WALKING INTO A MORE BEAUTIFUL 2023
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Some of the most moving and powerful experiences of the last couple of years have been my occasional “walks-with-me”. The format is simple: people come to visit me here in Horningsea, we go for a walk and then have lunch in the pub. They get to share their business or life challenges with me, and we have a long conversation.
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In a world of rush and anxiety, we all need more time for closer, deeper conversations. Walking together, we experience a kind of companionship that’s a little different from a conventional consulting or coaching relationship. Some of the best ideas and insights come where we spend time together in this less hurried way.
Wonderful things have happened on these walks, and some have turned into a longer term relationship: for example I created a more structured dialogue to help a scientist build a more regenerative business. There have been entrepreneurs, founders, teachers, creative souls, leaders in a variety of guises.
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Beauty is our lens
I love to do this kind of deep mentoring. Beauty is our lens, regenerative design is our practice. I’ve also found a way to do an online version of the experience.
This year, I want to have more of these personal conversations and grow some new thinking alongside others, one step at a time. If you think this would be valuable, I would love to talk a walk with you, real or virtual.
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One walker writes
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"What do you even call this? Mentoring, coaching, personal development? Consultancy? Or therapy? A hazing, perhaps. Tough love. Out here, on the flat lands, still with enough contour, enough shape to surface the ricochets of Alan’s searing honesty. Silence against such a canvas can be deafening and there are moments of silence. But somewhere between AC/DC and the teachings of the Buddha — our A to B — there is also humour, challenge, gentle provocation and storytelling. Always storytelling.
Familiar themes are recalled from Alan’s central thesis — the notion that all business, all life, can and should aspire to be more beautiful. That beauty is not a repose, suspended in aspic or framed in gilt-edged mahogany, time-bound and discretionary. It is democratic. It is motion. Beauty is a verb. In aspiring to be beautiful, as Alan says, ‘Why would you want to do it any other way?’.
From the practical to the personal, the line we draw (never a straight one) from these stories — of business and craft — to our own is really then about proximity, being close to one’s own story. Owning it and drawing on it."
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