Blow those cobwebs away!

Going around in circles

Going around in circles, or even a vicious circle, has come up a lot in recent coaching sessions.

Perhaps not this type of circle

More like a circle or cycle of inevitability - that just keeps going around and around without end - just like the earth circles the sun, or moon circles the earth etc.

A circle that has a certain amount of stress attached to it, and an accompanying inability to know what to do.

The circle/cycle might be related to too much work, no sense of direction, repeated unhelpful outcomes, being at the receiving end of the same unwanted behaviours, or even stuck in a rut of 'this' always means 'that'. (Although if you resonate with being stuck in a rut in the current situation rather than going around in circles you may find that post helpful too.)

When faced with this statement, beyond exploring the end goal of what we'd like to be doing instead of circling, we have a number of options about where to focus our attention to find a solution. The main two are:

• Discuss how we got here, and how it feels, and get drawn into all the whys, and wherefores, and reasons and excuses of how we've ended up where we are, and why we're stuck and can't do anything about it, and in so doing often put up barriers to seeing the situation from a different perspective (ie Stick with our left, more logical, side of brain in the hope of finding a solution)

Sorry if that's a little strong - but you get my meaning - we use logic to justify why are right to be stuck, and there's nothing, or very little, we can do about it.

• Explore the metaphor contained within our language and allow our non conscious mind, and more creative right side of our brain, to help us find a solution. Doing this keeps the barriers down, and enables us to view the situation from numerous perspectives, each with the potential to provide resolution.

Exploring the metaphor in this instance would mean exploring 'going around in circles'.

Bear with me on this, I know it sounds a little weird.

The hypothesis is - if you can describe the situation as going around in circles, then your mind understands why, and will also be able to describe the size, shape and speed of the circle! Otherwise why would you be using that saying, rather than another saying such as for example juggling ball or spinning plates? 

If you can describe the circle, then I would suggest, you can also develop strategies for not going around in the circle, and can then apply these strategies to your real life situation you're current stuck in. 

Which means when one client mentioned a vicious circle I asked them to draw the circle in the sand, and to then explore how to stop it:

The solution in this case involved making the circle an infinity sign, with a sense of yin and yang - nothing staying around for any time, no right, no wrong, just what is, and allowing more of a flow to life rather than a frantic circling.

This does not need to make sense to you. It's why metaphors are so personal and why they work - it just has to make sense to the person wanting a solution, and provide their mind with some options of how to experience the current situation differently. 

Once the mind has seen and experienced these different perspectives, its as if the box of solutions has been unlocked.

On a workshop recently one group drew the image below, and as they did moved from blaming others for the constant circling, to understanding what they could do differently to change the situation. Interesting that the infinity sign featured there too.

Other examples can be found here on my Facebook live in the snow!! and a post I wrote a few years ago where circles became squares, and that made all the difference (Going around in circles).

There's no right or wrong - just tangents your mind takes you in the hope of finding a different perspective to view the current situation from.

If you were previously feeling like you were going around in circles you may already notice solutions have appeared? Or perhaps you need to try drawing your circle to understand more about it.

Or any of the following images may help shift your current thinking from stuck to back on track, and headed towards your goals rather than going around and around.

Or perhaps it's about making a collage to represent the circle - either the current sense of the circle, or how you'd like it to be.

If you've been going around in circles in an area of your life what will you do to stop and take action to go in a different direction, and when will you take that step?

Alison Smith
Landscaping Your Life
Unlocking your potential using unconventional means!  

Are you on the same page?

If you're struggling to get on the same page as someone, or being pulled to lots of different pages yourself, you may like my post over on The Purchasing Coach blog exploring this interesting metaphor "we need to be on the same page".

Because words have power, and metaphors too.

Alison 

The climate of our mind

"The climate of our mind is hard to change" Polyfaces film as seen on FMTV.

Here on Landscaping Your Life (LYL) we love a good metaphor, and certainly one where we can go to nature and explore what the words mean in that context, before then applying it back to our lives.

That is, we need to discover:

• Is the climate in nature hard to change? 
• If we could, would we want to change the climate?
• How would we change it positively, or negatively?
• How this applies to the climate of our mind (remembering to do this only once we've fully explored the answers to the above questions). 

When I first heard the statement I initially interpreted it to mean 'the weather of our mind is hard to change'. This would actually result in a very different post. After all, nature doesn't hang on to any weather for that long. Weather is simply a delicate dance to find balance within the environment, with each change in weather providing an opportunity to take the next step towards that equilibrium. We're certainly not good at doing that are we - with many of us holding on to the weather in our minds long past it's sell by date. (The LYL post on trying to control the weather might shed some more light on that.)        

The statement however, wasn't about the weather in our mind, it was about the climate of our mind.

To find out the difference I looked to NASA to help:

"The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere "behaves" over relatively long periods of time.....In most places, weather can change from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season. Climate, however, is the average of weather over time and space. An easy way to remember the difference is that climate is what you expect, like a very hot summer, and weather is what you get, like a hot day with pop-up thunderstorms."


Hmmmm ... I'm thinking the difference between expectations and reality is the topic for another blog.

In summary climate is the underlying history of weather over a period of time for a specific location, and is initially based I'm assuming on the characteristics of a specific location's longitude, latitude, and height above sea level. 

With that understanding, let's consider the 4 questions I outlined at the start:

• Is the climate in nature hard to change: the location can't change its climate itself - it's done to it as a result of external factors such as "biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions, certain human activities and even meteorites."  
• If we could, would we want to change the climate: there could certainly be reasons to want to change the climate for a location due to unfavourable conditions. The challenge comes in defining 'unfavourable' conditions, and understanding how that impacts other locations. Which means we may decide we can only change the climate for a location so long as it doesn't negatively impact another locations' climates, or perhaps more importantly it doesn't negatively impact the long term sustainability of the planet. Which provides an additional reason to change the climate, when the long term sustainability of the planet is under threat due to the current global climate.  
• How would we change it positively, or negatively: by making changes to the "biotic processes, solar radiation, plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions and human activities." The key being to understand what factors we have control over, and to then identify which changes we are able to make that will have a positive outcome, and which will have a negative outcome. 

Which leads us to explore our answer to the final question:  

• How the above exploration applies to changing the climate of our mind: For me the key is determining the need to change the climate. We certainly have the ability to make changes but taking action requires us to understand the reason for change, and be motivated enough to take the necessary action. We need help, it seems, to understand the impact on our long term sustainability of our current mind set. Once we've done that, the easy part comes in determining what action to take! The same goes when we're trying to change others' climates - we could try to enforce change by changing some of the external factors but we don't have as much control over the outcome as we when we simply persuade the mind of the need for its own evolution.

As ever, the person to whom this exploration will make the most sense is the person who used the words. Unless anyone reading this can fully relate to the words, our assessment of the outcome will at best be an estimation (hmmm ... that links back to the climate being an estimation, and the weather being what we get. So perhaps we would have got more insight from working with 'the weather of our mind'!)

I wonder what I might be missing - I'd love to know your thoughts on how we can learn from climate change in nature, and relate it to climate change in our minds. Do please leave your comments below.

Alison Smith
Landscaping Your Life
Inspiring Change Inside and Out

Not sure why but the exploration above reminds me of a post I wrote entitled "is an integrated landscape possible" Perhaps because at some level, whilst the exploration has been less satisfying than I'd hoped, it feels like there's a kernel of an idea there that's alluding me - and it feels like quite a big idea! Help much appreciated.

Bad apples just get more rotten

I have been inundated with examples of the different ways we can view good and bad over the last week, and thought I’d share the thoughts that have arisen for me:

One key conversation was with a friend about being a ‘good person’ vs a ‘bad person.

I agree certain behaviours are bad (although I’m pretty sure we’ll all have different scales for what goes where) but that doesn’t make the people doing them bad. If we continue to label others, rather than their behaviour, as bad then it’s not long before we start believing them to be rotten, like an apple, and therefore useless. The only option then is for them to be discarded. 

As a metaphor "Bad/rotten apples" it’s not got a lot going for it, not least because it means we're all apples just waiting to go rotten!! 

I wondered what might be a more helpful and resourceful metaphor we could use for other people – what about:

• Tomatoes – because they need the right soil, nutrients, feeding, watering, heat and light. That is they need TLC and the right conditions to enable them to flourish. Although perhaps unhelpful when thrown at others rather than eaten as part of a healthy diet.
• Flowers – what I like about this metaphor is flowers can flourish in many environments despite the lack of the ‘right’ conditions. But constant lack of any of the right conditions will certainly not allow for a flourishing, vigorous and beautiful flower.

