This is fantastic news for Tobysshoes and our social movement, we have no doubt that we will be seeing more and more of these articles with celebrities moving into the Vibram Fivefingers.

All good news for the Vibram and Tobysshoes.com

We think you’ll agree, practice really does make perfect, and we like to think that people who train through our organisation want to be the best of the rest in the field of NLP.  It is our intention therefore to provide you with as many opportunities as we possibly can to help you develop your skills as part of our continued commitment to your personal and professional development through NLP.

With this is mind, we would like to extend a warm welcome to you, as our guest, to attend our ‘almost monthly’ NLP Practice Group in London.

Chris Jones, a great friend of ours, and someone who has trained with us through to NLP Trainers Level, will guide you through most of the practice sessions we have planned for you.  He will cover topics that you are already skilled in from the NLP Practitioner level with the aim of practicing those skills until they are ‘in the muscle’.  Whilst Chris will recap on the theory of each topic and provide examples and demonstrations, expect the sessions to be highly practical.

The following dates have been booked for you:

1. Sat 27th Aug 2011
2. Sat 1st Oct 2011
3. Sat 19th Nov 2011
4. Sat 14th Jan 2012
5. Sat 10th March 2012
6. Sat 12th May 2012
7. Sat 30th June 2012
8. Sat 18th Aug 2012
9. Sat 6th Oct 2012
10. Sat 1st Dec 2012

Each Practice Group will be held in Farringdon, Central London from 1pm to 5pm on the above dates.

To book onto one or more of these groups, please go to:

https://tobyandkatemccartney.com/practicegroup.php    

and complete the booking form online.

You are invited as our guest to this practice group and there is no charge for attending. These sessions are only available for those who have trained to Practitioner level or above with us.  We do however offer a limited number of seats though, which we expect will ‘sell-out’. In order to preplan these sessions, we must ask for your credit card number as a verification of your commitment to the group and the session/s you are booking, as well as a protection of our investment in you.

Your card will NOT be charged if you attend the session/s you book. However, if you fail to attend, we will collect £50 for holding an unused reservation. Thank you for your understanding.

For your continued development,

Toby & Kate

That little dash that they put onto your gravestone after you have gone…  It represents your whole life.

Not much of a motivational speech you might be thinking – but it can be!

The good news is that the dash is designed by you. Carefully crafted and remembered by whoever you want. That dash represents your stories, your memories, your inspiration and kindness shown to others. It can mean so much to so many and touch the hearts of people around the world…  Or, let’s face it, it can mean nothing… Just another date separator for someone who died sometime…  I don’t know about you, but I want my dash to be worth remembering.  I have around 50 to 60 summers left on this planet all being well, and I want to make my dash one to remember… Like the many hero’s who died in the war to provide us with the life we have today; what are you going to be remembered for.. what do you want to be remembered for, and what might you do today to say Yes to that…

Toby

Rach will be moving at the end of this month to manage a large project with ‘Nestle’. What can we say – you can’t keep a girl from her chocolate. Rach has done really well to secure this full time job with a much larger company and we hope she will continue to grow with these new career opportunities.

We are sad to see her go and wish her every success in the future. She has been a huge support to us, and many of our clients and friends. Rach will be leaving at the end of the month.

We are now looking for a new member of our family to take over from Rach (these are not easy shoes to fill…). We promise to find the right person who can support us all as effectively as Rach has done over the last two and a half years.

Warm regards,
Toby and Kate McCartney

It would seem now that I have become somewhat famous among our delegates for a certain skill I have… making Malteser Cake! So, as promised, here is the recipe (unfortunately, I have no idea where it came from as my Mum was given it by my boyfriend’s Mum years ago!):

Malteser Crunch Traybake

Ingredients:
4oz margarine
1tblsp of golden syrup
13oz of milk chocolate
10oz digestive biscuits
6oz of Maltesers

Method:
In a pan melt 4oz margarine, 1tblsp of golden syrup and 6oz of chocolate. One this has all melted add 10oz of crushed digestive biscuits and 6oz of Maltesers.

Mix it all together and press into a tin. Put it in the fridge and allow to set for about 20-30 minutes.

When it’s cool and set cover with the remaining 7oz of melted chocolate and put it back in the fridge to allow to set.

You can get creative, and drizzle white chocolate over the top and add whole maltesers but, I like to keep things simple.

Have a go and ENJOY!

Rach x

The ‘typical’ items to go are usually chocolate, coffee etc but I was thinking of something a bit different…

Last week I heard some ‘good news’ about someone who had ‘wronged’ me many many years ago (and of course that’s ‘wronged’ in my opinion!). However rather than feeling happy for them, I felt something different. And not a good different. Did this person deserve this happiness? Maybe it was not really happiness, but a facade. Clearly an unresolved part in me, that has unknowingly held onto some hurt from the past.

So, to get to my point… for lent this year how about giving up a negative emotion that doesn’t serve you? I suspect this could do more good for ourselves and others, rather than just causing a dip in Cadbury’s sales!

