To mark the momentous occasion (well it is for us!) of the birth of the Niggle revolution, we thought you should know what the revolution is all about. It’s about liberation from the shackles of your own mind, it’s about seizing control of the seat of power in your personal universe (that’s your mind) and telling it who’s boss (that’s you). We have enough proper research now, from clever people who study such things, and from our own experience as life and business coaches (which adds up to more years than we’ll ever admit to!), to know that there are many different answers to any question, depending on who you ask, and the only person with the perfect answer, is you.
This is has been a huge month for us with Niggle going live almost exactly nine months since we first talked about it in Amsterdam. This happened about a week earlier than even we had hoped for. We’re fairly optimistic people who expect everything to go smoothly, but even we were surprised when the lovely Craig at himumsaiddad called to say Niggle was on itunes! Then again everything about it has been magical from the start, and it’s been a fantastic journey turning what began as an interesting premise into something that people everywhere are actually using and, oh happy days, actually liking!
The interesting premise we had was that a great coach is a coach who is so totally present, so focused on you, that they as a person are barely there at all. When you are the subject, the only ‘expert’ you need in the room is you, and the perfect coach would be more like a presence than a person, and simply hold the space and ask the right questions so that you can hear yourself think, and then make decisions about what you really want. We decided we would build an app that takes the coach out of the coaching equation and puts the coaching experience one hundred per cent in the hands of the user and the universe. Always the best combination!
Once the idea had been seeded, over coffee and waffles in a canal house in the Jordaan, it seemed to take on a life of its own and we soon understood how it would work. We explained our idea to a few developers in several countries, before choosing himumsaiddad, in London, UK, to partner with us in building it. We chose them because we liked their work, obviously, and because they know what they’re doing, but mainly because they were the ones who ‘got it’ the quickest and liked it the best, and we thought they would be the most fun to play with. And they are!
So Niggle was conceived in the Netherlands, born in UK, and is a collaboration between professional coaches and creatives in UK, Denmark, Netherlands and Cyprus. Niggle is free to download, and is just the beginning. We’re already working on new versions for different types of people with very specific niggles - like people working in big corporations, and people starting up or already running their own business. Meanwhile, we’re listening and learning from those of you who are using Niggle now, and planning an upgrade that will take your ideas and suggestions into account and feature new ideas we’ve had too!
There have been many magic moments over the last nine months and there are two that really stand out, both involving time. The first, was the day before we were supposed to submit the final, final, final version to Craig in order to be sure to make the deadline and have Niggle up and running in time to present it to our colleagues at the ICF (International Coach Federation) conference in Las Vegas. We still hadn’t found the right music and we had run out of ideas for getting some. We were frustrated with ourselves and each other, how could we have left it to the last minute?! Then one of us suggested we call Sanya Budna. Sanya is a fine singer songwriter and a good friend who we all know and love, so none of us could imagine why we hadn’t thought of her earlier. We had only a few hours to go and Sanya is not the easiest person to find. We decided to try skype first and, for possibly the first time in history, she answered immediately. We told her what we needed, how quickly we needed it, and sent her the graphics. She told us to “hang on a minute” and played us something she had written and recorded in 1997. It was so perfect we were speechless. The music was always there waiting for us and somehow we got to it in perfect time. It seemed like the last minute at the time, but that was just our perception when, in fact, it was in perfect time.
We were delirious with delight when we delivered everything, music and all, to himumsaiddad bang on deadline in order to get it to Apple where it would go through the process all new apps have to go through before they can be put in the App Store, and which we were told always takes ten working days. In our delirium, we had the audacity to ask Craig if there was any chance our baby might be born on the full moon (we like the Moon so we thought this must certainly be an auspicious time to launch an app) in 7 days time. He didn’t exactly laugh at us, by now he was feeling the magic himself, but he more or less told us not to hold out breath. 7 Days later Craig emailed to say Niggle had gone live at exactly two minutes after midnight in the light of the silvery moon, and we all exhaled.
Works on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Android and Windows versions coming up soon.
Download NIGGLE for Free
at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/niggle/id463308853?mt=8
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Learn more on how to Niggle at http://www.niggleapp.com
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