Phillip Holt's World

Yesterday I showed some of the flowers, beauty, in our garden in Bukit Mertajam, Malaysia, (click here to see), and I have to thank my brother-in-law Thiang who looks after our garden in our absence.

Thiang’s love is orchids, and the climate in Malaysia, hot and humid, is the natural environment for some of them to grow.

Here is just a sample of flowering orchids in our gardens.

 

Orchid Phalaenopsis

 

Orchid

 

Orchid

Orchid

Orchid Cattleya (wild)

Trichopilia Tortilis

Orchid Cattleya

I showed some of the “creepy strange monsters” (click to read) in my home and garden in Bukit Mertajam, Malaysia. The pictures were taken in just one day with difficulty, as the creatures would run off or fly away before I had chance to take-hold of my camera.

Hibiscus

If you can name the plants let me know   

  

The flowers in the garden bring colour and happiness. They also attract the monsters who seek the sweetness of the nectar, the food from the leaves, to lay their eggs, to take shelter from the harsh environment of heat and high humidity and shelter from the monster human beings and other predators.

If we dwell on just looking for the monsters in our life, that is all we will find.

Working with clients on a one-to-one basis (click to visit web site), for fears, phobias and other related problems, I find that they dwell on the problems they think they have, they make mountains out of mole hills (click to read explanation of phrase).

How many times have I sat and listened to someone go on and on about their ailments, how ill they are, how depressed they are, how things are always going wrong for them, not only in 1-2-1 sessions, but mostly when talking on a social level as friends or family.

Maybe it is someone in a relationship, and all they see is the bad things in their partners, that they are never at home, that they “look” at other people, talk to other people rather than to them, they do favours for others and never for them.

Look beyond the monsters, look for the good things, as they are there, and they are more permanent, more colourful, pleasing, relaxing, and brings joy to those who spend a just little time viewing them, being with them.

It has been proven that those people who think positive thoughts are more positive, healthier, optimistic, happier.

Dwell on the beauty and the positive about you.

As I travel, I come across situations and things I have never experienced before, culture, language, eating habits, beliefs, animals and creatures, flowers and plants.

Yesterday as I walked around my garden in the home in Bukit Mertajam, Malaysia, I came across a couple of strange looking creatures that I would not experience in the UK.

To me they were initially shocking, repulsive, frightening, as my brain searched to find previous experiences of exposure to such creatures, and that had only been in a zoo, and the creatures had been behind thick glass.

Why had they been behind thick glass?

Perhaps they are dangerous, poisonous, they bite, they will grab you by the throat and choke you to death.

No. I think it was to protect them from us, the human race, the beings that tries to eradicate or dismiss those things that it does not understand or like, and there I was standing, with these creatures all about me.

They were not about to attack me. I expect they were watching me, anticipating my next move, as I suspect they are more frighten of me, than me of them.

Think about it, we are the monsters, with big eyes, large tentacles (fingers and toes) searching the air on long extensions to the body (arms and legs), giving off strange odours, (body sweat or Chanel No. 5), with bad breath (toothpaste, cigarette smoke), making strange sounds (talking), and being covered in multi coloured objects (clothes) to camouflage the monsters body. See us from a small creators view point.

In fact they are so frighten of me, it was difficult to get photographs of them, they flew or ran off.

Our home in Malaysia, in Bukit Mertajam, can at times be a peaceful place.

That peace can be over-ridden by lorries with straight through exhaust systems, or a new mosque near our house calling for the faithful to prayers with the loudspeakers at full power at 5:30am in the morning, some of the offspring of the Ng family’s nine brothers and sisters, gathering to play and have fun, the animals and birds calling their mates, or the frogs croaking after the nearly daily deluge of rain.

Laughter of some NG family children December 2007


Opposite to the house is a small patch of what I call jungle, with tall grass, high trees, containing a wide variety of wild life I am sure, including I expect snakes. I have not seen one yet, but my eyes are always aware that there could be the hypnotic python snake Kaa from Rudyard Kipling’s book the Jungle Book, lurking just ready to get me in his gaze.

Every so often on this trip as I have been standing in my garden I would hear a crack coming from across the road. Then there would be a pinging or rushing sound as something fell to the ground or fell through the leaves.

In this patch of “jungle” are rubber trees, left over from when the land was a rubber plantation. Then, I understood what was happening.

In the rubber trees are seed pods, which at the moment are ripe and germinated, ready to be scattered and sewn.

The seed pod springs open with a crack, firing the two large and hard seeds great distances through the air like bullets.

So take care walking under a rubber tree, it might attack you.

It is a dangerous place this jungle, the world we live in.

Watch out, protect yourself, wear a hard hat, there are horrid things and people out to attack you.

To all my friends around the world, may I wish you a Happy New Year.

It is a time to reflect on all we have or have not achieved in the previous year.

It is a time to make promises and wishes to ourselves about those things we want to do in the new year.

Make the New Year resolutions, positive, beneficial to yourself and others, become motivated to do these things, and most of all, see yourself doing these things as if you are there standing in your own shoes at the time to come now.

Live your dreams now. Daydream.

When looking back, we often use the words “what if” and “if only”.

            “What if  had said this or that?”

            “What if I had done that?”
    
            “What if this had happened?”

            “If only I had said this.”

            “If only I had done that”

            “If only I could do…….”.

What has ever happened in the past has happened, it is history, let it go, but learn from it. Many people continually do the same thing, time after time, if it does not work, change what you are doing.

            “If only I had changed my job or my supplier, I would be so much better and happier off now.”

It did not happen. Get on now and make the changes.

            “If only I had not said what I said”.

It was said. If it hurt someones feelings, or was against their belief or culture, and you did not know at the time, then is it your fault, or the other person who could have been a little more tolerant towards you. Learn from your mistakes and say and do it differently next time.

            “If only I had not done that”.

As long as you did what you did with good intention at the time, then rejoice. It happened, get over it. Perhaps, you like me, walked into a lamp post, or fell into a hole injuring yourself, and you say :-

            “If only I had seen the lamp post”.

You did not see the danger. Next time you will be more aware of things that can go wrong. Learn from it, else you will get hurt again.

When we say “if”, we tend to try and place the blame on other actions, other people, other times, to take the responsibility from ourselves.

Stop it.

There is only one person in charge, and that person is you.

Live your live as you want it to be, not as if it could be, make it real.

Again, HAPPY NEW YEAR, and thank you all who I have had contact with in the past for being there, and I hope to meet with you in a new POSITIVE New year.

Want to know an NLP term, click here or visit NLP Glossary on the left.

On a short car ride from my home in Bukit Mertajam, Malaysia, I came across a small biscuit shop, selling homemade biscuits.

The odd thing that caught my eye was that all the customers took their shoes off upon entering the shop.

                                                        

Taking ones shoes off is not an unusual custom in many countries, in China, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Turkey etc, it is common prior to entering a home to take your shoes off. Some people offer slippers for their guests to wear.

Temples, Hindu and Buddhist, and mosques, all require that footwear be removed. But a shop?

On removing my shoes and entering the shop, it was as if I had traveled back in time, a time when I was in Chasetown, my parents hometown in he UK, as a small boy.

Rows and rows of glass jars, each containing a different variety of biscuits of shape, colour and taste, all neatly arranged and stacked inside the jar. No self service here.

A polite notice had been placed throughout the shop in Chinese and English, saying “NO TASTE”. 


                                        
                                                                            

There was not a piece of packaging to be seen anywhere. No expensive artwork, no description of what the biscuit was, no what ingredients had been used to make them.