Today is Rewilding Day.
As a Rewilding Business Partner of SCOTLAND: The Big Picture, I'm proud to support the restoration of Scotland's natural landscapes. It's work that sits very close to the heart of Landscaping Your Life because I've long believed that what we do to the land, we also do to ourselves.
And that thought brings me to a question I've been sitting with this week. What would it mean to rewild your role?
I wrote this poem a while ago now, but I find myself returning to it:
Rewild your life not just on the outside on the inside too
Like nature we seem to have smoothed the rough edges taken out the risk and played it safe
It's as if we too have chopped down the trees, straightened the rivers and reused the flood plains in our lives
No longer allowed to meander to get to our destination and instead aiming for the quickest and most direct route to win the day
In business, we optimise. We manage risk. We stay rational. And there's nothing wrong with any of that, except somewhere along the way, many of us have unconsciously domesticated ourselves to fit a version of our role that doesn't quite fit who we are.
Rivers are straightened. Floodplains are cleared. Every minute is accounted for. And what's lost in that process is the very thing that made us effective in the first place: our capacity to absorb pressure, our imagination, our humanity.
The poem continues:
Rewild feels scary because wild feels scary and yet it's who we are
That line is the one I keep coming back to.
To rewild your role is not to abandon professionalism or throw out what works. Rewilding, whether in a Scottish glen or in your own working life, is about restoration. It's about allowing the things that were always there to find their way back.
Allowing uncertainty. Allowing emotional range. Allowing conversations to meander rather than drive straight to the point. Allowing yourself to bring more of who you actually are into the room.
So on Rewilding Day, I'd like to offer you something gentle to reflect on.
What stereotype are you putting on to do your job?
And what would rewilding your role invite you to do differently?
You don't have to answer it now. You don't have to act on it today. But if you notice something, a flicker of recognition, a small sense of relief, that might just be your inner wild landscape asking to be heard.
When in doubt, nature.
Listen to me read the Rewild Your Life poem >>here.
