Speaker #0Instead of kind of acquiring things, you know, new knowledge, new courses, new certifications, which is where almost everyone goes when they think of career change or think they think of their start starting a business. It's what do I need to acquire? What do I need to get? What if instead it's actually just about peeling all of that back, undoing the conditioning that isn't serving us, letting go of the beliefs that don't help us, coming back to who we are coming back to land, coming back to community and nature. Hello friends and welcome back to the podcast. I started out my morning with a walk in the woods and it was such a beautiful start to the day. The grass was absolutely soaked in dew. It was still pretty cold. And then the sun was starting to light up the tops of the trees. And as the sun rose higher, you could see the kind of, I was going to say steam, I don't think steam is the right word, the evaporation coming off of the ground. and I also heard my first cuckoo of the year. As I was walking I was thinking about being in nature. As you probably know a lot of my work is about reconnection to nature and I try to find as many ways as possible to actually take my work into nature. for example with coaching in the wild sessions where I take a walk with clients whether in person or over the phone and you know we even do some kind of forest bathing techniques we we sit we wander we soak it all in and I've also been setting myself kind of personal challenge that I'm as I'm talking about it, realise that I've been neglecting a little bit, to build up to doing a full day's medicine walk in the summer, which is when you spend a full day from dawn to dusk in nature with no phone, no plan, no food, just being. And I've gone from being quite scared to really, really excited about doing that. although I do need to build up to it. And as I've said before, if that is something that would be interesting to you, let's do that journey together. I've got a small WhatsApp group where we kind of share ideas around this and little progress and maybe try and find times where we can immerse at the same time. And when you're immersing in nature, I know even that word probably, it could sound quite pretentious, but I use it deliberately because to me immersion, I think of sort of easing your way into a warm bath and letting the water envelop you and that's kind of analogous to how you experience nature when you're immersed in it and it's quite different to taking a walk in nature, it's quite different to taking a run in nature. I think very often when we're in nature, we are doing something, you know, we're taking the dog for a walk, we're doing our run, we're getting our steps in, and there's a very kind of active, purposeful energy to it. And when we approach nature with that energy, there's nothing wrong with it. Of course, it's, you know, all time spent in fresh air in nature is going to be beneficial, but it's... It's really easy to miss things. I don't know that you can listen when you're being busy and active and getting something done in nature. You don't see things in the same way. For example, I just recently discovered in the near the area of woodland where I walk this thin and kind of open area and there it's it's on a hill and at the top of the hill there's a small strip of woodland. And of course I knew that the strip of woodland was there, I'd spotted that there were several oaks in this strip of woodland, but only a couple of weeks ago did I... finally see that the oaks had been very deliberately planted in a straight line and at regular intervals and they must have at some point formed a boundary that someone, and I just love this idea, someone thought I need a boundary so I'm going to plant oak trees and I hadn't seen this line of oaks and I must have walked in this area. I've walked it almost every day for five years and I'd also walked it even before then and I just hadn't seen it because I didn't have the same relationship to how I was in nature. I didn't ever let myself slow down enough and just be amazed and look around and that's something that my clients often share with me as they start building in these practices. I have a client who is really determined to do a daily walk and build that into her schedule. She has a very fast paced job where she's often kind of back to back in meetings and she's trying to find breathing space in all of that. So she's committed to doing this daily walk and she shared with me how hard it is to slow down on that walk and leaving her phone behind is definitely helping but it's... you know, it's so outside of our usual frame of reference for most of us that actually we kind of find that we get this like cellular resistance to slowing down because we just don't know how to do it. We don't know how to just be. I had another client who I was doing a wild coaching session with a couple of weeks ago. And at the beginning we did, we sort of sat down, me with my back against an oak tree. He was on a trail in Oregon in the US and he shared with me that he had never lain down and looked up at the canopy of the trees and just rested in that way and again that is something that I often hear from clients you know I've never I would never as a grown-up let myself climb up into a tree I've never just sat by a stream and looked at the water We are so out of practice with just being. And that is my invitation to you this week, to give yourself even just a few minutes just to be in nature. You know, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to do anything that just feels too uncomfortable for you. You can just sit on a bench and just look around. You can maybe place your hands on the bark of a tree or... stand next to running water and close your eyes and just listen to the running water for a few moments. Just give it a try and see what happens and see if you can begin to experience what it is to just be. That is my goal with this medicine walk, with this nature immersion, with, you know, building up that practice and doing more and more of that. And I... I was going to say I learn something about myself every time but it's not a sort of conscious, it's not like I necessarily come back and write down what I've learned but I feel like I expand my understanding of who I am every time. And this concept of being versus doing is something that I think is, I'm really learning about in the context of business as well and I think is really important to the journey of being a regenerative entrepreneur. It's come up in a number of different spaces, I've read various different things that have really spiralled this train of thought in a really positive way. So let me try to explain what I mean by this. I think particularly those of us in in Western societies, particularly white people in Western societies, in fact, we know how to do, we're sort of trained to do, it's almost become in our blood, it probably, I