Today we ask one of the most beautiful questions – from a David Whyte poem: “What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?”
Because today one year ago we were in the Royal Festival Hall – a small team co-designing a revolutionary, systems-based leadership programme called Leading Collective Impact. One year on – we’ve a strong team led by the excellent Jacq Lim, a successful pilot, have a panel of brilliant coaches and are half-way through a profound programme on diversity and inclusion. Even more important we’ve had almost 50 women participate in the programme and seen extraordinary transitions and applied insights.
What could you seed now that could spread its branches against the sky next year? Or in ten years?
Here is the rest of the poem by David Whyte. Its called ‘What to remember when waking“
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?
Can we help? Speak to Laura on hello@sheleadshange.org to find out more around how Leading from Within or Leading Collective Impact or our Spring Board panel could help you spread those branches wide.
Have a beautiful day!
Love
Nicola