I'm very, very, very excited to share with you the first Landscaping Your Life ezine aimed at helping you to Landscape your life whether it's your goals, confidence, motivation or other behavioural skills that need a little support.
To give you a flavour of what's included, there's a special feature about taking the learning from attracting bees in your garden to having a similarly buzzing life.
There's a number of regular features such 'In the potting shed' where we learn about the tools needed to landscape our lives.
and, in this edition 'Plant of the season' is Thyme where we learn from nature about time management ;-).
And the Landscaping Your Life walk invites to consider the insights from deadwood row, let the light in avenue, unfurl corner and clear ahead copse.
It's that time of year again when Chelsea Flower Show reminds me of the origins of a process that I've used with clients for over 20 years.
Despite the image above, I'm not talking about gardening clients but procurement clients. In the late 90s we were struggling to get the managers at the bank that I worked for interested in supplier management. My love of gardening provided a means of getting them a little more interested - in that questions about when they last pruned back their suppliers, or allowed one time in the greenhouse, or what tools were they using to develop their suppliers piqued their interest. Since then I've shared many a post looking at the analogies between gardening and procurement such as
Since it's early origins the metaphor got bigger and I wasn't just using gardens as a metaphor for supplier management but nature became a metaphor for our lives and Landscaping Your Life (LYL) was born.
For over 20 years I've had a foot in two camps - purchasing and wider personal development. Whilst often delivering both to clients I've kept my social media separate. That double life has confused clients, and me, which has led to the decision to move my blogging to my personal development blog - Landscaping Your Life.
This week to celebrate this merger I'm going back to my gardening roots. I do hope you'll join me for vlogs, blogs, posts and insights as I visit different landscapes and explore many aspects of landscaping your life, and specifically:
Mon 20th: Landscaping your potential
Tues 21st: Landscaping your time
Wed 22nd: Buzzing with life
Thurs 23rd: Landscaping your relationships
Fri 24th: Taking a landscaping your life journey
Sat 25th: Landscaping your success
I certainly think its time that I allow the Landscaping Your Life seed to germinate, and plant it out into the garden for all to benefit from its insight.
Alison Smith Head Gardener Landscaping Your Life - making life more beautiful
The origins of Landscaping Your Life (LYL) date back to the late 90s when I used gardens as metaphors for supplier management. Whilst I later expanded it to include all of nature’s landscapes to all of our lives we’re going back to LYL’s gardening origins this week.
As Chelsea Flower Show shares the best in garden design this week we're going to be our own garden designers designing aspects of our lives so that we may flourish and share our beauty for all to see🌸.
Join me daily over on the Landscaping Your Life blog for vlogs, blogs, posts and insights as I visit different landscapes and explore many aspects of landscaping your life, and specifically:
Mon 20th: Landscaping your potential
Tues 21st: Landscaping your time
Wed 22nd: Buzzing with life
Thurs 23rd: Landscaping your relationships
Fri 24th: Taking a landscaping your life journey
Sat 25th: Landscaping your success
I do hope you can join me as I finally allow the Landscaping Your Life seed to germinate, and plant it out into the garden for all to benefit from its insight.
Alison Smith Head Gardener Landscaping Your Life - making life more beautiful
Much like the sky has a continuum of cloud cover we all have a continuum of mental health.
Which is why my good friend Amy Macdonald at Headtorch frequently reminds us in their workshops, training and elearning that the answer to "how many of us have mental health" is
You'll find some short stories I wrote to support my own mental health over on my Landscaping Your Life blog.
It's Mental Health Awareness Week the above video shares insight from the sea relating to our mental health.
As those at Headtorch remind everyone at their conferences, workshops and elearning the answer to "How many of us have mental health" is
Yes, we ALLhave mental health, not just on bad days, not just when we’re feeling down, not just when we’re off work.
Every minute of every day of every year we have mental health - 100% of the time, 100% of us.
Mental health, that just like our physical health shifts up and down a continuum. Which means there’s different strategies needed to support our mental health dependent on where we’re at in any moment. Sometimes the strategy involves visiting the doctor, other times medication, other times talking, a walk, painting, the gym, time with friends or in nature, writing 😉 and so on. As many different strategies for mental health as there are for physical health.
Mental health awareness week is an opportunity for us ALL to consider what we can do to support our own, friends’, family’s, and colleagues’ mental health.
In previous years I’ve shared here insight from Headtorch’s conferences, explored what we can do to support suppliers’ mental health over on the Purchasing Coach blog, and written about strategies for taking care of my own mental health, and even the menopause, a time that significantly impacted my mental health.
This year I thought I’d share some short stories I’ve written. Short stories that explore different aspects of our own mental well being. Not at the very edges of the mental health continuum but of the every day thoughts and beliefs that impact our mental health. They're short stories I originally wrote as a means of reminding myself of the need to support my own mental health. Short stories I hope you’ll enjoy - you'll find them over on my Landscaping Your Life blog