know I often refer to this, but it probably kind of goes back to the industrial revolution where, you know, we started to sort of become machines and our purpose became to produce and be efficient and we understood ourselves more and more by doing. And we, over time, and I think this has been really accelerated since, particularly since smartphones came along, we've lost the art of just. being. If you think through the course of a usual day, you probably spend a few moments just being. You know, if you have a meditation practice, you probably do a little bit more of this. But most of us, and I include myself in this, spend a very, very tiny portion of our day just being without some kind of stimulus or some kind of purpose, without doing something. And in business and in work, this is ever so much stronger. You know, and I, maybe I'll actually, I'll speak more from a personal perspective. You know, as an entrepreneur, I understood that my job was to create. My job was to problem solve, was to bring forward new ideas, new offerings, new products. to come up with the next strategy, to look several moves ahead. It's extremely active, doing, productive energy. And I think that's part of why I loved entrepreneurship. Actually, it gave me this kind of outlet for this creative energy that I didn't have a home for. And it sort of gave me a sense of who I was and why I was and my purpose. And, you know, to an extent it served me well. I built a quote unquote successful business, but I wouldn't define it as a regenerative business, even though it was purpose led, you know, with strong, a kind of strong ethical foundations. I, when I think of regenerative business, that is a business that is much more in sync with life, much more in balance with life. It's about making space for and acknowledging life within our businesses, within our work. And that is much more about being than it is doing. And this is even contradictory, perhaps, to some of my earlier episodes where I've, you know, given very kind of practical advice, you know, take these steps, try this exercise. And that's because I don't, you know, that's That's because I want people to feel like there's something tangible that they can hold on to and do. But what we aren't used to doing, and I think other cultures are, ancient cultures are much better at doing, is just being. Understanding that our value is in simply being. And I read this beautiful post on LinkedIn that I will link in the show notes. That when we want to shift our careers in a regenerative direction, I might be using my words rather than the post's words here, but that's how I understood it. We should look much less about what we need to do and instead focus on what we need to do less of. That instead of kind of acquiring things, you know, new knowledge, new courses, new certifications, which is where Almost everyone goes when they think of career change or think they think of their start starting a business it's what what do I need to acquire what do I need to get what if instead it's actually just about peeling all of that back what if instead it's about undoing the conditioning that isn't serving us letting go of the beliefs that don't help us coming back to who we are coming back. to land, coming back to community and nature. And for me that's really where I am in my business now, is letting go of the idea that there are formulas or structures or processes or strategies that I need to follow in order to get somewhere. And that actually I have everything I need and everything that I could want to offer someone and that my job is actually just to sweep away everything that is not that so that people can see it, so that people can experience it, so that I can build a business that is just really rooted in who I am because how else can I possibly show up other than who I am? So I'll try to kind of break this down into some slightly more graspable details and try and give you some some practical examples. So when I sold my previous company and then trained as a coach and was exploring, slowly exploring what I wanted to do next, I entered into a very playful stage. I really just let myself follow what was in my heart, followed joy and it brought me always always back to nature. It's when I built a relationship with nature that I simply didn't have before. And I couldn't make sense of how that would marry up with having a business, with being an entrepreneur and with all of those skills that I had. But I let myself trust it. I let myself flow with it. I did, you know, I did forest retreats. I did play dates for grown-ups. learned about forest bathing. I, you know, I just played with stuff. I did coaching play dates. I coached people in eucalyptus groves and on beaches and in meadows. And then at some point it felt there was like a compulsion in me that I need to take this more seriously. And that is kind of what channeled me into creating Regenerative Work Life. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with that focus, I really believe. very passionately that the the the power that we have when we choose to make changes in our careers and I feel that there are a lot of people who are deeply unhappy and uncomfortable with the work that they're doing who they're doing it for what the purpose is behind that work and that want to find ways to create a work life or a business that is more deeply aligned with life that brings them life that brings life to all of the living beings and land around them. So I'm completely sold on that. But with hindsight, what I realised is I really didn't need to let go of the playful part. And I really didn't need, you know, to follow the various programmes of how you launch a podcast, how you should structure a website, how you should structure offers. When I did those things, what I was actually doing was distancing people from who I am. And as we've come into springtime, so it's, you know, coming towards late April, as I record this, and that really abundant time of year, the bluebells are out in the woods, the tulips out, the weather is warming, everything is just coming alive, the blossom is on all of the fruit trees, and I'm feeling that in myself. I'm feeling this. creative energy, this playfulness, this joyfulness. I'm letting myself just do things because they excite me. I have multiple different offers that I'm talking to about, things that don't necessarily directly correlate to my core offer around regenerative career coaching. Just playing, taking clients into the wild, taking my work out into nature, doing the immersions, re-enchanting my life. and allowing that enchantment to flow out to anyone who needs that, desires that, understands that. And what does that mean for you? I don't know. I don't feel the urge so much to tell you what you should understand anymore, except that I know that you are everything that your business needs, that you are everything that your work