watch tHe skies

I saw this email and thought of you…

I was sitting in the waiting room for my first ppointment with a new dentist. I noticed his dentistry diploma, which bore his full name.

Suddenly, i remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name had been in my high school class some 40-odd years ago.

Could he be the same guy that i had a secret crush on, way back then? Upon seeing him, however, i quickly discarded any such thought.

This balding, gray-haired man with the deeply lined face was way too old to have been my classmate.

After he examined my teeth, i asked him if he had attended Morgan Park High school.

“Yes. Yes, I did. I’m a Mustang,” he gleamed with pride.
“When did you graduate?” I asked.
He answered, “In 1959. Why do you ask?”

“You were in my class!”, I exclaimed.

He looked at me closely, and then, that ugly, old, bald, wrinkled, fat ass, gray-haired, decrepit son-of-a-bitch asked, “What did you teach?”

Last week I got to see one of my coaching clients who I hadn’t seen for some time. Although the initial aim was for us to see each other monthly for a few months, events prevented that from happening. So I hadn’t seen her for 3 months, and had only spend 2 hours with her in total.

She came to see me to help her with her confidence. She was struggling to find her way in her role, and was finding it very stressful. She has also lost confidence in her ability to deliver training which is a key part of her job. We spent a couple of hours exploring her beliefs about herself, her situation and what she wanted her job to be like, and then we parted ways, so I was anxious to catch up and find out how she was getting on.

And yet I couldn’t have expected the progress that she has made - the confidence issue is gone and she is tackling bigger and better challenges with renewed vigour. Her team have commented on the change in recent months and she has altered her behaviour with her staff and is seeing the results of it.

And during our session she explained how our first meeting had been a big turning point. “Whenever I get in to those situations, I just hear your voice in my ear and that gives me the boost that I need”. Wow, it’s hard to describe the feeling with knowing that I’ve helped someone so much. After all, it’s really the reason that I do what I do, and it spurs me on to do it even more.

I just thought I’d share that with you

The other night at the practice group we talked hypnosis - at a previous session (which I couldn’t attend due to vomiting family members), Dave Rose, a local hypnotherapist, came in a did some apparently excellent work with the guys. So they told me all about what they got up to whilst I was knee-high in baby sick.

Anyhow it got me thinking once again about hypnosis and what it is. There are of course many books on the subject - if you are interested in understanding a little more then I suggest reading Derren Brown’s “Trick of the mind”, as he covers his views in one of the chapters. The trouble is, no matter how much time people spend discussing or researching hypnosis, as it stands, it’s just opinion because we still don’t know enough about the way the brain and mind work (assuming that they are different). Sure they can talk about brain wave patterns, but that is still analysing the output of the brain, not the internal processes to any great extent.

So it’s interesting… what is hypnosis?

It amazes me how many people tell me that they aren’t hypnotisable… “I’m just not susceptible to things like that”. “Like that?” what other things are like hypnosis? Firstly in my experience the best hypnotic subjects are intelligent and creative, creativity itself is often sourced from altered states, so people who have high creativity, emotional intelligence and \ or vivid imaginations make great hypnotic subjects. And by subjects I mean that they are receptive to being shown how to hypnotise themselves… Read the rest of this entry »

I read a friend’s blog entry the other day and it made me sad. It made me sad because the person in question is sad and I don’t like to see people I know unhappy.

And so this little story came to mind, I can’t remember where I read it.

One day a sheep farmer was returning from the city where he had sold his wares. Along the route he saw a rare sight in the fields behind the road - a hunter had caught a lion. Having never seen a lion close-up he stopped his cart and wandered over to the hunter who was working on the carcass to take his trophies. Suddenly the farmer noticed a rustling in the long grass and cautiously wandered over to look, noticing a tiny lion cub cowering, hungry and frightened.

The cub would surely die out in the wilderness alone, so the farmer decided to take the cub home.

