Friday 31 August 2018

Nature as our coach

As Purchasing Coach I use many different tools to facilitate insight for coaching clients.

Coaching has many different objectives, and the tool used will be determined by the goal the client has on that day.


For example, to get from A To B we need to:

  1. Understand where we are currently - A
  2. Know where we want to get to - B
  3. Understand what we might be stopping us getting from A to B 
  4. Deal with that's holding us back
  5. Have an action plan to get from A to B
  6. Take action
  7. Celebrate progress
  8. Review progress, and amend direction of travel as necessary
  9. Get to B, C or an improved A
Coaching can provide support at any or all parts of that journey. Which means a coaching session might include asking powerful question to help and support you to:
  1. Understand your current situation, and understand why its not where you want to be
  2. Identify your goal/vision or mission, and understand why it's where you do want to be 
  3. Explore the potential barriers, blocks, hurdles, fears that might be holding you back
  4. Release the blocks and barriers to making progress
  5. Identify a plan of how to achieve your goal
  6. Take action every day towards your goal 
  7. Remind you to celebrate your successes however small 
  8. Review where you are, whether you still want to get to B, and what needs to happen to stay on track or alter your journey
  9. Achieve your goals
There are many tools and techniques available to help you along the way. 

For example I recently attended a friend's, Caroline Johnstone, book launch Dare to be Happier: an Introduction to the magic of journaling to transform your life. Hearing her talk reminded me of the power of reflection, journaling and gratitude to help us to move through the 9 steps above.

In my Advent series of posts I introduced 24 unconventional tools in my coaching toolkit that I have available to support people on their journey.


One of those tools - Landscaping Your Life - has it's own book launch coming up very soon. Can't see the wood for the trees by Alison Smith is published here in the UK - although it's already available on Kindle and also in paperback in the US.

Landscaping Your Life uses nature as a coach - with questions being asked in the form of elements of landscapes rather than words. 

These 2 videos help explain it a little more:


Coaching Question from Nature: How can you blow away the clouds or even rise above them so you can appreciate and accept your essence and light in the world?


Coaching Question from Nature: How can you ensure you connect with all that you have in common, rather than what divides and separates you from others?

I've also written many a post here in this blog on the more conventional tools I use in coaching I do. This index of posts includes a number of these - including exploring goal setting, understanding your values, increasing confidence, watching your language to name just a few.  

If you'd like to know more about coaching available from me or nature do please drop me a line alison@alisonsmith.eu or give me a call +44 (0)7770 538159. 

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach
Inspiring change - inside and out

If you can't see the wood for the trees, are stuck in a rut, up a creek without a paddle, are treading water, or out on a limb, or perhaps feel like a fish out of water the recently published Can't see the wood for the trees offers coaching advice from the very landscapes contained within these sayings.

Which means if you're stuck in a rut - the rut will have the answer, if you can't see the wood for the trees it suggests the wood will have much to say - after all as David Wagoner in his poem Lost suggests "The wood and the trees ... are not lost .... you must let it find you."

More on stockists of the book here.

Tuesday 21 August 2018

Making Mountains out of Molehills


Today is the day when my baby :-) Can't see the wood for the trees: Landscaping Your Life to get back on track is available to download and, if you're lucky enough to be in the US, available to buy a hard copy too! (Unfortunately we'll have to wait till 20th Sept here in the UK to get our hands on one).

The book explores the sayings we use when we're stuck such as: 
  • Stuck in a rut
  • Can’t see the wood for the trees
  • Up the creek without a paddle
  • Like a fish out of water
  • Out on a limb
  • In at the deep end
  • Treading water
  • Going round in circles
  • Missed the tide
It uses the Landscaping Your Life process that I've been using with clients for over 20 years, and if you resonate with any of the saying's above you might want to pop over to my Landscaping Your Life page and find out more about it - YouTube too.

A more logical explanation about the solutions proposed in the book focuses on two other sayings:

Firstly, we need to take our head out of the sand about about inability to solve the situation.



That is, there will be a solution we just need to stay calm and find it. 

We also need to recognise that we might just be:
It's not a phrase we often use about ourselves, and yet that's what we're doing when we're describing a situation as stuck. That is, we're stating we don't know what to do, and we are most definitely stuck and unable to move. 

The truth of the matter is it's likely that there will be part of us that does know what to do. We just need to turn up its voice a little so we can hear it. 

The mountains are the sayings we use - ie we've taken a situation and are depicting it as mountain like rut, tree, creek, limb and so on!

Which is where the molehills come in, because they're the solution:
  1. Motivation
  2. Outcome
  3. Life as it is now (what we’re leaving behind?)
  4. Emotional intelligence
  5. Head out of the sand
  6. Interference removed
  7. Longitude and Latitude
  8. Start
That is, the solution to any problems we're facing lies in one of the above MOLEHILLS, or more precisely:
  1. To be inspired and motivated
  2. To know what you’re headed towards (B)
  3. To know where you are now (A)
  4. To understand yourself and manage your state
  5. To take personal responsibility for your life
  6. To understand and remove what’s holding you back
  7. To develop the route for getting from A to B
  8. To take the first step
Over the six years I've written here I've covered many of these subjects, and over coming weeks will return to these again to explore how we can use them to get unstuck and back on track.

In the mean time if you're stuck in a rut, and have struggled for some time to find the motivation, you might just want to go and find a rut in the landscape, step into it and out again and notice what you notice. You might be surprised!

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach
Landscaping Your Life - inspiring change inside and out