As a nurse, I wiped bottoms and made beds for 17 years. And I worked through the ranks to reach the top of the management tree. When I met Mark (my other half), we got a dog – a beautiful Golden Retriever called Lucy. I fell head over heels. Then I took the plunge, and left the 9 -5 (joke!) to start my own business. It’s a coaching and training business. In one corner of my mind, I thought, if it doesn’t work out I’ll do something with dogs. Fortunately it took off and I never looked back. And so did my passion for dogs and subsequently, dog sports.

Like many coaches, consultants, and business owners, I was really busy. And I struggled to get the quality of lifestyle I was seeking in the first place. Training the dogs would often take a back seat because of a gruelling work schedule, which often meant I was away from home for days. Over time I started to notice my suitcase getting a little heavier each time I left the dogs.

After more than a decade as an on the road executive coach and coach trainer, I remember standing in my kitchen, thinking maybe this ‘busyness’ I’d created, wasn’t right for me after all? But WTF would I do next?

Then one November afternoon, I’m listening to the good Alex Baisley, a coach from Canada, and he said something really smart…’start with the lifestyle you want and back your business into that, not the other way round’.

And that resonated for me. Why?

Because there’s something that matters every bit as much as doing what we love – and that’s how we do it, where we do it, and who we do it with. Not in a cheesy, marketing way, but in a self-caring, soul loving way, that feels good.

So I stepped out of the traditional coaching and training classic ‘hotel’ and ‘conference’ room settings, and into The Paddock, on a smallholding in Berkshire.

Rather than travelling all over the country to deliver my coach training courses, I invited delegates to come to the training Barn at The Paddock, for a rustic learning experience amongst the hens, horses, and sheep.

And instead of training the dogs on my own at The Paddock, I invited fellow obedience fanatics to join me there twice a month, to train our dogs, support each other, laugh, cry, and have fun doing what we love.

When I’m not training dogs, I train people. When I’m not training people, I train dogs. And occasionally I do both!

I cannot imagine a life in which dogs do not play an important part. I love hanging out with them and I love sharing what I do and how I do it, with others.

‘Walking round in circles’ is often used as shorthand for “WTF should I be doing next with my life because I’m just walking round and round in circles and getting nowhere?”. This is not a cool feeling in a world where one tap on a screen sees everyone else sharing pictures of their (linear )journey. But in my experience ‘real’ life is anything but linear, and I think Walking Round In Circles is the perfect title for a website dedicated to embracing the circular flow of life – because that’s how life is.

Angela Watson x