Over the next few months and years, the lion lived with farmer’s flock of sheep. After some initial concern, the sheep took him in and raised him as one of their own. He ate with the sheep, and slept with the sheep. For all purposes he was a sheep himself.

One day the sheep were grazing in a meadow when they took the fancy of a hungry predator - a lion stalked the flock for the longest time, and as one sheep strayed from the group, he pounced and began to chase…

Only to stop in his tracks when he noticed one very oddly behaving lion - baaing and bouncing away like the sheep that surrounded him.

“You!” yelled the hungry lion, “what are you doing?”

“Me?” I’m running away from you with my brothers and sisters…

“Why? They are not your brethren - you are a lion!”

“Of couse I’m not… I’m a sheep… baaa!”

“Come here, to the water’s edge, I will show you…”

Cautiously, the sheeplion approached the lakeshore.

“Now, look…”

Sure enough, the sheeplion now noticed the similarities to the hungry lion. Previously he had noticed his similarities to the sheep - a nose, two ears, eyes, four legs, yet now he saw a majestic jaw, powerful muscles and strong, penetrating eyes… He baaed again.

“No!” said the hungry lion, “don’t baa, roooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

And so he did, the timid baa was replaced with the powerful, throaty roar of a mature lion.

“That’s better, what are you?” asked the hungry lion.

“I’m a lion! And I’m hungry… where are those sheep?”

 I actually added the last line myself. Feel free to delete where applicable, if you, like me prefer happy endings.

I’ve been wondering and wandering what to do about this blog. After all I’m sure that you may have noticed that posts have been sparse recently. That is partially due to time, partially due to diverting my efforts in to a new site, and partially due to a concern over what to write here.

Coaching and personal development musings, which take up a lot of the site to date, are moving to the new site, which is a site designed to provide advice, suggestions and book recommendations for those looking to make changes in their lives. In addition it is the home for information about the coaching and changework services that I provide, which is over and above my day job. URL to follow soon once the site is ready to launch. I’ve got enough content on there now, I’m just considering the layout and graphics now. I’ve also produced some products to sell too, however I am still toying with how and why to sell them. And I am still thinking about the final purpose of the site, which has changed a little since initial inception. Originally it was going to be a general self-help site that I would use to sell my products. However now it has changed to an on-line credibility resource to support my face-to face selling of my services. Currently the idea is that someone gets my business card and as a result has a look at my website as a supporting buying decision to the face-to face explanation of what I do.

And since I started the plans for the site, my work role has changed; I’ve taken on a lot more responsibility and I’m enjoying it a lot. So the new site and the coaching work is effectively a paid hobby rather than an aspiring career change. It gives me practice, covers its costs and grows my confidence to deal with even more challenging people, situations and problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

After an evening of hypnosis at the practice group I returned home to find itv showing “Open Water“, a movie about two scuba divers stranded in the ocean.

Presumably shot on hi-8 the movie gives a pretty good impression of what that experience might be like - the dehydration, jellyfish, sharks, the fear of dying in the sea and, er, did I mention the sharks? It’s a very effective movie, particularly the moments towards the end where the blackness of night is punctuated by the flash of lightning which gives us a few brief glimpses of the ensuing shark attack.

But of course Jen and I sat patiently and waited for the happy ending. Of course there’ll be a rescue… there always is, apart from that “Perfect Storm“… it’ll be too depressing otherwise, and I don’t want to go to bed depressed. I much prefer ambiguous endings… that way I can make up my own ending, which can be as fluffy and happy as I want.

Oh, right, is that it? Bloody hell why did I watch this?

Hang on… there’s something over the end credits….

oh. Right, that about finishes me off for the evening then.

Might skip having a bath tonight, I’m still suffering shark movie post-traumatic stress.

Let’s dig out Finding Nemo… that’ll make things better. Oh no, where do Nemo’s parents go? Blimey even in Disney movies the sea is a dangerous place.

Why is it that boilers only fail in the cold? And why does the 24 hours it you have to wait in your refrigerated home seem to take days? Fortunately the wait passed slightly faster with five lovely disks of Blade Runner to watch.

