Landscaping Your Life Launch

It's my birthday today, and I'm excited. It's also the launch of my new Landscaping Your Life blog. Which means I'm double excited. Once I've had my favourite brunch, and favourite desert, and no doubt the odd piece of birthday cake then excitement won't be the word for it :-)

Please see below a duplicate of today's blog over on the Landscaping Your Life web page. Although of course I'd love you to pop over there, subscribe and tell your friends too.

Since April 2000 I've used nature as our teacher and metaphor for life with clients helping them to get back on track. As a result I've developed many different tools and techniques, and the collective term used to describe these terms is Landscaping Your Life. 

As I relaunch Landscaping Your Life today I wanted to provide an index of the blogs I've written on the subject. These blogs cover a range of topics:

• Sayings we use that keep us stuck - and how to use them to get unstuck   
• Observations from nature - noticing what we notice 
• Using landscaping Your Life in business, or procurement
• and a few others Landscaping Your Life tools and techniques 

Of all the different tools I use to help people get back on track Landscaping Your Life has been the most effective, and efficient too. It's why it's still a tool I use often with others and myself. It's as if it's stood the test of time - like much of nature itself. 

Landscaping Your Life tools are very quick, and the insight can stay with people for years. Easy for me to say I know. I'm hoping with this launch, therefore, that I can encourage past clients to share their experiences so that you may learn of its efficacy from them rather than me. 

That said the easiest way to check LYL's effectiveness is to try it for yourself. Why not have a read of some of the following blogs, pick one of the tools and have a go for yourself - and do let me know how you get on. 

Or simply join me going forward as I add new blogs with insight from nature, or share tools you can use at work or home, alone or in groups, to help provide insight on a challenge.  

Sayings we use that keep us stuck and using them to get unstuck   

• No pain no gain
• Making mountains out of molehills
• Can't see the wood for the trees
• Stuck in a rut

• Head in the sand I'm never sure whether to share the pictures :-)

• Up a creek without a paddle
• I don't want to burn any bridges
• Up a creek without a paddle

Observations from nature - noticing what we notice  

• Incremental progress

• Timing
• Don't keep doing the same thing
• Impatience
• The solution is right infront of you
• Preparation 
• Don't cut corners unless it's safe to do so
• Are you getting enough perspective
• The Dark Hedges

• Letting go
• Nettles and dock leaves

and a few video blogs

• The mind is like a rock pool
• The mind is like an ocean 
• Come round the bend with me (or time to turn a corner) 
• Go with the flow 
• Take action NOW

Using landscaping Your Life in business, or procurement

• What Purchasing has in common with gardening
• Grow dammit
• Are your suppliers running riot like Japanese knotweed
• Are your business tools just for show

• How will your stakeholders grow
• Business Strategy development (when I used LYL with a board of management to develop their 5 year strategy)

And other tools not so well supported by lots of blogs :-)

• Going for a walk with an issue in mind
• Writing a story - this about a wave (not for everyone I suspect)
• Using landscape pictures and the first tool that was developed
• Using collages
• Using imagined landscapes to improve challenges: e.g.  connecting to your audience, confidence when speaking, destressing.  

I hope as you've explored some of these posts they have given you a flavour of what's possible when using nature as your teacher. 

I also hope that you will now join me here, on YouTube, pinterest and/or Facebook as I further explore the changes that can be inspired when we allow Landscaping Your Life, and perhaps more importantly nature, to do its magic! 

A new year Landscaping Your Life workshop is being considered in a venue in the north of England or Scotland. Do let me know, therefore, if you'd like to be kept updated as plans take shape. Or would like me to consider workshops in your part of the world (Hawaii and Australia would be great destinations for a holiday too :-)). Coaching and group facilitation are also available - do call me +44 (0)7770 538159 or alison@alisonsmith.eu.

I look forward, over the coming weeks, months and years, to exploring with you what nature has to teach us so we may all stay on track and find our flow.

With love and laughter *

Alison 

Alison Smith

Landscaping Your Life

Using nature to inspire change inside and out (more here on why that's important)

* and if you'd like to hear what the laughter sounds like turn your sound down a little (ok a lot) and play this vlog