Inspirations | Matt Wingett

The Woman Inside Of Me

By Matt on Saturday, November 6, 2010

When I was 23 years old I had the strangest dream. I remember it vividly even now, nearly 20 years on.

I was living in a cottage on the Isle of Arran, off the West Coast of Scotland, where I had taken myself to write a book. The cottage was a whitewashed old place on a farm, with walls made of two layers of local stone, with rammed earth between to keep the wind out. In order to open the windows in the thick walls, I had to stretch deep into the window alcove, nearly bending double to do so. Being so thick, the walls also kept out the sound of the outside. It was a silent space.

Upstairs, the bedroom had a wooden ceiling following the angles of the roof. At night, the window looked out on to dark, brooding fields, and a sky filled with bright stars. The full moon would cycle round once a month, shining a milky light on to my bed, with me in it.

I slept deeply in that room. The soughing of the wind in the gables was the only sound, except sometimes I would hear the scratching of a mouse scurrying up over the roof.

I was a sensitive soul, and I had gone up there partially to write a novel, and partially to be cured of a broken heart. I was a romantic wanderer, I suppose.

One night, I was lying deep, deep in sleep in this silent place. As I slept, I dreamt that the spirit of a woman came to me. She was a strange creature, with a face as white as moonlight. She wore a winding sheet – or if not that – then a floating white cotton night dress. Her face was cold and she looked at me with a definite intent, though to do what I could not be sure. Her hair was blonde – not white blonde – but the colour of ripe straw. If I were to say that she was anything, then she seemed like a goddess of the wheat. And I don’t mean that she was a spirit from a bottle of fermented barley.

She floated closer, hovering over me, and I could feel her cold breath on me. I realised that she was going to float down and smother me. And it was then that I woke up with a short, sharp gasp, staring into the night.

And as I looked, she was still there in front of my eyes, lowering herself towards me.

I found that I could not move, and as she came closer, I tried so hard to cry out. But somehow I was held in a helpless trance, unable to move and unable to scream. I was shaking with fear. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as her body and face pushed closer. I knew something terrible was going to happen.

And then, her body touched mine. And she continued to sink down until she completely disappeared inside of me.

As she did so, I felt a huge wave of resignation and relief wash through me. I had a feeling as if of an unwinding of a massive tense spring in my stomach, and I suddenly felt grateful and happy for her presence.

She has stayed with me, inside of me for years now. There are times when I feel that I have lost her. But she comes back when the time is right. When I am in contact with her, I feel at my most confident. I am able to organise my thoughts, and I am able to write coherently and from the heart.

I have no idea who she is, except that she is me.

Dreams are the strangest things. I do not know what that dream was, nor do I want to know, but thanks to that dream I am more comfortable in my skin than I ever was before. That dream marks the time when I stopped being a boy and I became a man. It is also the time from which I count my life as a writer.

All of this, thanks to the woman inside of me.

Inspirations

Barb Stepp – NLP’s Fairy Godmother

By Matt on Friday, November 5, 2010

Yesterday I was lucky enough to interview Barbara Stepp, the world’s oldest NLP Master Trainer and DHE Master Trainer. For those who don’t know about NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), it’s a system of personal improvement which basically teaches you to think more clearly and effectively by bringing your emotions under control and deliberately using them to inform your decisions.

It presupposes the existence of an “unconscious” in all humans, but not in the old-fashioned Freudian sense of being a mystic land of uncontrolled primal drives which are transformed into neuroses and psychoses as they come to the surface. In NLP, the unconscious is conceived more as an amazingly effective mechanism which regulates inputs to the conscious mind.

The point with NLP is that because the unconscious is by definition outside of our consciousness, we have never really been consciously taught to get the best out of it. That’s why so many people end up victims of their emotional states without even realising it. Undirected, the mechanism of the unconscious can send up undermining and disempowering emotions, just as much as affirmational and empowering ones. These emotions shape our expectations. NLP enables us to become masters of those emotions and hence of the decisions and actions we make and take in our lives. It teaches you to think on purpose.

There’s more to it than that. For example, those who do NLP, being concerned with emotional states, are interested in finding a

barbara_stepp — Barbara Stepp, NLP's Fairy Godmother

gateway between the conscious and unconscious mind. Such a state is hypnosis, that half-dreamlike state that enables the land of dreams and the waking mind to meet. Thanks to countless movies and tv shows, it sounds more mysterious than it is. The state of hypnosis is really very much like the state one moves through as one falls asleep, or that is achieved in meditations – or more prosaically, when someone really boring talks to you for too long. The eyes glaze over and you become absorbed in your own thoughts.