Toby and I visited Samye Ling (a Tibetan monastery) with a recent group of students. During the visit Ani Lhamo one of the Nuns shared with us a very powerful meditation, where you bring to mind someone you dislike and then for 5 minutes you sit quietly and think only of love for them (if you are familiar with typical ‘nlp’ techniques, this process seemed to allow the unconscious mind to perform a perceptual positions, time line and belief change!) These few minutes created a space to think about someone in a new positive way. Each time the mind was seduced by negative memories or thoughts you simply bring your mind back to the task at hand – to think only of love for them. And with this simple meditation the negative emotions slowly start to change, to shift to something other than the way they were. We can’t change the events from the past, but we can change how we feel about them now. And having done this for the person I mentioned earlier, I am now happily wishing them a lifetime of happiness, which is much more in line with who I truly am and the way I wish to be in the world.

So, if you’re thinking of giving something up for lent, then think of an emotion that doesn’t serve you. Stress? Anxiety? Jealousy? Anger? See how it goes. Try it for 40 days – and hey if you really want to bring that negative emotion back into your life go for it – but I suspect this might be something worth giving up for good.

With Love, Kate

First off we have Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) – Tuesday 8th…

…then we have England V Scotland on Sunday 13th where rugby fans like myself either celebrate or commiserate (the latter I hope if you are Scottish)…

… and of course we have Saint Patrick’s Day on 17th March and even if you are not Irish, it gives call for a Guinness or 9…

Anyway, I feel like joining in on the celebrations this month, and have set up a little ‘celebratory competition’ for you all…

First of all, here’s what you could win:
1. A £15 iTunes voucher;
2. …Some pancake mix;
3. …A Guinness gift;
4. …And a British bulldog cuddly toy (I personally like this one the best)

And here’s what you have to do to win:
Somewhere on my sites (both tobymccartney.com and tobyandkatemccartney.com) I have hidden some pancakes, a Scottish Rugby player, an English Rugby player and a leprechaun (4 items in total). They are on random pages waiting to be found…

All you have to do is find them, copy the page urls (taken from the top of your web browser), and paste them together with your name into the comments box below this blog post…

I will choose 3 winners from a hat on Saint Patrick’s Day (17th March) and if you are one of them I will send you your goodies…

Have a wonderful March, and good luck!

Toby

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/happiness-lessons-for-all-407247.html

Toby

It’s all very impressive, but for me the section of her story that really stood out and made me sit up and take notice, was before her public success while she was at school. Rising at 5am to swim and doing homework in the back of the car! I guess it’s easier to maintain that level of commitment once you have lifted an Olympic gold medal, but to continually get up at 5am, throw yourself in a cold pool of water, when you don’t when (or if) it will pay off and your peers around you are living a very different ‘easier’ life, is, to me amazing.  To exchange instant pleasures for delayed gratification is surely one of the main ingredients of a champion.

I suspect that many people (and I include myself in this often) are fully engaged in microwave thinking – a deep belief that compensation should immediately follow any effort. Champions, leaders and those that are highly successful are different. They earn these labels by perfecting their competencies. If you look at champions, that label took years of hard work and sacrifice to achieve, with little or no apparent compensation along the way.  So with ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ or ‘Goals’ prominent in many people’s thinking at the moment, good questions to ask ourselves might be “Am I more interested in pleasure, or gratification?” “Am I more focussed on pleasure-based activities that deliver short and sweet payoffs or on gratification-based activities that take longer to achieve but deliver long and meaningful payoffs?” The choice is ultimately our own.

Wishing you huge success for the year ahead,

Kate
P.s. If you really want a shock, the Guardian published Rebecca Adlington’s full hour-by-hour training schedule online. Just scroll to the bottom of this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/10/rebecca-adlington-swimming

In these last few days to Christmas there is this inevitable rush. My friend today told me she ‘had’ to be at the shops for 8.30am to be in any hope of a parking space. I’m met with the question ‘you all ready for Christmas then?’ everywhere we go. Somehow we as a culture seem to take our normal amount of busyness and increase it 10 fold in order to celebrate. I know it’s maybe an overused saying, but, less is often so much more.

A few years ago Toby and I had Christmas in India. The area was mostly Hindu, and there was no sign of ‘Christmas’ anywhere. Not the usual music, decorations or Santa hats! And yet strangely, we experienced the most purest Christmas spirit by exchanging simple gifts and singing carols with friends in the dark whilst sharing insect repellent on a warm night. A totally unconventional Christmas for us both, yet by having and doing so much less we both agreed we enjoyed Christmas so much more.

Huge thanks to my yoga teacher for sharing this meditation with our class.  If you’re anything like me, chocolates near to you may disappear at an alarming rate at this time of year, but in the interest of doing less and experiencing more, I passionately recommend you trial this meditation. So, go and dig out that box of chocolates (you know exactly where they are) and REALLY allow yourself to enjoy!

Steps follow below.

Merry Christmas

Kate

1. Lay out a napkin or towel in front of you. Sitting crossed legged and breathing evenly, focus on the chocolate. How the light affects it. The colours, textures (ensure the chocolate is out of its wrapper.).

2. Slowly pick it up. Notice the weight of it. It’s texture. Rotate it. Observe the shape and colour.

3. Bring the chocolate up to your nose, and inhale deeply. Notice what thoughts come to you as you do this. Let the thoughts come and go.

4. Place the chocolate in your mouth without chewing it for a few moments.

5. Then slowly bite down and chew. Notice the flavour, richness, and texture. Be aware of it’s after flavour.