Hey Subscriber First Name

I’m excited to have reached another milestone - edition 50 of this newsletter. It wasn’t long ago that I celebrated a year of public writing (I didn’t start weekly), so I hope you’ll forgive me for marking another moment.

It feels important to recognise when we achieve something of note. As a recovering perfectionist, that hasn’t always come naturally.

When I look back at the timeline of my life, I can see how that 17‑year‑old boy sitting on the edge of my mum’s bed asking ‘what do I do now?’ was terrified of getting things wrong. So I learned to survive by never stopping and trying to not ‘fail’. That avoidance meant I would get in my own way and often didn’t even launch.

Which brings me back to the question I left us with last week:

“Which parts of yourself are you most proud of today - the parts a previous version of you would be amazed to see?”

Something that resonated for me was related to our life stages. As we age, we begin to see the breadth of what we carry - the skills, the experiences and the chapters that make us who we are.

When I look at my career, I see three chapters: the marketeer, the sustainability strategist and now the coach/facilitator/event-host.

The marketing chapter is one I often forget. I was never ambitious, yet somehow I climbed the ladder, led teams, travelled the world making TV adverts, helped build a brand worth £400m and ultimately supported a £1bn business sale. It was exciting and I learned a lot. But at the end of it, I was left with a feeling of “is that it?”, which is probably why burnout hit so hard.

That burnout pushed me into my second chapter: sustainability. Training as a B Leader, helping businesses become B Corps, becoming Carbon Literate, embedding ethics and purpose into brands. It aligned more closely with my values but something deeper was calling. I noticed that meaningful change always begins within the people - their values, their culture and their inner landscape. I was doing the work of a coach without realising it (or having the training).

Which led to chapter three: coaching. I wanted a qualification that was both rigorous and soulful, which took me to Wise Goose and the wonderful Helen Sieroda - a peer of Joanna Macy, Thich Nhat Hanh and Lady Diana Whitmore. That training allowed me to integrate everything I’d learned - the systems thinking, the brand building, the ethics, the inner work and the nature‑based wisdom.

For years, people told me to ‘niche’. But I’ve realised I’m not a niche. I’m an integration. And the parts of my past I began to avoid and forget - the marketing, the corporate rooms, the financial planning meetings are the very parts that make my work now so grounded and unique. I sometimes joke that it allows me to balance the Profit and Loss with the Peace and Love!

I like this quote from Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher who predicted the internet 30 years before anyone else. His words remind us to look up and see what we’re actually building or creating. We become so focused on not making a small mistake that we sleepwalk into a real problem, simply by not seeing the bigger picture. It’s why we need time away from our businesses and pauses from our day‑to‑day lives to check whether we’re truly heading where we want to go. Otherwise, we end up somewhere we never intended, just faster.

When you only see one part of the system, you keep solving the same problem in the same way, even when the world has changed. You become efficient but not expansive. Knowledgeable but not imaginative. Confident but not necessarily wise.

You’ve probably heard the word ‘generalist’. I’ve never liked it, it sounds like an apology - being good at many things means you’re not great at anything.

But (our inspiration for this newsletter) Buckminster Fuller had a better word: comprehensivist.

Bucky never believed humans were meant to be specialists. He believed we were meant to be comprehensivists - people who see patterns across systems, connecting ideas that design new ways of being rather than fitting into old ones.

He used nature as his metaphor:

A bird is specialised for flying. A fish is specialised for swimming. A mole is specialised for burrowing.

But humans? We’re not specialised for anything but we can learn to do everything.

We design planes instead of growing wings. We build boats instead of growing fins. We create tools, systems, cultures and stories.

Specialists are efficient but comprehensivists are expansive.

Bucky believed hyper‑specialisation was one of the great risks to humanity that if we all focus only on the thing directly in front of us, we lose the ability to see the whole, to anticipate, to imagine and to design better futures.

And when I look at my own path - the marketing, the sustainability, the coaching, the nature‑based work, I can see I’m not a contradiction, I’m a system, an integration.

And you are too.

In a world that keeps telling us to narrow down, to specialise, to fit into a job spec or a neat LinkedIn headline, the real work is to lean into the fullness of our story. To trust that our breadth is not a liability, it’s our leverage.

I hope my diagram hasn’t oversimplified things. It’s not to say that one box is better than another - we all move between them at different times in our lives. And we can learn from each type of person; that’s what brings strength: a diversity of thoughts, beliefs and experiences.

