep myself amused for hours on end in really dull meetings. So here are a couple of my favourite mind games to keep those meetings interesting and perhaps keep them moving a little.

Shutting down a boring conversation. I’m sure you’ve heard about matching and mirroring - assuming body postures, tonality etc., to get in to rapport with someone. Well when you want them to go away or be quiet, mismatch everything, if they talk quietly, talk loud, if they sit cross legged, then open wide. Amplify this by rocking back and forth ever so slightly, and maybe even hum to yourself. Oh and the icing on the cake - in between eye to eye contact, stare at one particular point on the top of their ear. Anyone who can keep up a train of thought in such environment is probably playing mind games with you too, so bring it on!

Find a point on the ceiling, and whenever other conversations stray in to unwanted territory, subtly and regularly glance up at this point. When you get a chance to talk, be sure to glance up at that point regularly, and couple it with lots of negative words, ie, boring, pointless, dead-end etc. Most people won’t get this consciously but their unconscious minds will, and before you know it you have your own pavlovian experiment with an adverse reaction to subjects that you don’t like. Be sure to reward the doggies when they do good though.

And that’s the end of the mischief today. Have fun and remember, with great power comes great responsibility

So the other day I noticed that I had now been running this blog for over 2 years. Which is not only surprising but encouraging. Unbeknownst to me I had managed to sustain a website with regular updates for an extended time without it becoming a chore or absorbing my life. Previously I ran a movie review website for quite some time and it was proving successful, it more than paid for itself, but the demands of keeping the content updated became too much and I ditched it.

However lessons were learnt, and these lessons have been further molded and formed with the study I’ve been doing over the last year, plus a yearning to do more with the coaching skills I continue to discover, than is offered in my everyday job.

Over the weekend I suffered from an unexpected (aren’t they always) bout of sickness that left me with lots of time lying in bed with nothing else to do other than think. Not something I get much time to do nowadays. And rather than being a pain this has given me the opportunity to decide what to do with all of this stuff I can do, and continue to learn. And so the next steps are beginning to take shape. I won’t mention much more at this stage other than it seems to answer the key questions I would ask if I was coaching myself through the thought process (which of course I am). And so I’m busily researching and developing and planning the next steps. And, of course, taking action; for it is action that makes success of belief and direction. That is, if you believe in such nonsense, which I assume you must do if you take the time to read my site.

Ben is now coming up to 18months old and to date we have kept him away from TV. However now we would be grateful if he would watch something for, say 10 minutes just to give us a break. Perhaps just long enough to get a cup of tea.

This morning as I was having my breakfast, I turned over to BBC2 to find Bob the Builder, and seeing as a couple of Bob’s construction vehicles look a bit like tractors, Ben was rapt and stood, pointing and laughing as Bob built a drive-in cinema.

However it did bother me greatly that Bob was using illegal scaffolding practices. The handrail was only a single bar and there was no kickplate to prevent tools being knocked over the side where they could cause serious injury… RIDDORs are just waiting to happen.

And it’s this kind of slackmanship that keeps me from letting Ben watch television. What kind of parent would allow their child to grow up learning unsafe construction practices? I mean who knows what bad habits he can learn from Fireman Sam, let alone the haphazard driving demonstrated in Roary?

In all honesty I am very annoyed and disappointed in the BBC in this respect. I would write a letter of complaint but I hear that Postman Pat is on strike…!