With both these examples at least it’s easier to understand what is needed to ensure the plant flourishes and contributes to the garden. It’s also useful to consider the impact of the greenhouse, the gardener and tools used because ultimately these too will determine the extent to which the plants flourish.

What metaphors do you use to describe others, and in what way might these be unhelpful to finding a solution to the issue.

Is an integrated landscape possible?

Blog from the archives reprinted here

As I start to write this I'm not sure where I'm headed but thought I'd share the process of using metaphors contained within someone's language to try to solve the problem its describing.

The Spend Matters headline read "GPS and Cabinet Office procurement – more integration to come, says Crothers" and went on to quote Bill Crothers, Government CPO at the Cabinet Office, as saying "... different components of the commercial landscape that are not necessarily integrated."

So I got to wondering what an integrated landscape would be like in reality (ie in nature) and then we can explore together how these map (excuse the pun :-)) across into how to have an integrated commercial landscape Bill was referring to - because I'm not sure many people are liking the option he proposed.

The key when using the #landscapingyourlife process is to stick with the metaphor for as long as possible. In this case sticking with exploring the integrated natural landscape and not a commercial one. A bit like when we're conducting the research and analysis phase for a category. It's no use making assumptions and jumping to conclusions until all the data is in.

So stick with me, and notice what you notice as you read further, as I share the thoughts and insights that appear as I explore an 'integrated landscape' from my lounge and a road atlas of Britain!

As it's impossible to view the whole landscape at once I automatically thought of a map. Remembering of course that the map is not reality only a representation of it. The map I had to hand was a road atlas of Britain. It is however out of date and a little worn! 

So I'm already wondering if I can get a sense of integration when I don't even have an accurate and up to date picture of the whole? For example I know the new forth road bridge would be shown on a new map with completion date some date in the future.

The first page I turn to has a map that shows the bigger picture but not how all the component parts connect with each other. Each major city simply a blob!

The next size map has the Britain split in 2. It clearly shows the blue lines of motorways connecting major hubs and the linking A roads, but big gaps of blankness of unconnected space in between. So still a disconnect I suspect.

If I drill down I keep getting more detail but smaller areas covered. A greater sense of integration within that small area but greater loss of integration with the whole.

I'm currently not getting a sense of what an integrated landscape looks like and start to wonder if it's possible other than for specific areas within the whole as shown above.

This is where doing this alone has its weakness as I'm not sure where to go next and in groups it's easier to feed on each other's ideas...

I will give it a go none the less...initial thoughts I soon discounted included:

• Using Google earth and satellites to help see the bigger picture and zoom in and out as needed. I kept getting a sense that's no different than the problem I was having with the maps. You either get high level of the whole, or detail of a small bit. You can't have a detailed whole picture.
• I also thought about cutting up the map and pulling bits together. But that ignores so much and allows for a distorted view of reality because my values and judgements then decide what is and isn't included. 

Which brings me to the only solution from this exploration that I could see:

• I keep being drawn to the water that surrounds Britain as the defining integrator. Every part of Britain understanding how they relate to the water even if not to each other. Unlike the landscape, that is full of variety and complexity and needs the detail to make sense of it all, the sea that surrounds the landscape is fairly uniform. A little colder or warmer in places impacted by different currents but something that can be understood as a whole.   

So where does that quick trip into the landscaping process get us - for me the insights include:

• You need a map to make sense of the landscape - otherwise all you can do is view the landscape you're standing in at that moment in time.
• That's only relevant if the map is up to date. That is you can't integrate something that's not quantified and you certainly can't integrate it in order to quantify it!
• Beware of options that split the map in two as its easy to concentrate on the half you know better and forget about the bigger picture.
• A detailed map is only possible for small areas, and locals will still know the area better than any map ever will.
• You can't have detailed integration of the whole - you either have high level integration of the whole or detailed integration of a smaller area.
• Integration at a high level tells us very little.
• The only way to make sense of the bigger picture and how it all fits together is to understand the container in which it sits.

The next step would be to then understand what the sea represents on the 'commercial landscape' Bill was talking about.

I would love to read what you took from this slightly different way of looking at the situation. Not quite what I was expecting but then it would need to be Bill who makes the assessment of its value, as it was his metaphor I explored. 

Alison Smith

Landscaping Your Life

Inspiring change inside and out