needs. and when you feel yourself reaching out for something more, when you feel the need to do more and to learn more and the how-to, just to pause for a moment and just really question whether that is what's right for you and just see if you can build a little more trust every day in what you already are because that is what people connect. too and connection is really at the heart of regenerative work there we have it okay i'm going to finish up with a few um notices because i do have as i said quite a lot of different offers going on different ways to work with me and i know that all every business strategy that i've ever read or taught myself would say, you know, focus in, sell one thing that confusion doesn't sell, blah blah blah blah blah, I don't care, it feels great to me, it feels regenerative, it feels like I am, you know, I'm growing a garden and I'm planting all kinds of different species to see, you know, which are going to take root and that they're all going to support each other, so it's joyful chaos and I'm loving it. But let me clarify for you a few of the different ways that you can come and play. So the my main. No, I don't know. I don't know if it's my main offer. One of the things I'm really excited about at the moment is coaching in the wild. So I am offering single sessions, which is something I have not done before. Usually my career coaching is a six month commitment. So single sessions where I am in nature. You are in nature. It doesn't matter if we're not close by. Most of my clients aren't. I've done this with clients on the other side of the world. We do it by the magic of a WhatsApp call and we share what we can see. We share that connection and it creates such a wonderful energy around coaching and you can bring whatever you like to that coaching. It's just an open space for you to experience nature immersion, to experience coaching, to be listened to, to explore ideas with me, to seek advice if that's what you want. Coaching in the Wild, it's £150 for a two-hour walk and all you need to do is send me a message on any social channel you like or an email alissa at regenerativeworklife.com. So that's Coaching in the wild. So another thing that I'm doing is I got this itch after I had a little break over Easter with my family to create an audio course. I love audio as a medium, that's why I have a podcast. I want to create this audio course around simple daily practices for living more regeneratively, for living in more daily enchantment. Whatever work that you do, this is meant to be easy, fun, light, daily practices that you can just... you can actually really just enjoy simple things that you can move more deeply into and find more connection in from food to nature walks to disconnecting, slowing down, all of that kind of magic. And as an experiment, I am community funding the creation of this course. So I know exactly how I want to create it. I want to go away to a kind of retreat centre that I've been to before so I can spend about like 24 hours in solitude, resting, wandering in the gardens, being in nature. And I'm going to create this course within that 24 hours, like overnight. And I'm really excited about the energy of that. And I am asking my community for 10 supporters who want to buy this course ahead of its creation to allow me to create it in that way. So For each supporter it's £25 and you will get the audio course as soon as it's created ahead of everyone else you'll get access to a one month support group where you can ask any questions as you go through the course and you'll get a special thank you in the audio course. I've already got two supporters for that so there's eight supporter places left it's £25 again message or email and let me know if you would like to support the creation of that. And then finally, if you have been here for a little bit longer and you're more familiar with where my work has been over the last six months, of course, I'm still offering regenerative career coaching. I am blown away by the work that I am doing with my long term clients and the visions that they have for their work lives, for their work lives that are going to serve them. into their old age, work lives that bring them real genuine balance with family, with their own creative pursuits and their work that find meaning and contribution and purpose in their work. And this is, you know, this is where my entrepreneurial experience really comes into play because we are doing both we're doing inner work and outer work we are tending to your nervous system moving past your limiting beliefs and your blockers you know finding your your confidence the source of your power within you but we're also dealing with super super practical things like how do you go to get about putting a board together and what do you need to think about when you're fundraising how do you put a pitch deck together and how do you do market research what kind of approach might you have for your launch? And coming back to what I was saying earlier, this is not about me telling you how to do something. Of course, I can offer insights from my own experience, but this is really about me helping you access that inner guidance and wisdom that I know that you have so that you can make those practical external decisions. And what is so magic about this regenerative career coaching is the combination of the two, the inner work with the kind of external practicalities and me being able to look at, you know, the marketing you're putting together or your launch plan or your funding deck and bring to bear some of the benefit of having a good 15 years experience helping people to build, launch and fund businesses. So if regenerative career coaching is where you want to engage with me, then take a look at my website regenerativeworklife.com and you will see all the details of the program on there and there's a form there that you can fill out okay that was quite a lot let's do a fun update to end which is that um I'm back to baking bread and I'm absolutely loving it every time I get into a rhythm of baking bread regularly I just it just it just grounds me I did it this morning before coming back to work after a two-week break and there's an alchemical magic to baking bread that just brings out this childlike wonder in me. I watch the yeast and the sugar and the water bubble up and create this amazing frothy magic and I love coming back to peel back my tea towel and see the dough when it's like doubled or tripled in size and it's just that is what is bringing me So much joy at the moment. And then I get to eat it and love it. And I get to watch my family eat it and feel like I'm kind of pouring love into them. So there you are. Thank you for listening to this somewhat eclectic smorgasbord of ideas and thoughts and offerings this week. And I look forward to seeing you back here on the podcast. I'm a little bit of a I'm Tom Thorpe. I'm Tom Thorpe. I'm sorry.
