Structure Your Life By Design

Structure Your Life By Design---Not by Default, at bottom, a headline guaranteed to get my attention.  Late to the game, I signed a CBS-TV contract the same day I signed a book contract, age 45.  Needing to keep my day job, designing landscapes, how to carve time for book & TV work too?  Without delay I hired a client who had recently become a certified Career Coach.  Best decision ever.  Together we came up with a template to get all the work done, while keeping a private life, and no stress.  She also recommended I hire an image consultant.  Another best-decision-ever.  Who knew image consulting is a complete science, much like landscape design?
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Myriad facets aligned.  A designed garden, designed career, designed personal image, each made life easier.  What else could I design?  Interior of my house, from attic to crawl space.  Again, more steps taken to add beauty/function.  Life became more simple.


Picture Aerin Lauder via Eonline   

Then, I was given 8 heirloom chickens for a birthday.  Wanting them, it was a surprise what they gave me, a degreed landscape 'expert'.  My garden had already been on tours, in magazines and on tv, yet the chickens taught me more deeply about gardening, perhaps the most profound gift, beyond structure-your-life-by-design.  And the chicken lesson made me laugh out loud, in my garden.  Isn't that the way with koans?  Moments of intuitive enlightenment.  Stewardship.  With the chickens I knew gardening is about stewardship, in the macro, and micro.  Macro?  Micro?

Stewardship is a gift in any life.  Stewardship is everywhere, once you understand.  G*d almighty first created a garden.  Indeed.  More humor.  Until understanding 'stewardship' I had thought my gardening was entirely my brain/physical effort/monies/talent/desire/spirit, la-ti-da.  Without ceasing, until the epiphany, my garden had been in constant stewardship of me.  Constant.  Washing of the servants feet, cliche comes alive in stewardship.  So too, take- my- yoke- upon- you.  No worries, this is no altar call, but an understanding of historical metaphor abiding in stewardship.  A source of energy, and delight in doing, for things outside of yourself, bringing a depth of wealth to your spirit no amount of money can purchase.

E.M. Forster knew well the trap of money, for those living without stewardship, using layers of humorous narrative, for the observant.  In particular, Where Angels Fear to Tread, ca. 1905.  One character wonders about another, both wealthy, what will she do, she has no resources.  Interesting.  Wealthy character without resources?  She's rich, of course she has resources.  Quickly to my 6" Websters, and learning resource is also the capability or skill of meeting a situation.  Forster understood Jane Austen's method of writing, I already knew this character would not prosper, with his effortless, lighthearted disdain surrounding the word 'resources', though I originally had zero clue to its specific meaning.  Have you noticed when Jane Austen describes a character's garden, with defects, so too their character, but that's implied with the garden slam.  Go Jane.  

Back to, below, Structure Your Life by Design, and, "...    Mary Elizabeth knows how to create authentic designs for learning linked to full system change. Mary Elizabeth shares design thinking as a process clients can use to imagine new possibilities for personal and professional change. Mary Elizabeth helps dynamic, motivated change leaders structure their lives by design, not by default...super quickly. "   Without stewardship I cannot imagine tackling a single layer of Mary Elizabeth's structure your life by design.  None.  Too much effort.  With stewardship, I see what she is doing, and know it is doable.  Easily.                    

You are invited to attend:

Structure Your Life By Design—Not By Default

with Mary Elizabeth Bongiovanni of Learning Through Design

Tuesday, February 16, 2016 from 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Whether you want to implement a new initiative at work, craft a high leverage concept, or rethink your brand, the Design Process powerfully moves you from inspiration to implementation. The process helps you:

• Identify important design challenges for your personal and professional life
• Frame your challenge as a design question
• Declare the ultimate impact you want to have
• Envision possible solutions to the problem
• Understand the context and constraints you are facing

These are essential dynamics of the Design Thinking—a process that allows us to imagine a better future and take steps to make it happen.

Mary Elizabeth Bongiovanni is a professional leadership coach and Chief Engagement Officer of Learning Through Design. Having served diverse learning organizations for 23 years, Mary Elizabeth knows how to create authentic designs for learning linked to full system change. Mary Elizabeth shares design thinking as a process clients can use to imagine new possibilities for personal and professional change. Mary Elizabeth helps dynamic, motivated change leaders structure their lives by design, not by default...super quickly. "

Chose pic, above, of Aerin Lauder for every layer of its design, and stewardship.  The house, she inherited from her grandmother, without changing much she made it completely her own, using it for pleasure and work.  

In its deepest sense I know beautiful-garden-beautiful-life.  Seeing pics of Lauder's personal/professional life it seems she's projecting, subtly, beautiful-self-beautiful-life.  All roads lead back to Joseph Campbell's, "Follow your bliss."      

Fill in the blank for you, Beautiful- ______- Beautiful- Life.  What is yours?  

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara