Hi Subscriber First Name,

It’s been a big couple of weeks in our house.

Henry got his A Level results and a week later, Arlo got his GCSEs. Two very different young people, two very different journeys and both have left me thinking about resilience, ‘success’ and the power of simply keeping moving when you can't see where you're going.

I spent a lot of my life believing that security meant working hard, earning well and building a successful career. I stayed in corporate life longer than was healthy, telling myself I was doing it for my kids.

The burnout eventually showed me that I was trading too much of my presence for a pay cheque.

My boys watched that whole metamorphosis. The well-paid corporate version of their dad slowly became the person I am now. I’ve never wanted them to carry any of that but I have wanted them to see the change. And that has meant questioning some of the things we’re told about what a successful life is supposed to look like.

Because the message is still pretty loud - work harder, compete, get the good job, achieve more.

But what happens when your kids have watched that exact path nearly break their dad? They've had to find their own answers.

Henry has had a lot to navigate in eighteen years. You can read more about it on Linkedin here. Autism, bullying, mental health crises and this year, epilepsy arriving at the start of exam season. Seizures, tests and the constant fear of collapsing when he needed to perform was heavy.

Then, just as it looked like the hardest part might be behind him, his university course was cancelled. And still, he kept going.

Not heroically or with some grand five-year plan, just one foot in front of the other. On the days he could manage it, he did what he could. On the days he couldn't, he found his way back the next day.

So you can imagine his surprise (and our enormous pride) when he got into a top UK university that he once only dreamed about.

Arlo's road has been quieter but quieter doesn't mean easier.

He's often the watcher, the one who reflects rather than announces, a calm energy in the instability. Diagnosed with ADHD, he had to drop subjects and find ways to keep going in a system that wasn't always built for how his mind works. There were times when other people had more or less written him off.

But he hadn't and we hadn’t. He worked with a tutor, asked for help from teachers who are family friends and he kept turning up for himself. Term after term, often in his brother's slipstream, which is its own kind of pressure that nobody really talks about.

He just kept doing the work and that's made me think about resilience differently. There’s a version of resilience that looks like surviving epilepsy in the middle of exam season and there’s a version that looks like refusing to be knocked off course while a much louder story is happening right next to you.

Both count, one person's harder road doesn't make another person's road less significant.

Which brings me back to the trimtab (the thread behind this newsletter). A trimtab is a tiny flap on the rudder of a ship. It takes very little force to move it but that small movement moves the rudder, which changes the direction of the whole vessel.

Almost no force, applied in the right place and held for long enough, can change everything. Nobody watching the ship change course sees the trimtab, they see the turn.

Henry didn't need to see the whole path to university, he needed to get through the next exam. Arlo didn't need the school to believe in him, he needed to keep his own energy moving while something much more powerful was growing inside of him. And that got him the results he needed to get to the college courses he wants to be on.

Neither of them fought the current head-on. They kept their vision and showed up over and over again until the direction of everything changed.

I've spent years reminding other people that the smallest sustained input can be more powerful than the biggest dramatic gesture. I didn't expect my own sons to teach it back to me, but they have.

And I'm incredibly grateful for that.

Upcoming Events

The Natural Network at Patch

27th August: 10am - 12pm. Tickets here

Our monthly gathering at Patch, exploring how we work, lead and do business in more sustainable, human and natural ways. This month's guest speaker is Jamie Oakey, talking about his work in community renewable energy. And we have the ‘bicycle blender’ this month so we can see human energy while we make our own leg powered smoothies!

The Longer Table at Four Acre Farm

28th August: 7.30pm - 9.30pm. Tickets here

We’re back at the Farm! This gathering is an invitation to join us for an evening of good food and honest conversation. We’ll be exploring what joy means to us despite being in the middle of these challenging times.

Wrapping up

There’s a lot going on in the world and it’s easy to feel like we need to make some enormous change to keep up with it.

But maybe we don’t.

Perhaps there’s something in your own life that doesn’t need a dramatic intervention right now. Maybe there’s a small adjustment you’ve been thinking about making, a conversation you need to have, a boundary you need to hold or simply something you want to do a little differently.

You don’t need to know exactly where it will lead. You could just ask yourself, what’s my trimtab?

What’s the small thing that, if I keep moving it in the right direction, might eventually change the course of something much bigger?

And then perhaps give yourself permission to start there.

With compassion and curiosity,

Nick