The book
What if the life you're living isn't the only life available to you?
A book about the questions people carry and rarely get asked. What enough looks like. What a decision is really costing. What somebody has quietly decided is no longer available to them.
Yours permanently, with 30 days of TAIU included.
Welcome to TAIU
Welcome to TAIU
The book gives you another way to look at your life. This is where you can do something with whatever it brings up.
Talk something through. Build a picture of your life. Write something down. Park it for later. Return to a decision and see whether your answer has changed.
You do not have to know where to start. Start with what is on your mind.
- Talk to TAIUSay what is going on and think it out loud, by voice or by typing.
- My TreeYour private view of your whole life, in your own words.
- My JournalWhere you write, dictate, park things and come back to them.
- Sessions and workshopsA session helps you work something out. A workshop helps you work on it.
Meet Alto. The alternative voice inside TAIU.
You speak to TAIU. Alto is the character you see beside its answers, still while you are speaking or typing and moving only while TAIU is thinking or replying.
Talk to TAIU
What is going on?
Speak or type it as you would say it to somebody you trust.
TAIU will help you slow it down, look at what is actually happening and consider what else might be possible.
You can leave the conversation there, save it in My Journal or add what matters to My Tree.
Talk to TAIU
You do not need an account to begin.
My Tree
The loudest thing today is not your whole life.
My Tree is somewhere to step back and look at the life you are actually living. What it began with, the person carrying it, the parts being lived now, what they add up to, what may still grow and what reaches you from outside and gives something back.
It is not a score and it is not a balance wheel. It is your life in your own words and nothing in it moves unless you write it.
Choose any part of the Tree
Nothing here is a score. Each part simply helps you notice something different about the life you are living.
At the base, the rings are what this life began with. The trunk is you. The branches and canopy are the parts of the life being lived now. Sunlight reaches you from outside. Weather is what is happening around you.
How it all works together
Nothing you do here has to disappear
A conversation with TAIU can become a Journal entry. Something important can be added to My Tree. A session can give you something to return to. A workshop can help you go further.
You decide what is saved. Nothing is added to My Tree or My Journal without you choosing it.
- Talk to TAIU
- Save what matters
- Add it to My Journal or My Tree
- Return and review
- Go deeper through a session or workshop
My Journal
My Journal
A piece of paper cannot bring you back to what you said.
Write or dictate what is on your mind. Save a thought, park a decision or record what you said you would do.
Come back in a week, a month or a year. See what changed, what did not and whether the thing that once felt urgent still does.
If you said you would do something, TAIU can bring you back to it. You can also decide that it no longer matters.
- Write it or dictate it
- Keep a general entry or connect it to one part of My Tree
- Read it back, edit it and save it
- Search and filter what you have written
- Set a date to return to something
- Park something without being made to act
- Choose whether TAIU can use an entry when it is helping you
Sessions, workshops and the book
Go further when you need to
Sometimes talking is enough. Sometimes something deserves more time.
Explore more than 300 guided sessions and workshops across work, relationships, family, money, health and the questions raised by the book.
A session helps you work something out. A workshop helps you work on it.
You can stop, save your place and return when you are ready.
You can talk about the book from a chapter, a sentence or a question it raised. Anything useful is only saved if you choose to save it.
The thinking behind TAIU
The thinking behind TAIU
The rest of this page is the thinking the book is built on. Read it if it helps. None of it is needed before you begin.
After the book
When something in it stays with you, come back to it.
A chapter that would not leave you alone is a good place to start. Take the idea, put your own life next to it and see what it actually means for you.
The book and the rest of TAIU are the same thing seen twice. One reads, the other works.
Where people usually start
Trying to work out what is actually true.
Why a small thing keeps coming back.
Whether a decision made years ago still fits.
What you are protecting and who you are protecting it for.
Why somebody close to you sees the same thing completely differently.
Why a life that looks fine does not quite feel fine.
Look at any of it
You do not need a problem to look at your life.
Eight places to start, each with something to read on arrival. Take them in any order, or take one and stop there. Ending up deciding that nothing needs changing is a real answer, and it is worth knowing why.
- WorkWhat it gives, what it costs and whether it still fits.
- LoveCloseness as it actually is, not only when something is wrong.
- FamilyThe people, history and continuity you did not entirely choose.
- HealthBody, mind, energy and what recovery is like at the moment.
- MoneyWhat you are asking it to provide, and what it restricts.
- Where it beganWhat was already here before you had much say in it.
- What nourishes youWhat reaches you from outside and gives something back.
- What may still growSomething you want room for, with no obligation to act on it.
The Alternative Is Unthinkable
The alternative is unthinkable
Most of us rule something out before we have even looked at it.
There is usually a version of a situation we have quietly decided is not available. Sometimes for good reasons. People depend on us, the money is not there or we gave our word. Sometimes only because we said it once years ago and never went back to it.
The point is not to choose the alternative. It is to notice which alternatives you stopped examining and why. Some of them you will look at again and close for good reasons. That counts as an answer.
Looking at it again is not a promise to do anything. The other way might be staying, leaving, repairing, accepting, waiting, preparing or seeing the same situation differently and carrying on.
Every alternative costs something. Knowing what it would cost is more use than pretending there is a free version.
What is already good
Looking properly does not only find problems.
Often it turns up something that has been working for years and has never once been said out loud. A friendship that survived everything. Work that suits you better than you admit. An ordinary Tuesday you would miss immediately if it went.
Worth knowing, because the things nobody names are the things people forget to protect.
Sunlight
Some of what keeps a life alive was never an achievement.
People, places, beauty, music, food, weather, affection and being somewhere you like being. None of it appears on a record of what you have done, and a life can be well arranged and still short of it.
There is nothing to measure here and nothing to increase. It is only worth being able to say what yours is, so you notice when it has gone quiet.
Other people
Everybody is standing in their own life.
TAIU helps you get curious about somebody else. It does not tell you who they are and it cannot speak for them.
You were shaped by people, and what you decide reaches people. Understanding where somebody else is standing usually changes a conversation more than being right does.
Where did you grow up?
What was it actually like?
Who had the biggest influence on you?
What did money mean in your family?
What makes you happiest now?
New growth
New options rarely arrive while you sit still.
They tend to come in sideways. A different city, an unfamiliar room, somebody whose life looks nothing like yours or a thing you tried once and were bad at.
Nobody is required to be growing. There is nothing to plan here. It is only worth knowing that curiosity is how most people find the option they could not see.
Ways to use TAIU
Four ways in, and they are not a ladder. Talking it through helps you work something out. Working through it helps you work on something. An exercise is a short piece of writing you do alone, and My Tree is where any of it can be kept.
Membership
Thirty days come with the book. After that, you decide.
Membership keeps sessions and workshops open, along with everything gathered around your Tree. Nothing converts by itself and no card is charged when the included time ends.
- £79 a year
- £8.99 a month
Where this leaves you
You are allowed to look without deciding anything.
Some people come away wanting to change something. Some come away wanting to protect something. Some still do not know, and leave it for now.
And sometimes looking properly says that nothing needs changing. That is an answer as well.