Barb’s story is often mentioned by Richard Bandler, the man who invented the term “NLP”. It is worth retelling briefly here. In the 1980s Barb attended a seminar being run by Richard in which he selected her from the audience as part of a demonstration of hypnotic age regression. He took her back to a younger time, and asked her unconscious to reset her body to that younger self. It was part of what Richard called his “Hypnotic Beauty Treatment”.

I have listened to the recording of that session, and it is a highly effective trance which left me feeling really “zingy” afterwards. With Barb it did far more.

What Richard didn’t know is that Barb had been told by her doctor to get her affairs in order. She had terminal cancer and was given 6 months to live.

Within weeks of the seminar, Barb returned to the hospital to have more tests done. The startled doctors now informed her that there was no cancer in her body at all. In those intervening weeks, she had got hold of a tape of the trance Richard had done on her, and had repeatedly used it on herself. At this time she had also undergone spontaneous remission.

It is always difficult in these cases to claim that such an event caused such a response. The scientists among your will by now be starting to hit the ceiling, and so I am making no claims here whatsoever. But what I can say is that Barb is certain that Richard’s intervention was key to her survival.

Barb is now nearly 72 years old, and is a wonderful presence to be with. Having been around for so long, and being so full of light and laughter, she has been given the title: NLP’s Fairy Godmother. The thing that really struck me about her is that she is continually looking to learn new things, and to have fun in life. Doctors have often said that survival rates among cancer patients for those with a positive attitude are much higher than those without it. Barb’s attitude to life is not only positive, it is pro-active in the extreme. She is a scuba diver, a mountaineer and a pilot. She got her pilot’s licence at the age of 65. She has a sparkle in her eye and is just a joy to be with because she is looking for fun in every single moment of her life.

If there is one thing that I took away from the interview to learn from, it was Barb’s attitude to life: “When I stop learning, then I will stop living”.

She assures me, she has no intention of doing either.

Banana Republic Inspirations

The Birdwoman of Southsea

By Matt on Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Walk into a pub in the Banana Republic, not far from the old Royal Marines Barracks on a Sunday afternoon, and you might be lucky enough to hear a woman singing some jazz numbers, backed by a pianist and a bass player.

She lilts out the numbers with a steady ease, lifting her smooth voice over the drinkers’ pints as they gather for a relaxed pubday afternoon, and weaving for a moment little pockets of joy and sadness, laughter and tragedy from that oh-so malleable raw material: sound.

“No Moon At All” – Helen MacDougall and her Musicians

This singer, with her dark hair and her lean figure I think of as The Southsea Birdwoman. She has sung in pubs and in clubs around the south of England, and she has played gigs to big audiences down at the Southsea bandstand. Thousands have basked on the grass by the sea, or danced swing, while her full band has filled the air with jumping rhythms.

But there is far more to the Birdwoman than being a singer. She is an unusual, massively gifted individual who has the hands of a builder, the muscles of an athlete and the voice of an angel.

helenmacdougall — Helen MacDougall - The Southsea Birdwoman

Catch her on a summer afternoon down at the beach. She lives only a four minute walk from the solid shingle incline that shelves down to the sea. If you time it right, and the wind is in the right direction, you will find her taking wing on the waves – windsurfing over white horses, catching the air in her sail and scooting over the spray. Her tensed arms and her solid body taking on the elements, allow her for a moment to soar over the pale-green Solent on her single, white wing.

At work, you may find her in the trees, helping kids to find greater confidence by climbing with rope and harness up into the canopy. Or she may be at work building a bivouac, or showing kids how to light a fire and make artefacts out of wood: little pots from bark, perfectly made, with a lid and a base, as if a little craftshop has sprouted in a glade.

And at home, you may find her building her nest: hammering and sawing, making little additions to her home. The decking she built at the back of the house is a genuine feat of construction, with pillars of wood sunk deep into concrete, and a space where a tree has been given room to grow up through a hole specially cut. This is a sociable watering hole she has made, a lucky horseshoe of seats for friends to gather in the back garden on a summer’s day.

Indoors, for warmth in the winter, she has built a fireplace. She poured and set half a ton of concrete to build a suspended constructional hearth herself, and then put in place a cast iron Victorian fireplace. She has reboarded the downstairs floor, painted and decorated the whole house. Upstairs, completely unafraid, she took a circular saw to a wall in order to extend a room and build a clothes cupboard from the narrow space where an old boiler tank used to live. And she plastered over the place where the original door was so that it is now impossible to tell that it was any other way.

Consider her now: singing for all to hear, or flying on her windsurfer, or hopping high up in the trees – or again – building her nest – and now you understand why she is the Birdwoman of Southsea.

he Southsea Birdwoman

Walk into a pub in Eastney, not far from the old Royal Marines Barracks on a Sunday afternoon, and you might be lucky enough to hear a woman singing some jazz numbers, backed by a pianist and a bass player.

But there is far more to the Birdwoman than being a singer. She is an unusual, massively gifted individual who has the hands of a builder, the muscles of an athlete and the voice of an angel.

At work, you may find her in the trees, helping kids to find greater confidence by climbing with ropes and harness up into the canopy. Or she may be at work building a bivouac, or showing kids how to light a fire and make artefacts out of wood: little pots from bark, perfectly made, with a lid and a base, as if a little craftshop has sprouted in a glade.

And at home, you may find her building her nest: hammering and sawing, making little additions to her home. The decking she built at the back of the house is a genuine feat of construction, with pillars of wood sunk deep into concrete, and a space where a tree has been given room to grow up through a hole specially cut. This is a sociable watering hole she has made, a ring of seats for friends to gather in the back garden on a summer’s day.

Indoors, for warmth in the winter, she has built a fireplace. She poured and set half a ton of concrete to build a constructional hearth herself, and then put in place a cast iron Victorian fireplace. She has reboarded the downstairs floor, redecorated and painted it all. Upstairs, completely unafraid, she took a circular saw to a wall in order to extend a room and build a clothes cupboard from the narrow space where an old boiler tank used to live. And she plastered over the place where the original door was so that it is now impossible to tell that it was any other way.

To consider her now: singing for all to hear, or flying on her windsurfer, or high up in the trees – or again – building her nest – and now you understood why she is the Birdwoman of Southsea.

She is an amazing character, a kind and good hearted individual – and one, I am pleased, to call my friend.

Inspirations

Stevie Kidd: An Exemplary Man

By Matt on Sunday, October 31, 2010

In the last few years I’ve had the privilege of meeting some extraordinarily gifted and brilliant individuals. From millionaires, to artists and singers, through to individuals who are just kind and wholesome, the mix has been inspiring, bewildering, challenging and uplifting. Some of these people I have come to admire, learn from and marvel at. Such a man is Stevie Kidd.

Stevie Kidd, CEO of the KDS Group — Stevie Kidd, an examplary man.

Picture him now. A towering figure with a bald head, keen eyes and a mind that moves as fast as light and has been formed from hard experience, pure determination and powerful emotions. He has in his eyes a hint of genius and maybe a look that some who don’t “get” him might call madness, but which I know is pure inspiration. When Stevie is in the room, you know about it. And when Stevie is in the room, he knows you know.

I cannot go into the details of everything that he does, nor the incredible and confident way that he generates a new idea and then puts his heart and soul into pursuing it. Suffice to say that in 6 short years he has turned a £500 loan from his mother and a burning idea into a multi-million pound business, with divisions in training, distribution, care and personal development. By the time I have written this piece, I am sure he will have added yet more elements to his business, and will have made further friends at high levels. Stevie is the original unstoppable force who is making changes in people all around him. One of his businesses gets the long-term unemployed back to work. For him and his dedicated staff, this isn’t about figures, numbers or statistics. In every case, and in every business interaction he has, it is the people that he cares about, and the people that he will push and challenge to make their lives better.

So let me give you three snapshots of the man.

Snapshot 1:

Midnight on a street in Earl’s Court, standing outside a Thai restaurant. I have just noticed Stevie respond to some gossip around the table by standing up and walking out for a cigarette. I read it straight away in his eyes: he wasn’t going to get drawn into showing anyone any disrespect. So, instead, he walked out the door, his phone in his hand, and started to think about his next business venture. This is Stevie all over: he never stops or rests to bask in the glory of a moment, or to fritter a moment unproductively.

