Not to make anyone jealous, but this morning I had a fantastic breakfast in my apartment here in the Marmara Suadiye Residence on the Asian side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul.
Um, I can’t wait until tomorrow morning for a memorable start of the day.
Today I find myself in Istanbul, having meetings, giving presentations to staff and teachers, interviews with the press, eating and a little sleep.
I am staying in an apartment on the Asian side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul on Bagat Street THE MARMARA SUADİYE. This residence comprises of 32 furnished apartments, with mine on the 11th floor, with views of the sea and three islands and the Bosphorus, with all the shipping and ferries taking goods and people to various places. Oh, how I enjoy this city of Istanbul, it is alive, and the ferry crossing is a joy.
And here in the apartment with its’ large lounge and kitchen, massive bed, I could need a search party to find me if I over sleep to find me in the bed, plus a bathroom with a view.
the Marmara Suadiye, IstanbulIn reply to a message regarding my 50 Euro fine by Trenitalia for not validating an 11 Euro train ticket from Rome’s Airport, Leonardo da Vinci Airport or Fiumicino, I replied it was “Water under the Bridge“.
In an overseas telephone conversation to a non British person, I was asked what did I mean by this English saying.
It means that something has happened, but it has finished and is no longer important.
So I was fined 50 Euro by Trenitalia, but it happened, there is nothing I can do about it now, so I can let any bad thoughts go, it is no longer worth thinking about.
Usage examples:-
I was once very close with a person, we argued and refused to talk to each other for a long time, but that is water under the bridge, and we became friends again and talk all the time.
I was married once, but the marriage failed and we divorced, so that time of my life is water under the bridge.
It is always sad when loosing a friend, a relative, and today I have lost a friend.
Perhaps that friendship has had its’ problems, perhaps due to language, perhaps due to beliefs, perhaps due to culture, perhaps due to clashes of personality, but it is not good to dwell on what went wrong, but to remember the good times.
Some weeks ago my brother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, and gradually he went down.
Today he lost his fight, and has joined his ancestors to watch over those that remain.
I feel a little empty, but I must keep my state high, as I have nearly 30 people here in Milan waiting to start the last day of the course I am delivering.
Life continues for the rest of us.
There are some situations one can plan for, and some we can not.
Sometime times we plan ahead for what we presuppose will occur. It could be for a business meeting, a presentation, a meal with friends, a date with a loved one, a wedding, our health, our future.
How often does what we plan happen as we planned for it to happen? Rarely, as so many outside forces influences the outcome, beyond our control.
Not even Darren Brown, a mentalist, a magician, an illusionist, a hypnotist, a person who has studied NLP, and has now become a television personality performing the most amazing feats at this time on TV weekly, can predict the future. A couple of weeks ago on “live” TV he predicted the results of all numbers drawn in the UK Lottery. How did he do it? Well, as I said he is a mentalist, a magician, an illusionist, a hypnotist, a person who has studied NLP, and an illusionlist.
I remember being on a TV program by Granada and Discovery TV, Extraordinary People, commenting on another performer Jess Rose, and his performance was amazing, yet predicable. That is to say, I still do not know how Darren Brown does what he does so well.
I too do not know what will be happening in the coming weeks.
I will be in Milan, Italy, from Thursday till Sunday, presenting a PhotoReading and Mind Mapping course at the Concorde Hotel, and the following week in Rome giving the same courses to another set of participants.
I have a plan of what I am going to do, what I am going to teach and present to them, and I am preparing and planing the trip.
Already, things are not going to plan.
I have heard my normal translator will not be with me, and who will be my new person, I have no idea. I have no idea of how good they will be, or have they worked with me before.
My laminating machine I use to prepare a handout has finally gone to the scrapheap in the sky, halfway through producing the final product.
I have hoped to have heard from people so I can plan for future dates, but the telephone stays silent.
Poo Poo happens and will always happen.
Am I disheartened? No.
Slightly unhappy? Yes.
Poo Poo happens, so there is only one way forward, accept it and get on with solving the problem with joy and fun.
Both my sister-in-law and her husband in Malaysia have cancer of the liver and stomach. The prognosis is not good, in fact the end is very near.
The husband has given up, and has done for some time. Yes he is very ill, but he does not help himself, expecting other people to do the fetching and carrying, his wife has taken the same attitude.
It is a big struggle to get the sister-in-law to do things for herself, not to give up. To get out into the garden to see the beauty of the flowers, to listen to the songs of tropical birds, to hear and watch the ever changing heavy tropical rain storm.
Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Enjoy the day. We do not know what will happen.
