Well, you may already have heard that I’ve got a major birthday this week. Generally, I like to celebrate my birthdays and really mark the occasion in some way.

And this one is no exception. In fact, I’ve got three different celebrations planned, spreading out my birthday over 10 days!

I’ve also been reflecting a lot on this ‘end of decade’ birthday and my feelings about it. In general, I don’t have any concerns about getting older. I have antecedents on both sides of my family who lived well into their 90s and, given that I’ve had the benefit of a more affluent upbringing than they had, and better healthcare along the way, I confidently expect to live to 100!

What’s been on my mind, is just how much the world has changed since I was a child.

So, just for fun, here are ten things that I’m happy to have experienced, that just don’t happen any more…

(If you have no idea what some of these mean – ask your mum and dad!)

1. In the village school I attended when I was 7 years old, we had lessons in italic handwriting using fountain pens with special nibs. I still enjoy putting pen to paper and particularly like using a fountain pen.
2. When I was a child, television was only available for part of the day. There were long periods of time when the only thing you saw if you switched on ‘the box’ was the Test Card. The ‘off’ switch is still my favourite part of a TV!
3. When I was a teenager, if your boyfriend wanted to dump you, he had to do it to your face. Okay, it wasn’t pleasant that I also had to tell him to his face when it was over, but at least we learned how to deliver bad news in person.
4. When I took my Maths O-level (yes, O-level, not GCSE), I was part of the last year group that was not allowed to use a personal calculator in the exam. Mental arithmetic was important and we were proud of what we could calculate in our heads.
5. I remember the thrill of going to the cinema to see the original ‘Star Wars’. It was ground-breaking stuff!
6. At University, I wrote essays by hand and tutors scrawled over them by hand. Final year projects and dissertations were usually typed up by professionals. In my final year I was studying Artificial Intelligence and the use of computers in psychology. My tutor introduced me to the new Word Processing and I typed up my own dissertation on the University mainframe!
7. And speaking of University, I was really fortunate to get a full grant for my University place. Tuition fees were paid by the Local Authority and I also received a grant for living expenses. I graduated with a small overdraft, but no huge burden of debt such as experienced by most of today’s students.
8. Early in my career, I had a job where I had the exclusive use of a PA. She used to open the day’s post and when I’d read it I’d dictate replies to her, which she took down in shorthand and typed up on an electric typewriter. We got our first pcs when I’d been in the job for a year, but I still dictated most of my correspondence to my PA. (I’m not all that old, really!!)
9. In that same job, I travelled a lot. Keeping in touch with home meant either using expensive hotel phones or leaving contact numbers before I set out. It was a real thrill when the bedside phone rang, having been out of touch all day.
10. I started going to theatre at a young age. I have a collection of programmes from the Royal Shakespeare Company going back to 1977. I saw Ian McKellan and Judi Dench in Macbeth. And Jonathan Pryce’s iconic Petruchio. I saw Glenda Jackson play Cleopatra. I fell in love with Ralph Fiennes playing Henry VI. I remember Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Michael Hordern’s Prospero. I could go on. And on. And on, taking in David Tennant’s Hamlet and Al Pacino’s Merchant of Venice along the way. What a privilege to have seen some of the world’s finest actors live on stage!

So, the world keeps changing and new technology shifts the way we live our lives. I’m ‘writing’ this blog post on a touch-screen pc and you’ll be reading it electronically too. My cloud-based mailing list system means that you’ll get a personal reminder to view my blog this week and you can comment on my writing for all the world to see. 

What a long way we’ve come from my handwriting lessons!

How I still treasure the fountain pen my Dad gave me when I passed my O-levels!

Delegation can be quite a thorny issue. Whether you're on the receiving end of delegation that isn't very successful, or whether you're the person who's in the position of delegating and it isn't working as well as you'd like it to, then it may be something that's caused you a certain amount of stress or frustration or sleepless nights.

Last time we spoke I talked about why you might want to make a plan for the day, in advance of the day. And I recommended to you that you do it the night before. Now I don't know whether you've been doing that or not, but one of the things people often say to me when they first start making a plan for the day is that actually they find it quite frustrating. Typically people say things like: "Well I made my plan and I went into work at 8.30. And by about half past 9 I'd strayed away from the plan because somebody wanted something that wasn't in my plan… So what's the point in planning if I can't actually stick to the plan?" It's a good question isn't it?

Have you ever wondered how to get the perfect work/life balance? And not just the right balance between working life and family life, but also giving the right amount of time to your hobbies and other interests or commitments?

I used to belong to a voluntary organisation where experienced members would advise the newer ones, ‘your family comes first, your work comes second and this voluntary activity comes third.’ Fine in theory, but I can remember more than one occasion when the local President missed a meeting at short notice because of family circumstances – and it wasn’t well received!