I join him on the sodium-light-flooded pavement, and we stand and talk a moment while he lights a cigarette. He is thinking about the new things he has to do, about the new projects he is going to get involved in. He tells me about the things that motivate him – about his role models – about his drive to want to help others.

And then, as we talk, two lads come down the road, one with a bicycle, the other on foot. The smaller of the two is a skinny black kid of 14 or so, with thick NHS glasses on, all scratched up. He squints through them at Stevie, and tries to get a cigarette off him, and then to get money from him to buy some cola. He doesn’t appear to hold his attention on anything for any amount of time, staring around him, and not listening when Stevie talks – but still hovers and flits around, somehow pulled in by Stevie’s manner. The other kid is a taller, heavier white guy with freckles – about 15 years old, with a quiet inward-looking presence, and looking a little lost, too.

Stevie holds firm about giving the pair of them money. And then he starts on something that I begin to realise he does all the time. He launches in at the two of them, engaging them in conversation, finding out what makes them tick, what floats their boats. He drops ideas into their heads when one of them tells him he likes cars. There are training courses for mechanics that young people can get on to, there are great things that he could do with his life. But he does it in a roundabout way – holding their interest at the same time as putting ideas into their minds. They talk together, these three, in a low-key way for 15 minutes, and then he lets them go.

He didn’t have to do it, but when they leave he turns to me and says: “I got the white kid thinking. Out here, now, that’s all you can do. Plant a seed. The other one, well, he had a lot of problems, I could see that. I hope something has got through.”

Snapshot 2:

Standing in the training room of the KDS Group, Glasgow, where Stevie Kidd has helped hundreds of long-term unemployed get back to work by putting them through his training programme, he is showing a group of us his offices. We are standing around him as he goes through the photos on the wall of the different academies his company has trained.

He points out individuals one by one in the groups, relating their unique stories to us: “This one, he had a really shitty childhood, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. This one, she just had no self confidence. This one, he was a kid without a sense of direction, and I shook him up big time. All of these people are in work, thanks to us.”

He pauses a moment as his finger hovers over another photograph. “This one, she…” he trails off and his story break offs. I can hear his voice breaking, and I see him bend his head, inhaling through his nose and then his mouth, to calm himself. The emotion in him is so strong, and he takes a full minute to master his emotions, running techniques of self-composure on himself to stop being overwhelmed by his feelings.

After a while he says: “She had so much go wrong.” He won’t reveal any more than that, merely telling us: “It was a terrible story. But she is in work now. She is working. She’s okay. And she’s happy, at last.”

And as he says this, a renewed note of hope enters his voice and he wipes a tear from his eyes with the back of his hand.

Snapshot 3:

Interviewing Stevie Kidd in a London hotel for an article I am writing, and hearing him talk about his day. The passion with which he starts to talk about the lives he has touched that day, beginning at 5 a.m. by sitting with the staff in the hotel he is staying at and helping them to sort out the newspapers for the guests. Heading out and inspiring his driver to do more with his life – even stopping at a bookshop to buy him the books he needs to take his career further. In between meetings with politicians and businessmen, stopping at a newsagent and just getting the shopkeeper to smile. In the evening, heading out for dinner and getting the staff in the Chinese restaurant to have fun and laugh.

And then, he leans closer to me as he grows more intense and his face and voice become more passionate now, he tells me of seeking out the homeless in parks in London, helping them to find a place to stay, before getting back to the hotel at 3 a.m.

It almost seems too much to believe, until I log in to his facebook account and see photos of each of the stories he has told me about. I think about the sheer energy and passion in this man, and marvel at it…

Above are three snapshots, all tied together by a single theme. Some people might call it philanthropy, some might call it care and respect. But the theme is more neatly summed up in another way: People.

Whenever Stevie Kidd engages with a person, he expects them to engage back with a thousand per cent of their being. He is a man driven by passion, and by extraordinarily strong emotions which flow through a body that has to be strong enough and powerful enough to contain them.

Some have described him as a “force of nature”. I don’t think that. I think he is an extraordinary individual, who cares about others from the bottom of his heart – and understands that business, like the rest of life – is made up of relationships.

And I believe that if you choose to learn that lesson, which lives at the heart of it all, it will make you not just rich – but also wealthy in the true sense of the word.