So, I am looking forward to starting my next tour of many countries, meeting new people and old friends and challenges.
I am planning ahead, but will have to make adjustments, like going to buy a new laminater, which I can do with a smile on my face and happiness in my heart.
So where ever you are in this small world of ours, enjoy what we have now. Be kind to yourself and to others. What you give out, you will get back.
Enjoy.
My work takes me to many countries, giving training course, teaching participants how to gain control in their lives, and should they wish how to help other people too to gain control, I give lectures, talks to business people, educationists, students, clubs and the general public. Much of my work now is in this field.
I also continue on a now smaller scale to see clients on a private basis, what is known as 1-2-1. It gives me immense satisfaction to work with these people, who may have suffered for many years over a fear or phobia.
Oh how I would love to work with the BBC presenters on a nightly program called The One Show, when shear panic was evident when spiders were shown each night for a week. The presenters Christine Bleakley and Adrian Chiles could be seen retreating behind their seats as spiders were produced to for them to observe. In a later program it was shown that this same fear or phobia was just as evident for frogs, and for Christine, moths.
Why should people suffer so much, when in one session this irrational fear can be overcome, removed, and if they should so wish, to handle these wonderful creatures?
I gives me great joy to be approached sometimes by people who asks for my help, to work with them for perhaps just a few minutes, and they walk away with the problem gone, they can stand on the top floor of a tall building, walk onto an aircraft, stroke a dog, walk out of their house that they have not left for many years. OK, I usually sent about two hours with a client for that one session.
I also does not matter that I have usually have no further contact with the clients. Why should I? Do they want me hanging on to them asking them “are you OK?” They need to get on with their life.
Often the clients report “that it is as if I never had the problem“. Great, why should what had been before does not interfere with what happens now.
I remember one lady in Istanbul who had a fear of heights, one quick session, and we went up to the restaurant on top floor of the hotel overlooking the Bosphorus, the end wall being totally being glass. She stood there, nose on the glass, and said she was fine, but perhaps it was not high enough.
A business man who prior to seeing me could not drive on a motorway, or even drive over a bridge, and said that if it worked he would make me a millionaire. I know he now drives himself all over the country, yet I have never heard from him.
An actress who had lost confidence with herself and her acting, so much so that she was going to be written out of the TV soap opera, yet she is still there many years later. I have had no further contact with her, and so it should be that way.
A senior police office that had not been able progress through interviews that would enable him to reach the next level in his career. He needed something special for him that was missing. He has since gone even further in his career, as I watch news about him.
All I have seen just once, and have had no further contact., and I believe this is what it should be if they so wish, as they have a new life.
Do I want to hold a spider or a frog? No, not really. But, if I needed to I can without fear.
A fear or a phobia is learned, and if something can be learned so it can be unlearned by something else stronger.
Email for more information holt@nlpnow.net.
It is mid September here in the UK, and Summer is coming to an end.
As I walked to a lunch meeting, I was surprised to see the streets and footpaths covered with fallen leaves, a sure sign the Autumn is on its’ way.
The nights will draw in, the late sinking of the summer sun or sunset can be after 9:30pm and rising or sunrise at 4:30am giving over 17 hours of sunshine, we will soon be switching the lights on at 4pm in the afternoon.
The temperature will drop, and we will have to wear jumpers so not to get cold shoulders.
Each change in the climate as we move from summer to winter and back again brings beauty and happiness if we only look for it.
It is now September in the UK, and it is time for the game conkers, a game that has been played for generations.
A conker is the seed of the horse chestnut tree, and it is in September that they become ripe and the seeds are ready to be picked.
Once home the best conkers were found, that would not be defeated in the game. The shell would be strong so that it would not split when hit, and would be large enough to give a good hit.
We would try as many tricks as we could to harden the nut. Perhaps soaking it in vinegar overnight and then leaving it to dry for days, or to bake it in the oven. We had many ideas and methods.
We were ready for battle.
There will be two players, each with a conker on a string.
One player will dangle their conker down on the string, and the opponent will wrap their conker string around their hand and hit their conker against the other’s conker as hard as possible, the aim being to destroy the opponents conker.
There are rules to the game.
If the opponent who is doing the hitting, misses the dangling conker, then the one who is dangling their conker has two hits awarded against the other.
If the one who is dangling the conker drops it, and the hitter shouts “stamps“, they can stamp on the conker thus destroying it, but if the dangler shouts “no stamps“, the conker is saved.
If the strings become entangled, the first to shout “strings“, gets an extra go.
