Looking down on the earth from an airplane you can easily distinguish mountains and rivers, woods and plains, and all the various contours of the surface of our beautiful planet. You can tell where the cities meet the country, and where the fairy fort was once part of the field.

Standing on the ground, however, it’s nothing like as clear as that. There may well have been a fairy fort in the field at one time, and you may even be able to work out just where it is, but the lines that mark its boundaries are not as clear as they appear from far above. In fact, the lines may well turn out to be not lines at all, but indents, or something buried below the surface, or perhaps just a slightly different coloured surface.

It’s like that old saying, it can be hard to tell the wood from the trees.

And that’s the problem many of us can suffer from in relation to our practice. We know so much about it, that we may be able to make no use of it because we can’t distinguish what’s important from what’s not.

It’s one of the reasons why we have supervision in our work, so that we can have another pair of eyes, another point of view or perspective to help us to focus on what may be on the edge of our awareness, but not clearly enough for us to see.

At a workshop with other therapists recently, we had live supervision of our work. For those of you who had the “fishbowl” experience during training, it was a bit like that. During each “fishbowl” session, the tutor interrupted the work to ask the therapist to focus on their own inner experience. For some, this allowed something into awareness that had not been clear before. For me, I became aware of all the dilemmas that were running through my head, mostly about what to bring into the session and what to hold. In the space of the interruption, I found a way of bringing in what was on the edge, in a way that could be heard and used by the client, thereby bringing the work to a deeper place.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience yourself, talking about client work with your supervisor, and as you talk it out together, some new thought or idea occurs, that moves you and the work to a different place.

The same applies with the business side of your practice. Perhaps you’re struggling to create the practice you’d like? Perhaps you’d like more work, or better paid work? Perhaps you’d like to be more organised, or learn new ways of doing everyday tasks?

If you’re finding it hard to see the wood from the trees in your practice, maybe it’s time you got in contact with me for another perspective. I’d love to help you! Someone else may already have solved the problem you have. There may be lots of easy ways you could improve your situation. Why not get in touch here for your free 20 minute consultation?