Hi Subscriber First Name,

I thought I'd start this week with a welcome to our new readers. I've been writing these newsletters for over a year now and you might have missed the backstory.

Firstly, thank you to all of you that have read, supported or attended something I’m part of. It genuinely means so much to me.

Anyway, back to the newsletter. I started without much of a plan. The odd email here and there, letting people know about things I was involved in. Then a few of you started telling me you liked the writing, which caught me off guard, because after a lifetime of fairly successfully silencing myself, it turned out I had more to say than I'd ever given myself credit for.

So the odd message became a weekly habit. Now it's a new theme every week, the two of us working something out as we go. What's struck me most is that I can feel the change in myself across the year. This path has done something to me and the writing is part of how I notice it.

Much of that journey has been a condensed version of my career (you can read about that over at my Linkedin). After nearly 20 years in the corporate world I completely burned out, having spent most of it ignoring my own instincts and wisdom.

I then moved into the ‘sustainability’ world and trained as a B Corp consultant thinking that would be the answer I needed. But slowly I began to realise that the corporate thinking had followed me there and I could see that meaningful change always starts from within. So I trained as an advanced coach, using nature as a holder and metaphor, which took me deeper into the natural world and towards some truly remarkable people.

Finding the others has been the thing that brought the real magic. It meant I could start co-creating things I actually believed in, at places like Patch in Bournemouth and at the incredible Four Acre Farm in Ringwood. When I saw the impact that was having, something clicked. Daring Works became my business, built on the simple idea that being daring enough to think for ourselves and go with what's true is the work. The Natural Network grew alongside it as the community where that thinking comes to life.

The name of this newsletter comes from one of my heroes, Buckminster Fuller. I've been studying Bucky's work for years and it's where I first set off, with the idea that we can all be trim tabs. A trim tab is the smallest part of a ship's rudder and with the tiniest bit of pressure in exactly the right place it can turn something enormous. Bucky used it to remind us we're never quite as powerless as we feel. Step back, find the right spot, and any one of us can move a whole system.

So that's where I began. But over the last year my attention has drifted away from rudders and increasingly towards living things. Natural systems have become the metaphor I reach for and they keep showing up everywhere:

In the models I build with coaching clients, like my Inner Roots, Outer Fruits framework.

In The Natural Network gatherings that follow the wheel of the year.

In my training in animist and shamanic principles, where I'm learning to see us as part of the natural world rather than visitors to it.

In the time I keep finding myself spending on regenerative land with Kate at Four Acre Farm.

And in my own therapeutic work, where my healing opens up the magic of vulnerability and connection.

You can catch up on the full year of writing here if you're interested.

Through all of that I've come to see something. The trim tab is a powerful metaphor for finding our agency within large systems but it's also a solitary one. One person, the right pressure, the clever point of leverage. That thinking helped me find the fulcrum points in my own life, but once I'd created that change I could see that the real move was away from doing it alone.

We aren't standing outside the system hunting for the lever. We're inside it, part of it. And the power I kept looking for in the right lever turns out to live in connection instead.

Which is the same journey I've been on myself. From silencing myself, to realising I had something to say, to finding the people to say it with. From being alone to being among others…

Looking back at those photos, I'm feeling something relatively unfamiliar. Pride.

For years I struggled to really feel anything - I was a head on a stick as it was too painful to drop in to my body as that’s where the pain and trauma was sitting (the body remembers what the mind tries to ignore).

So external metrics became the measure I could use, I judged my worth by the size of the bonus at the end of the year or the nod from a boss. Now I actually feel emotions rather than just talk about the emotions I think I ‘should’ have.

So one of the things I feel most proud about is for becoming vulnerable enough to try new things, to co-create with people I genuinely admire and for not giving up when things get hard.

Part of that has been the slower work of healing. A lifetime of not facing the grief of losing my mum suddenly when I was 17 - I was running for so long that I stopped hearing myself and she would have wanted me to slow down. I’m also sure that as an old school hippy, she'd remind us all that love is always the answer and that when things feel overwhelming, get busy in your own little corner.

That’s even more important when the world feels as volatile and heavy as it does now. But building connection is what makes us feel safe enough to face whatever's coming.

Stephen Porges, who gave us polyvagal theory (how our nervous system regulates emotion, social connection and fear responses), puts it better than I can: "Safety is not the absence of threat; it is the presence of connection."

I've connected more in the last year than in the previous 42 so I feel safer and more hopeful than ever. Despite everything going on in the world, I have people I can rely on and they can rely on me, that’s what community feels like. And that’s come from me showing up as myself and finding my authentic voice because of it. That's happened through co-creating with Karley at Patch and, increasingly, with Kate at Four Acre Farm, where something genuinely special is being built by our combined experience and perspective.

Right now that means new gatherings. The Longer Table is on Friday 5th, a reminder that building longer tables and not higher fences has to be the answer. There are a couple of tickets left if you'd like to join us.

Upcoming Events

There’s so much on that I’ve brought back the events calendar. This is a place on my website where everything I’m involved in can be found.

So here it is, click here or on the image if you’d like to go and have a look at May and June.

Here’s the highlights:

The Longer Table At Four Acre Farm

28th May: 10am - 12pm at Patch. Tickets here

Four Acre Farm Open Day

28th May: 10am - 12pm at Patch. Tickets here

The Natural Network at Patch

25th June: 10am - 12pm at Patch. Tickets here

The Natural Network at Four Acre Farm

28th May: 10am - 12pm at Patch. Tickets here

Wrapping up

This has been an unusually personal one to write. A year in and I wanted you to know a little more about who's actually writing to you each week and why.

But this isn't really about me. It's about what happens when we remember that we are enough and that we can create new ways of seeing ourselves, built on what we actually want and need rather than what was expected of us.

It’s the magic of what happens when any of us stop running, start listening and find a few people to think alongside. That's available to all of us and I’m here to shine a light on the path.

I found my voice and I found a way to love myself enough to stop silencing my authenticity through the fear of being rejected. And that’s where I am, a continual motion of curiosity and compassion.

So wherever you are in your own version of that, I hope something in here landed. I'll be back next week with something new to work through together.

Until then, keep tending to those roots,

Nick