How do I measure the 17 years since I left full time employment to work for myself?
Do I measure it in hard times overcome such as: the recession; menopause; the death of my 89-year-old dad or 22-year-old cat; the pandemic & lockdown; or the current downturn?
Or do I measure it in the number of balls juggled between procurement consultancy and training and wanting to take Landscape Your Life out into the world?
Or, as I have chosen to do, share highlights of how Landscaping Your Life has grown and inspired change in others – 17 highlights in fact, and as I do so also sharing how I’m using these words to inspire my own journey going forward.
I will be sharing the first 6 highlights today, more on Sunday, and the final set on Tuesday next week.
So, sit back and enjoy what's to come.
Alison xx
1. Landscaping Your Life – flourishing lives and teams
Back in the mid 90s I used gardening as a metaphor for supplier management and procurement and very quickly expanded that to nature, and their landscapes, being a metaphor for our lives.
As you’ll see below since then it’s not only inspired me to leave full time employment and set up a limited company, there’s also plenty of blogs, vlogs, podcast episodes, poems, workshops and a book!
My first highlight, therefore, comes from a webinar where I took the gardening metaphor and applied it to managing teams. Inviting managers and leaders to consider what makes for a flourishing team.
As I consider “what next for Landscaping Your Life?” I realise many of these apply – and am focusing on perfect position by way of a reminder that LYL needs to be seen to make the difference it can – hiding away in a corner hidden behind a hedge is of no use to anyone.
2. Landscaping Your Life ezine
This use of gardening as a metaphor for our lives featured heavily in the LYL ezine.
This video shares the insight from an article in the ezine about how to have a buzzing life – a life full of passion, joy and laughter:
I’m thinking I perhaps need to do a little more to attract the buzz!
After years of using the metaphor in this way in coaching, strategy days and keynotes I realised a dream when I wrote a book on the subject.
It’s a self-help manual that you can pick up when you’re stuck and don’t know what to do.
One reader described the book as “first aid kit for the brain”, and as I reflect on all of the words in the book those that resonate most when I look forward to the next 17 years are:
4. Landscaping Your Life with Alison Smith Podcast
When podcasts appeared on the scene (yes I’m old enough to remember a time before podcasts) I realised recording episodes in nature leant themselves very well to this medium.
In my podcast listeners are invited to pick an episode title that most resonates with how they're feeling and then listen to it as I use nature as our coach and their landscapes as metaphors for our lives to help us get back on track.
Other paths Movement away from where we are A decision only needed when we reach that first crossroads No destination in mind just one step at a time
And laugh so much on the episode at my resistance to taking one step at a time, and having no destination in mind until I got to the crossroads. The lack of visible progress meant I really really wanted to return to the start rather than keep walking.
The insight of course came because I recognised that pattern of old and I kept on walking. Something I know I need to keep on embodying today.
Today though I’m choosing this video – a reminder for me going forward of the power of my laughter and, something I think I’m good at and should continue to do, and that’s switching it about a bit, ie not keeping doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
Many of the vlogs share different prescriptions for changing mindset, and that’s perhaps where the idea of a journal for prescriptions first started – however unconsciously.
6. Your prescription for wellbeing journal
After facilitating a wellbeing session to a procurement team in the Midlands last year, who I had asked to complete their own prescription for wellbeing, I realised that a journal for these prescriptions was a GREAT idea.
The prescription asks you to make a note of what supports you in achieving the mindset you need and also what else you might be doing that’s not helping - that you need to stop doing.
As I look forward, I know that my own prescription will include doing more open water swimming, walks in nature, and writing, with a little plank thrown in when I’m feeling out of sorts. And doing less news and apocalypse film watching (best not to ask)!
See you on Sunday, for the next set of highlights from the past 17 years.
