Life doesn't come with a manual.
But sometimes it helps to have somewhere to make sense of things.
Relationships · Money · Family · Work · Identity · Friendship · Success · Failure · Decisions · Loss · Purpose · Change
Something's on your mind
What is going on?
A decision, a relationship, work, money, or a feeling you cannot name yet. Write it as you would say it to someone you trust.
For example: “I don't know whether to leave my job.”
Your words are used to find a relevant place to start. They are not added to advertising or marketing profiles.
I want to look at my life as a whole
Nothing has to be wrong for your life to be worth looking at. My Tree helps you see the parts you are living now, the person living them, what shaped you and what may still grow.
Look at My TreeMy Tree
One life. Different parts of it.
Choose any part of the Tree to see what it represents.
No single part explains a life. My Tree gives you somewhere to see how the parts sit together, in your own words and without a final score.
Choose any part of the Tree to see what it represents.
How TAIU works
Start with what you need now.
There is no required order. Begin with one thing, look at your life as a whole, or write something down. Stop when you have enough.
Talk it through
A conversation for something that is on your mind. TAIU asks one question at a time and follows the part that matters to you.
Talk it throughWork through it
A more structured way to spend time with something that deserves a closer look. Pause, leave it for another day or return later.
See what you can work throughWrite it down
Put something into words without having to solve it. Keep it private, return later or ask TAIU to help you think about it when you choose.
Open my JournalLook at your life
My Tree helps you see the whole without reducing your life to one number.
Look at My Tree
There is a lot of life to think about.
TAIU contains questions, conversations, structured experiences, exercises, books and resources across the parts of life people most often bring with them. You will never need all of it. You only need the part that fits what is happening now.
- What am I actually good at?
- How much is enough?
- Should I leave?
- Why do I care so much what people think?
- What is this job costing me?
- Who is actually in my life?
- What am I not allowing myself to want?
- What do I want to leave behind?
Where the name came from
What if there were another way?
For years, The Alternative Is Unthinkable meant one thing to me: keep going when the obvious answer was no. Giving up was the unthinkable part.
Later I noticed that the same conviction can close a door. People who feel stuck have often reduced a situation to two choices: stay or leave, say something or keep quiet, carry on or stop.
Then somebody asks a question you had not asked yourself and a third possibility appears. Not the answer. Just another way of looking at it.
Whatever you have decided is unthinkable may be worth examining. That includes anything TAIU suggests about your own life.
Enough
Most people never decide what enough looks like, then wonder why more never settles it.
Time
We treat the parts of life we can measure as though they are the parts that matter most.
Change
You are allowed to want something different from what you wanted at twenty-five.
Twenty years of meeting people, in one place.
Work and curiosity took me around the world. Different countries, cultures, businesses and ways of living. I have had periods with very little money and periods with more than I needed. I have built businesses and lost them, moved countries and made decisions I would handle differently today.
I have never met anyone with everything sorted. TAIU grew from that, and from seeing how much can change when somebody asks a useful question at the right time.
My forthcoming book, The Alternative Is Unthinkable, goes further into the thinking behind TAIU. You do not need to read it to use any of this.
There is no finish line.
You do not get healthy and tick Health: complete. Money changes, work changes, families change and we change.
You may find something you want to change. You may find something you want to keep. Either way, seeing it properly is a useful place to begin.