The game ends when a conker is knocked off the sting, and the winner is awarded a point. Thus two new conkers having no points, the winner will become a “one-er“.
In the next battle or game, and the winner of the first battle (a one-er) is defeated, then the winner of the new battle will earn the points of the defeated conker, in other words, the losers “one-er” points plus the point for winning the battle, becoming a “two-er“. If the defeated conker had an accumulated title of a “ten-er“, then the winner would become an “eleven-er“.
A great British game which is now banned in many schools as the poor child could hurt themselves. Yes I sometimes had my knuckles hit by the opponents conker, and yes it did hurt, but there was no lasting effect, and I never heard of broken bones, blood being drawn from fellow school friends.
Yes we have strange customs.
Today has been a frustrating day.
Trying to get a letter from the British Tax system has so far proved impossible, and I have been trying for months.
Today I tried again. I telephone the help line to be greeted by the inevitable, “All our agents are busy, please try later.” then the line drops, as I am cut off.
Eventually I get through to get “if you want this or that, press button one………”, after what seems ten minutes I get to talk to a human, who tries to be helpful, but even after talking to someone else, tells me to contact my tax office, and gives me the same number I had just telephone him on.
I search for the tax offices’ telephone number holding my details, this is in Ireland, and me, I am in England. On finding the number I telephone, and it is answered by a young lady, who says I would have to telephone a special number, again I was given the same number I originally called.
Calm, I informed the lady that I had called the special number and they told me to telephone her office. I was told that they were not allowed to take telephone calls, and that I would have to go to the inquiries desk. Still calm, I said to her I was in London and her office is in Ireland.
I thanked her and ended the call.
I rethink my problem, and decide to go to the local tax office, yes a local office, but not one that deals with my tax returns.
On arrival, still very clam, keeping state, I relate my problems to a lovely lady, who is at a loss as what to advise, and says that the local offices do not have tax officers, that all tax affairs are now and have been for years centralized in large offices such as Ireland. She gave me a number to telephone, it was the same telephone number I had started with.
She kindly offered me a choice of two telephones that I could use in the office. I picked one and got the “if you want this or that, press button one………”, which I pressed, but nothing happened, and I gave up that phone.
When I tried the second phone I got “All our agents are busy, please try later.”
Eventually I got through, and a nice guy listened to me and said he would organise my letter.
I wonder.
It has been a quick trip from Rimini in Italy, back to the UK, flying out the same day to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a few days of meetings and giving training, back to the UK for a couple of hours, to go to Milan to be part of the training team for an NLP Practitioner, then back to the UK.
Jet lag?
There has been no time to get it. It is a matter of keeping state and not allowing it to happen.
The whole trip has been sometimes sad, sometimes astonishing, sometimes fun, sometimes hard work.
I was sad to leave yet another fantastic group of 60 participants in Milan starting their journey of learning NLP, having teaching them important aspects of NLP, anchoring, sub modalities, state control, including Antonio, plus other elements of the Practitioner course.
After handing over the course to Claudio Belotti, another NLP trainer I have worked with for many years, seeing him develop into a great, with Elena Martelli my translator, we headed for lunch at New York New York, a great restaurant near the Stazione Centrale.
My flight back to the UK was from Bologna, a wonderful city, which by Trenitalia Eurostar train, only one hour away. The UK is way behind Italy in the modernisation of their rail system, with the Italians laying a new track from northern Italy to the south via important cities, perhaps halving the journey time.
Previous journeys on Trenitalia had been a strange experience, having to travel first class standing. (click to read).Yesterdays journey did not fail to make me smile.
The Eurostar train glided out of Milan’s Stazione Centrale (the Central Railway Station) ten minutes late, with the lady train manager racing up and down the carriages shouting something in Italian into her hand phone.
I must learn Italian one day.
Shortly after leaving the station the train came to a sudden stop, but soon started again, and continued its’ very high speed but smooth journey to Bologna, with Elena and myself sitting back in the laid back second class seats.
An announcement was made by the train manager in Italian about the journey, and she repeated it in very good English.
Then the restaurant car made and announcement, and I saw a smile cross Elana’s face, but being given in Italian, I could not share Elena’s hilarity.
The girl on the public address system repeated the announcement, again in good English.
She said that the restaurant car was in the center of the train, and then commenced to say, that first class travelers would be receiving complementary coffee, croissants, newspaper, water, the list went on and one what the first class travelers would be getting free of charge.
There was no mention of second class travelers.
It was as if she was saying, “you other lots of sub standard travelers, look what you are missing, you should have paid a little bit more, and you would have got all that too.”