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I’m glad to be back in our usual rhythm this week and I’m here in your inbox on the usual day.

For anyone who missed it, the pause came after my eldest son unfortunately had a seizure and we ended up in A&E. I’m grateful he has recovered well from the concussion and he will have an EEG soon so we can understand whether epilepsy might be part of the picture. It feels like we’ve been moving through choppy waters and the tide is beginning to settle.

The EEG (electroencephalogram) process itself has always fascinated me. It’s a bunch of electrodes placed in a skull cap to listen to the electricity of the brain to catch the signals beneath the surface.

Interestingly, I’ve come across EEGs twice before in entirely different settings.

The first was in my corporate marketing days. We would spend tens of millions on advertising and needed to know how people truly responded to our work. Traditional research was always slippery as people say what they think they should say.

Focus groups drift into group-think while surveys can bend under the weight of the questions asked.

I once presented a new marketing campaign to a Board. Unbeknownst to me, two different research teams had commissioned studies with one feeling supportive and one feeling combative. So while both came from experienced researchers and both were technically ‘correct’, both told completely different stories. Corporate politics and bias had shaped the truth.

So at this point, we turned to neuroscience as we wanted something unfiltered.

We worked with neuroscientists to test our TV adverts. Our brand was strong, consistent and creeping into culture (kids were even making parody videos on YouTube). The music was catchy but we worried it was becoming annoying. When you spend up to £15 million a year on TV, that can definitely happen.

So we placed these strange little caps on people and watched their brains respond. You could see the exact moments something landed and it was mesmerising. The result was that we kept the same creative DNA for years. Despite being outspent by competitors, we grew the fastest, were the most loved and were eventually bought for over £1 billion.

It might surprise you that despite all of this research and data, much of our success was built on gut instinct. Much of the data was post-rationalised to keep the risk and finance people happy.

In the end, we were using fancy science to tell us what we already knew. It was validating that we needed to trust our gut. Even the science agrees as EEG data can increasingly measure the bidirectional ‘brain-gut axis’ revealing that gut signals, directly influence our brain activity.

I love this quote from Einstein to summarise that we can be in danger of ignoring our instincts and become increasingly rational. I don’t think AI has an intuitive mind or in other words, the gift…

So now we’re going to make a pretty big leap from corporate marketing to psychedelic drug trials (we definitely cover some ground with this newsletter!).

The second time I encountered EEG data was in a lecture by Professor David Luke at Bournemouth University. He shared research on what happens in the brain when people take different psychedelic substances.

There is a growing body of work showing that psychedelics can help rewire thought patterns. The data he showed gave me a sense of hope.

He studies how psychedelics affect people’s relationship with nature and themselves. Many participants felt more connected and more protective of the environment in a new phenomenon he called ‘eco-psyche-genesis’. It’s science catching up with something ancient that when we connect to nature, we feel more grounded and more alive.

The EEG images he shared were striking. On one side, a brain in its familiar state. Well worn pathways. Thoughts looping in patterns we barely notice. On the other, a brain on psilocybin. The usual hubs quieten. New pathways open. The system becomes more fluid. More curious. More capable of change. It is one of the reasons psychologists are so interested in these substances as potential tools in mental health. Participants also reported feeling more motivated to take ecological action and even spent more time gardening.

All of this is happening within controlled clinical environments and organisations like Imperial College London are doing serious work to understand both the promise and the limits of these approaches.

Psilocybin was once used in the NHS before later being classified as a Class A substance, which adds an interesting historical layer to where we find ourselves now.

What connects this all for me is a simple question about how we create the conditions for new patterns to emerge. Whether we are looking at buyer behaviour, mental health or our relationship with nature, we are always working with systems that are more complex than they first appear. And often, the tools we rely on only show us a fraction of what is really happening.

Which makes me wonder what new models we might need. What helps us see beyond our well worn pathways? What helps us interrupt the loops we didn’t realise we were repeating? What helps us build organisations, communities and inner worlds that are capable of genuine change rather than cosmetic shifts?

Because beneath all the measurement and interpretation, that is the work many of us are doing. Trying to understand how we think, how we feel and how we make sense of the world as it moves around us. And perhaps more importantly, how we might open up enough space for something new to take root.

Upcoming Events

If there’s one thing I keep learning, it’s that change happens through connection. New pathways form when signals meet each other in unexpected ways and communities are no different.

So as we explore new tools and new ways of thinking, these events are becoming our shared laboratory. A place to test ideas, meet new people and create the kind of energy that helps fresh patterns emerge.

We’d love for you to join us…

The Natural Network at Four Acre Farm

7th May: 9.30am - 1.30pm at Patch. Tickets here

We really would love you to join us on the Farm for this workshop. Some people I speak to are intrigued but not quite ready to book. Others feel unsure of what we’ll cover or if they are the right audience. My answer is always that if you’re curious, you’re the right person!

The Natural Network has been created as an antidote to the hours we spend indoors, under artificial light, glued to screens, trying to force ideas on demand. The result is well documented - burnout, exhaustion and a persistent sense of not doing 'enough'.

So this gathering brings us back to ourselves. To lead, think, to build with intention, clarity and power. It’s a collaboration between me and Kate (Four Ace Farm) as an integration of deep natural wisdom and pragmatic business decision making/planning.

If you’d like more information, please reply to this email and we can arrange a no pressure chat about the day. Plus, as a newsletter subscriber you get a £20 discount using the code - Naturalnetwork20

The Natural Network at Patch

30th April: 10am - 12pm at Patch. Tickets here

We’re now getting in to our stride with these events. We balance deep business knowledge in sustainable/regenerative practices, effective group facilitation and nurturing connection to self and others.

We always gather on the final Thursday of the month between 10-12 at Patch with the best pastries in our hands. We’d love you to join us.

Here’s the shape of this month’s gathering:

• Guided reflective practice with Karley - How often can you start your day with an experienced Yoga instructor and call it work? If you’re in an employed role, we promise not to tell your boss! And don’t worry, this is just a gentle pause in your day, it’s nothing too over the top.

• Answering your calling with Kate - We’ll hear from one of the co-creators of Four Acre Farm about the story from desolate farm land to a flourishing re-generation of a stunning market garden, community space and wild flower meadow.

• Community network building - I hate ‘networking’. It seems to have become the practice of throwing business cards in people’s faces. So this part of the morning is more like a mycelium network where the magic happens when we see that we’re all connected, when we show up with curiosity around who we are and the communities we’re part of.

Wrapping up…

So that’s where my thinking has taken me this week. In to the question of how we shift the patterns we’ve inherited, how we create tools that help us see more clearly and how we build systems that don’t just repeat the past but allow something genuinely new to form.

Because whether we’re talking about brains, organisations or communities, the work is the same. We’re learning how to listen beneath the surface. We’re learning how to notice the signals we usually ignore. We’re learning how to create enough space for different pathways to open.

And maybe that’s the real invitation in all of this. To stay curious about the models we use? To stay awake to the habits we fall into? To stay willing to experiment with new ways of thinking and being, even when the old ones feel familiar?

I’ll leave you with that for now.

As always, with compassion and curiosity,

Nick

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

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