At Yellowrattle Coaching, I am opening awareness of the whole experience of what it means to exist in relation to your world. These monthly newsletters bring a different lens to look through your world and hopefully inspire you.
Welcome to all 173 subscribers across LinkedIn and Substack 🙏🏻
For my 40th birthday, I received a beautiful silver key ring of an acorn. The reason behind the gift was that Oak trees take around 40 years to produce an acorn - a symbol of wisdom, patience and achievement
An oak tree takes forty years to produce a single acorn. Forty years. We live in a world obsessed with youth and speed. Success is something that comes swiftly and coupled with youth. How many ‘thirty under thirty’ power lists grace the covers of magazines? Up and coming new brands, celebrities and CEOs trend into our consciousness through platforms that themselves aren’t even halfway to being old enough to create a single acorn, in oak tree terms.
In a world that sends us so many signals that speed, youth and success are an indivisible trinity the oak stands as an ancient, even sacred, reminder that things take the time they take. An oak needs to uncurl her leaves forty times, stand strong in the sun forty times, let go of her leaves forty times and weather a winter forty times before she is ready to bring forth an acorn into the world.
When I received the small silver acorn it was also a promise of what was to come. At that point Yellowrattle Coaching wasn’t even a seed let alone a sapling. I had no idea what my first acorn would be, but I drew immense comfort that this stage of life was a beginning and becoming every bit as much as it was a milestone of age.
There are things that we are only ready for as we age; as our well of experience sinks as deeply as our well of talent.
The oak tree invites us to remember that our best work, our most vital work, may well come later in life.
For every thirty under thirty list, it’s refreshing to see the emergence of forty over forty lists. Vera Wang did not design her first dress until she was forty. Darwin published the Origin of Species at Fifty. ‘Grandma’ Anna Moses - one of America’s great folk artists - only picked up a paint brush at the age of 78.
Of course everything we have done goes into everything we go on to do, and each stage is important. Darwin took his journey on the Beagle nearly thirty years before and Anna Moses spent a lifetime embroidering before picking up the paints. But the oak invites us to relish the slow growth, the careful passing through thresholds. It invited me to found Yellowrattle.
What is its invitation to you?
My Realisation Podcast with Jane Jenkins
This podcast charts the story of my journey to creating Yellowrattle Coaching - from the camaraderie of Royal Marines, who gave me the courage to write my disruptive ideas down and make them happen, through to discovering that I didn't need permission to do the things I wanted to do.
As you’ve got this far, would you like to work together?
I am open to working in a consulting, speaking and coaching capacity.
My professional coaching is twofold:
Psychodynamic coaching: understanding why you are resisting the changes you want to make, exploring the defensive tactics that keep you stuck. A deeper investigation using insights from analytical psychology, facilitated through coaching.
Person centred coaching: building your convergent and divergent thinking capability to enable you to gain clarity over how you want to address your challenge or opportunity.
Find out more check out my website here
Previous content you might enjoy:
Podcasts:
Leadership beyond the job title
Previous Blogs
Why do we need a sprinkling of Yellowrattle?
Meaning and discovering the part you play in the world
How leaders can think and act like entrepreneurs