I have just awoken from my “power-nap”, and I notice a downside.
I feel very groggy as soon as my eyes open, my arms feel heavier, my legs are like lead, my head does not want to work. I feel my age of 95, or is it 96?
But I know if I relax a little, within a short period, I will be like the superhero I am.
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It is not that I am not doing anything here on the 26th floor of Angsana Villa’s. I can, on occasions, get a WIFI signal from a nearby apartment, or a mobile phone internet connection, allowing me access to the internet to answer emails, send messages, write proposals. I have a couple of books I wish to read and research, and I trust I am helping in a small way in caring for the sick people here even if it is moral support.
I have time to look over the vista of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, to reflect over our own mortality, of how short life is.
I see loads of kindness, compassion, help and support, as people pull together to find resolve and peace. Each in their own way contributes to the whole.
Compromises have to be made as the situation changes from one minute to the next, and even if one person becomes upset by another’s decision, they soon come back into the group.
I now see group decisions, where people are coming together in the hours of need, listening to others points of view, facts are being presented in a meaningful way, as the core group discuss and decide the best outcome, the best strategy.
It is a good learning curve for me. I am in my small world on the 26th floor of Angsana Villa’s and I am just a speck, only a small part of the whole, a small part of the visa of Kuala Lumpur, but like us all, my contribution, now matter how small, adds to the group, the whole, the world.
I must act with integrity, compassion, trust and goodwill, with kindness of heart, to stand back and consider others feelings and points of view, and to put a positive outcome on what may come our way.
In the NLP for Human Resource Management n Malaysia, in conjunction with LexisNexis, we held a one day workshop on how NLP will help in HR management. The content of the workshop was extensive, covering what is NLP, how to use NLP, NLP and coaching, negotiation skills including the Harvard University BATNA. We saw and experienced how the human processes information, and how we understand the world around us, demonstrating George Miller’s 7+/-2 theory, how the human brain then deletes, distorts and generalises information given to it, resulting in an understanding of the world which is not the real Map of the Territory. We reviewed how the human took in information from external sources through the five senses, VAKOG, and processed this information internally, again with VAKOG. Understanding how employees and employers accessed and processed information, would help those in the human resource field to manage and lead to achieve excellence. An interesting and full day, which included far more than the above, including Eye Accessing Cues, thus giving those who attended a broad outline of how NLP can be implemented within their organisations.
In 1962 the was the film, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, starring Tom Courtenay, and written by Alan Stillitoe.
It tells how Colin, a youth from the English of Nottingham, famous for Robin Hood, a boy who was rebellious, and from a poor background, was caught stealing from a bakery, and was sent to a reform school.
It was at the reform school that he found solace, satisfaction in long distance running, he could escape from everyday problems, review his past and re-evaluate the privileges and rank given to him by the authorities a the borstal or reform school.
Today I start another trip to deliver trainings and workshops.
My first port of call will be Rimini in Italy to co-train with other Society of NLP trainers the Master NLP Practitioner course organised by NLP Italy.
To the disgust perhaps of some people, I have a couple of days off, and there is no point in returning back to the UK, so I may find myself in my swimming shorts, laying out on a sunbed on the beach, not looking at all the bikinis as they come back from a swim in the warm sea. No I will not be doing that, as I am sure my friend Alessio Roberti will find work for me to do.
I leave Rimini an the 20th, to go to Kuala Lumpa in Malaysia to deliver a workshop called Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Human Resource Professionals, and attend meetings, only to return to Italy to co-train in an NLP Practitioner course in Milan.
So I may be “off air” from my blog for a time, but I will be storing up experiences to write about soon.
It was about this time last year that using my peripheral vision, or Phillip’s Sausage, I spotted an unusual infestation of a an insect I had never seen before the Harlequin Ladybird. (click to read)
This Harlequin Ladybird was a very new species in the UK, and I would have thought I would have seen the same sight this year. But no.
I wonder what has happened to them?
Have they been eradicated?
Is the climate not suitable for them?
Is it the case of H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds?
Here the Martians are defeated when they invaded earth, not by man, but by tiny microbes, the red weed.