When I started writing this newsletter, I was definitely in the Explorer zone. But to grow our skills, we need to be curious. I didn’t know what I was going to write or what genre my newsletter would fall into but I knew that if I gave myself permission to test, learn and find my voice, then it would be okay. I was trusting in my roots. I knew I had something to say, but I had hidden myself because I wasn’t sure which version of me was allowed to say it. It took realising that it had to come from the whole of me.

Now, I’ve learned that our voice isn’t built from knowledge, it’s built from experience.

AI can summarise information but it can’t live a life. It can’t sit at the edge of a bed at seventeen asking what to do next. It can’t burn out in a boardroom. It can’t rebuild itself through nature, coaching, community or courage. It can’t integrate the chapters of a life into something meaningful.

Only you can do that.

And that’s why your story matters, the whole of it. Not the polished parts. Not the LinkedIn‑friendly parts. The real parts. The complicated parts. The parts that don’t fit neatly into a job spec.

If you’re still finding your voice, here are a few things that helped me:

Start small. A paragraph. A note. A thought you’re not sure is ready.

Tell the truth. Not the dramatic truth - the human truth. People feel that more than anything.

Share from the scar, not the wound. You don’t owe anyone your rawness if you’re not ready. But you can offer your learning.

Trust your integration. Your breadth isn’t a flaw, it’s your signature.

And keep going. Voice comes from repetition and consistency, not revelation.

Fifty editions in, I’m still practising. Still learning what I sound like. Still discovering the parts of myself a younger version would be proud to meet.

And if you’re somewhere on that journey too, I hope you keep going. The world doesn’t need more specialists. It needs more comprehensivists who are brave enough to speak from the whole of who they are.

Events & gatherings

Everything I’ve shared here sits at the centre of our gatherings.

Because it’s one thing to understand these ideas. It’s another to feel them in your body, in community and in spaces that let you breathe again.

These events are designed to help you reconnect with the parts you’ve sidelined, to steady yourself in a changing world and to remember the depth you carry.

We have one space left for our event on Friday at Four Acre and our second gathering at Patch is shaping up to be pretty special.

The Natural Network at Four Acre - ‘The Emergence’

20th March: 9.15-13.15 at Four Acre Farm. Tickets here

We have just 1 place available and we’d love you to join us.

As day and night come into balance, this gathering invites you to step from reflection into visible action.

If winter was for thinking and February was for tending what is growing beneath the surface, we're now ready for emergence.

This focused half-day experience blends structured business reflection with nature-based insight.

Workshop, delicious lunch, connections and follow up 30 minute coaching conversation with me.

Don’t forget that as an email subscriber, you can use the code Naturalnetwork20 for a £20 discount. We’d love to see you there.

The Natural Network at Patch

26th March: 10am - 12pm at Patch. Tickets here

I’m really excited about this. We’ll be exploring ‘Rooted Resilience’ as our theme this month:

• Resilience in self - guided reflection and gentle breathing exercise with Karley

• Resilience in nature - the launch of a new campaign with local film maker Dan Pringle who will be presenting his concept

• Resilience in community - connecting with others who are asking the deep questions of themselves and their work

Wrapping up…

The more I write, the more I give air to the parts I once hid and those parts are where the real wisdom lives.

I know I’m not the only one who’s felt the pressure to simplify themselves. To appear clearer, sharper, more ‘specialised’ and ‘expert’. Many of us have been told to hide the breadth of who we are because it might confuse someone scanning a CV or scrolling a feed.

But the truth is, we’re not meant to be simple. We’re meant to be whole.

Our power comes from integration, from allowing all the chapters of our lives to inform the way we work, lead and create. We can choose to shrink ourselves to fit the world or we can grow into the fuller version of who we already are.

Growth isn’t linear and it certainly isn’t rushed. Sometimes we just need the right space, the right people or the right moment to remember who we are.

We lose pieces of ourselves along the way but we also grow into versions of ourselves our younger selves could barely imagine. And recognising that is just as important as tending to what was lost.

Until next week and always with with curiosity and compassion,

Nick

Well that’s it for another week. But we don’t have to stop there.

Here’s how we can continue the conversation:

• If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone who might like it too.

• If someone forwarded this to you, please Click here to subscribe.

• If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn then come and find me here.

• Instagram more your thing? Please come and follow me here.

• Looking for a deeper connection and would like to work with me? Just reply to this email or click here to start a conversation.