However, it highlighted some things for me about the whole issue of priorities. If you always give your time to your top priority, nothing else ever gets any time. There have to be times when you put the lower priority activities first, otherwise you’d never actually do them.

So the real skill is in planning your time and activities so that you never have to choose between your priorities in the moment. It means balancing your commitments so that over time, the important things get more of your time and attention and the less important things get less of your time.

In effect, that means you might have a priority for today that isn’t a priority for the week. Or a priority for the month that isn’t a priority for today. It sounds paradoxical, but actually it’s perfectly logical. If you had the same priorities all the time, you’d do the same things every day!

Ultimately, priorities are contextual. To avoid causing yourself stress, your priorities need to be aligned with your values and goals and you need to spend time on planning to get the right balance.

Do you ever feel like you've got so much going on that somehow it's all getting out of control? I get like that sometimes. And even though I've got a really good team who help me manage (well actually they manage me), quite often I find that there are so many things that I need to get done that I've lost track of some of them. And when I get like that and I feel a bit out of control, then I decide I need to go back to basics. One of the basics I always go back to is making a daily plan…

Since I mentioned in the last newsletter that I’m going to be offering NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner training again in 2013, several people have asked me what I mean when I refer to a ‘proper Practitioner training’.

As NLP is still an unregulated field in the UK – and much of the rest of the world – different training institutes have a different interpretation of what the label 'NLP Practitioner' means and also how to train people to that level.

I’ve often been asked, 'Why does your Practitioner programme take 20 days when other trainers are offering Practitioner in 7 or 10 or 15 days?' (Or even 2 or 3 days!) This is a great question: most of the people who come to Brilliant Minds are managers or directors in business and are very busy. Time is a significant consideration.

The answer is simple:

The 7-day 'accelerated' programmes offered by many NLP Training Institutes include around 50 hours of home study before the programme. The reason I don’t offer this is because I’m concerned that busy people don't always find time to do the home study. That means they don’t get the full benefit of the ‘live’ part of the programme and may impact the quality of the experience for other people too.

With a full 20-day programme all you have to do is clear the space in your schedule and turn up. Also, since the 20 days are spread over 4 months, there are lots of opportunities to review real-life experiences and learn from each other’s experiments. This really helps the learning to stick.

NLP is a set of practical skills and, as with any other skills, you only get to the level of 'unconscious competence' with practice. Doing the practice in the training room means you get high quality feedback. It also ensures that the practice actually happens. How often have you been on a training programme and not got around to using what you learnt?

In this Olympic year, I’ve been reminded that there isn’t a fast-track to everything.  Some things can only be achieved through commitment, focus and the dedication of time. 

Two programmes may both be called 'NLP Practitioner' but it's obvious to any intelligent person that you will learn more and get more benefits the longer you spend training. To put it another way, you get what you pay for. And I've never been interested in being the cheapest or the quickest – I just want to provide the best training possible for my clients.

Some institutes work on the assumption that if you do Practitioner training, you’ll automatically do Master Practitioner training, so they can fill in any gaps in a later training.

I want to be sure that if this is the only NLP training you ever do, it’s been worthwhile. When I sign a NLP Practitioner Certificate for you at the end of a 20-day training programme, you can be sure it means that you really can practise NLP successfully in your everyday life.

Here's the link for full details of the Brilliant Minds 'proper Practitioner training' 2013

The Olympic Games had a slogan: "Inspire a Generation" and at the time I wasn't really sure what I thought about that. But as time has gone on I've been reflecting back on a lot of things that have been happening over the summer. Not just the Olympic and Paralympic games, but other sporting achievements that we've seen. I've started to think about what I would like the legacy of the Olympic Games to be…

This year's NLP Conference takes place 9 – 11 November in London and I'm delighted to say that I'll be presenting a session at the conference again. My topic this year is 'NLP and Business Partnering'.

What can you expect at the conference?

The highlights include a full day and one half day workshop from Michael Grinder as well as a full day workshop from Art Giser.

The international line up of presenters includes Frank Pucelik, Wyatt Woodsmall, James Geary, Byron Lewis, Laureli Blyth, Heidi Heron and Frank Bourke. The UK trainers presenting alongside me include Ian McDermott, Lisa Wake, Judith Lowe, James Lawley, Penny Tompkins, John McWhirter, John Seymour, Pamela Gawler-Wright and Marie Faire.

The theme of the conference is collaboration and community and you'll have the opportunity to mix with like minded people and share experiences with practitioners using NLP in fields as diverse as education, business and therapy.

The conference provides the best networking opportunity in the NLP world!  So if you'd like to find out more and book your place, here's the link you need: www.nlpconference.co.uk