I was reminded of the past by an email I received from Vodafone Turkey, which showed a ladybird.
Other memories came to mind from the advert, that of Malaysian batik printing.
Strange how our mind works, and how memories come flooding back.
In my previous article, I wrote about learning from reading, will you be able to undertake a task after reading.
I have many interests and hobbies in my life, and as Dale Winton once told me when he was a DJ on Radio Trent, “Phillip, you have unusual hobbies“.
One of my interests is aircraft, and flying. I wanted to join the British RAF as an air traffic controller, even going to the officer selection section which lasted for a grueling three days at the RAF Station Biggin Hill.
I love to research about aircraft, the old aircraft, Spitfires, Hurricanes the Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero (SM.79), and always had the ambition to fly one to become a pilot.
Way back when I was much younger, I took a trial flying lesson, the cost was too much to continue, but what an experience. I loved it, but got totally confused and disorientated when the instructor asked me to turn the aircraft in a 360 degree turn. I was completely lost, as I had no barrings, nothing to tell me as I looked out of the cockpit window in which direction was I heading as I started the turn and thus not knowing when to stop the turn. There were no houses, trees, signposts, just open sky. I failed to take a compass heading before I started the maneuver.
Since then I have read many books on aircraft, on flying skills, I have learned about the process of flying, how an aircraft stays up in the air, I know the terms and language a pilot will use.
During a recent trip to Italy, my friend and colleague Gianni Golfera, said he would take me and teach me to fly. Gianni is a very experienced pilot, having his own stunt plane, and I understand an ex world stunt champion.
We set off one morning to a local airfield and booked a single engined aircraft, Gianni wanted to go to another airfield where his own stunt plane was parked so he could practice some maneuvers.
My heart was in my mouth, and thumping ten to the dozen as we raced down the runway and shot into the sky.
One minute I was at 3,000 feet, the next I was climbing, only to then find myself diving as I over compensated trying to get back to the correct height.
Before I could get used to this alien experience, Gianni took back control so that we could land at the new airfield, and he could take to the air in his stunt plane. There would be no way that you would find me in that plane.
My mind knew what to do when I was at the controls, but my body did not. My muscles did not react as I wanted them to do, they were uncooperative. So, I spent time running through in my mind the flight, relaxing my body, teaching my eyes how to read the instruments, how to read the horizon, the landmarks through the front and side windows, and noticed that as I was flying, there were body sensations I had missed, which told me if I was turning left or right, going up or down.
Even though I was standing on the ground waiting for Gianni to land, I was able to rehearse in my head and involve my whole body how to fly, by reliving the experience.
Once Gianni had finished his practice, we got into the rather slower and thankfully less maneuverable aircraft we had flown in with, and headed down the runway to head back to where we had start earlier. Then the aircraft began to shudder, and emit strange noises. Gianni aborted the flight, and parked the aircraft, saying there was something wrong and we would have to go back by road, leaving the aircraft for an engineer to look over.
So my second lesson was not to be.
A few days later, we were due to drive up to Milan for me to give a PhotoReading course, and Gianni picked me up early from the hotel, and took me for my second lesson.
This time my mind was prepared, I had rehearsed my body to relax, my mind was ready to accept feedback from all my senses, and I had Phillip’s Sausage in place.
Once in the air, and I took control of the aircraft, I forced myself to relax, to enjoy the experience, and began to move the controls, to get feedback as to what happened as I moved the joystick forwards or backwards, turned it to the left or right, and then combinations.
I could now recall what I had read, and experiment, and as I did, calibrating what my senses were telling me, to what the aircrafts’ instruments were showing, to what I was seeing outside.
I had control.
Now I had time to enjoy this new alien form of transport, and was able to take time to look at the landscape, the small lakes with water birds far below, I watched the coastline slip below me, making fine adjustments so to keep the aircraft on the course Gianni wanted, following his instructions with easy movements, to change direction, to head to the new airfield so he could practice in his stunt plane again.
On the return flight back, I again took control, and this time it was easier, with practice, I was getting better.
