Hello Wise Founder,

Welcome to the first ever edition of this newsletter.

Writing has long been my creative outlet, a means of sense-making of the world, and hopefully a way to add some interest or value into other people’s day. I’ve written in various forms including the coaching manual (which I’ll continue with); a newsletter on Substack (which I probably won’t); but I’ve felt ever-more called to create something like The Wise Founder.

My own journey has involved being a product leader in high-growth startups; a teacher of yoga and meditation; and a Coach to Founders and Founding teams. Those collective experiences shape my interests and beliefs in all sorts of ways, but I’m particularly fascinated with the idea of how we cultivate wisdom, not just knowledge, and how that can shape great leaders tackling important problems in the world.

I won’t pretend to have all the answers. This newsletter will be our opportunity to learn together from sources far and wide - ranging from the realms of neuroscience, psychology, spirituality, startups, and probably many more - many teachers, no gurus!

As a starting point, my plan is for each edition to include:
🧪 1 experiment to run
🤔 1 question to reflect on
📚️ 1 resource to check out
📖 And 1 longer read written by me

But if you have any feedback or suggestions for what you’d like to see included then you can hit reply to this email and send over your thoughts. I’d love to hear them.

Coming up

This first edition focuses primarily on the topic of self acceptance and change. It includes:

• A written piece about the paradox of self-acceptance and change

• A short meditation practice focused on self-acceptance

• A question to reflect on

• A book recommendation

The paradox of self-acceptance and change

There is a pervasive lie that so many of us have bought into. It’s amongst the most dangerous of lies - a wolf in sheep’s clothing - that appears harmless, is accepted by the flock, but is poised to eat us. The wolf in this story is the idea that self acceptance is the enemy of change - that in order to change, we need to see ourselves as deficient and work continuously to close the gaps in our deficiency. But it’s time to expose the wolf. To separate it from the flock once more to avoid it doing further damage.

I firmly believe that not only is self-acceptance not the enemy of change - it’s actually our greatest catalyst for it.

And let’s face it, being a Founder requires superhuman capacity for change. But I make a distinction here between those who are embracing their growth vs. those that believe they somehow need to be ‘fixed’.

For the latter, the trap I see them falling into is convincing themselves that they need to hold onto that critical voice in their head in order to do the ‘fixing’. The very idea of self-acceptance poses a threat. It amplifies some of their most deep-rooted fears about not being good enough. It signifies admitting defeat.

But herein lies the paradox. Our misunderstanding of what self-acceptance truly means, and our conditioning to a dominant paradigm of change focused on criticising ourselves, means we mistake self-acceptance for stagnation or a lack of willingness to grow.

In my experience, self-acceptance enables a different sort of change - one with greater ease and compassion. I love the Taoist concept of Wu Wei, which is sometimes translated as the ‘action of non-action’. It’s a mindset in which, much like water in a stream flows around the rocks in its path, we move with the ebb and flow of life and the world around us, rather than choosing to battle against it. We aren’t complacently or stubbornly resisting change but are allowing it to happen with a greater sense of flow.

To your average Founder this might be challenging some of the conventional wisdom they hold to be true; but I’m trusting that you’re not the average Founder. Your seeking something a bit different; and I wonder if leaning deeply into self-acceptance might be one important step for the Wise Founder.

If you liked this first ever edition of The Wise Founder then there are two ways you can support:

1. Share it with others you think would be interested - a growing subscriber base is how I’ll judge if this experiment is working

2. Hit reply to this email and send over any feedback - what you liked, what you didn’t, what you’d like to see in a future edition