In November, Warner Bros released the Blade Runner: Ultimate Collector’s Box, five DVDs covering five different versions of Ridley Scott’s cult vision of the future. Also included is an arse-numbing 210 minute documentary on the story behind the movie, which is every bit as engaging as the feature. I’ve been steadily working my way through the documentary, entitled Dangerous Days (after the early script name for the film), which takes you from initial concept through to the heady days of VHS tapes, where the film found a home (and finally made some money).

It amazes me how much trouble the film was. The crew seemed to clash on almost every level; nationalities, work ethics, creative demands, acting, scheduling. And in addition the movie was shot outside and at night, so the whole thing was done in the early hours of the morning. Then of course there is the much documented “studio interference”, the poor test screenings and the final shots hastily borrowed from The Shining outtakes.

And yet out of all of the conflict, pain and overspending came a majestic, visionary tale that stands today as one of the great scifi movies of all time. Without Blade Runner we wouldn’t have seen the rise of cyberpunk; scifi would probably still be like THX 1138 and Harrison Ford wouldn’t have a movie to complain about.

And there’s certainly something to be said about the result of all of that conflict. Certainly in a work environment the most creative situations I have found myself in is where there’s a healthy level of conflict - people that feel that they can disagree and be disagreed with, in a way that builds on ideas to make them better. Those situations come along less often than I’d like… too often is there a sense of false contentment where people don’t feel safe to air their views, and so we miss out on innovative ideas, or being called on things that are just plain stupid.

It seems to me that beauty like Blade Runner is a fine balance between order and chaos, where creativity lives but still has some boundaries, but where the boundaries don’t sanitise the ideas and the passion that comes from doing something new and challenging.

Hmmm perhaps I should watch the movie whilst the boiler is broken… too much comfort and I’ll probably miss the point.

I can’t believe that Big Brother is back on telly. It is a mind-numbingly irritating programme and yet somehow we ended up watching it last night, finding ourselves fascinated by the twist.

This time, Big Brother is a different celebrity each day, and each one can do anything they like to the housemates, presumably short of violating their human rights. And it is this potential for extreme exploitation that makes the show interesting.

After all, what is Jimmy Carr going to do to them? Matt Lucas was very entertaining as he forced the Chairman of the Scottish Youth Parliament to act like a complete nutcase all evening.

Personally I would recreate the Stanford Prison Experiment and see what happens. Or perhaps the Stanley Milgram experiments regarding obedience. Or maybe persuade them that an end of days scenario has occurred and everything has gone offline and they can’t get out.

Which, apart from me not being a Celebrity, is another reason why they won’t let me be Big Brother.

Ooh they should get Derren Brown to do it.

Happy New Year one and all, I hope that 2008 brings you smiles every day!

I’m not really a resolution kind of person - although the nice thing about the over-indulgence of Christmas is that is can be a useful opportunity to reflect on what you want steady state to be, to get some new perspectives and draw a line in the sand as to the way things are going to be from now on.

For those of you setting yourself new goals for the year, take a moment to imagine how you will know that you have achieved that goal… what will you see, hear and, especially, feel. Take some time to enjoy this experience and you will be encouraging your mind to create new pathways between where you are and where you want to be. It will make the transition easier as you begin to become aware of how much progress you have already made by simply giving yourself a chance at spotting your success.

For me, my resolutions, if they can be called such, are to get my new website online, finish my coaching thesis which is taking longer than I had hoped, and get back in to the exercise routine that slipped in recent months with the change of role and levels of travel. I’m still working on my well-formed outcome for the latter, the others just require me to find opportunities in my schedule to get the remaining donkey work done.

The film to see next year, this exclusive clip is great. Once I work out how to embed this, I, er will.

Mmm that worked quicker than I expected. The first person shaky handcam works really well… even on the PC screen this is a pretty exciting clip. Kind of Blair Witch meets Godzilla?