Learning has to be a whole body experience. My body had experienced flying before, maybe many years before, but I believe that once we have learned something, once we have experienced something, it is there for life, and all that is needed is for the right stimulus, the right trigger to be given and the old learning will surface.
In NLP it is said:-
I felt good. Thank you Gianni.
I have so much more to learn.
I am asked often, during courses, when people make inquiries, asking questions, what books do I recommend for them to read to learn this or that.
I am often at a loss what to say, as there are so many books available, in fact we are overwhelmed by written material, and every man and his dog seems to have written a book.
What information do they need?
What do they wish to achieve?
What will they put the knowledge to do?
No one book will contain all the knowledge on a subject, there will be a bit in this book, a bit in that book, even the Encyclopaedia Britannica only skims the truth, the full facts about our world, for as we research and discover new facts, new theories, new ideas, so what was written becomes incorrect, old and out of date.
I devour books. This week alone I have brought ten books. Some books are on the training subjects I give, NLP, memory, phobias, fears, stop smoking, weight loss, and more. Some are fiction, recommended by Andy Tuck, the General Manager of Borders book shop in Kingston upon Thames, as I said to him I was enjoying reading the complete and unabridged novels of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
We can all learn so much from books, as long as we realise that the book was written by another human being, who has their own understanding on the world, on the subject matter, and are they correct?
Reading Sherlock Holmes, I came across a passage in The Hound of the Baskervilles, which could sum up what I have just said, as Sherlock Holmes was supposed to have a brilliant mind, as he says:-
“Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his finger end, and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject, finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more…….”
Another aspect of learning from books, is getting the knowledge into the brain, but will this enable us to do the thing physically we have just learned.
Take riding a bike. Say you have no knowledge of riding a bike, you have seen people doing so, but never ridden one yourself.
So you go to the bookshop, buy a book, Learn to ride a bike in a day, and read and understand the concepts, the procedures, the mechanics of riding a bike.
Would you be able to ride a bike?
In life we have high-level generalisations, those that describe criteria or what is known as our values, those that are important to us.
Although we think ourselves as being rational people, we are more often driven by our emotions, which can be defined as our values or criteria, and these drive our behaviour, even though we may not be aware of them, they are working away at the subconscious level.
Values or criteria will be different in each and every one of us.
Some people drink alcohol because it makes them feel relaxed, reduces their inhibitions, to enjoy company of others, a social gathering, to escape from reality, the intoxication feeling, or to enjoy the taste, these are the values or criteria, that drive them or changes their behaviour.
Others, do not like the intoxication feeling, loosing control, deep seated beliefs maybe from a religious upbringing or culture.
Some people want to fulfill the value or criteria of looking good, to be seen as trendy, up-to-date, to fit in to society at work, school or holiday. Thus they buy fashionable clothes.
Others will want to be comfortable, to change their character, create a different persona, to hide their body.
The criteria we use, or the values we place on our behaviours, will drive us towards or away from doing something, often without us knowing why we are doing that something, as our criteria and values are operating at a subconscious level.
Get to know your own values and criteria, notice your thoughts, feelings, your internal representations, and if things are not working, change them now.
See Once Bitten, Twice Shy . This will help you notice your own values and criteria.
Today I finished the Society of NLP Master Practitioner course here in Bahrain, and it is always sad to say goodbye to the participants, never knowing if we will meet in the future.
Although a small group, I found them particularly interesting participants, as there were so many personalities, so many dynamics playing their part, so many different needs to be covered.
I would thank those participants for their input and hard work they put into the course, because without them, I could not do my job.
It is now back to the UK, instead of Istanbul, as my next scheduled course was to be held there for Coaching, but although I had turned down other work, other trainings to be there, it was never confirmed, and I waited until Saturday to decide whether to take a chance and be in Istanbul or not, just in case the organisers had got people on the course. It seems not, as they have not contacted me.
It seems nobody loves me in Istanbul.
Oh well, Italy will be my next port of call, the seaside resort of Rimini. I must remember to pack my swimming trunks, as the sea will be really warm and full of bikinis.
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