There is so much advice on how to position your blog/newsletter, how to provide value and increase your audience. With age, I'm getting slightly better at asking for advice in the right places- if even at all. Of course I want this blog/newsletter to be of value to you, but I’m also using it as a vehicle and a reason for me to go down a few rabbit holes that I find interesting. The challenge is often how to keep it to around 700 words and tie it up with a bow that represents me or what I'm trying to get across. Let's see if I succeed this time.
I was listening to a podcast the other day (that is apparently how 70% of my sentences start if you ask my eldest daughter) with Dr. Eva Selhub, physician and resilience expert, where she spoke about how nature influences our brains, bodies, relationships, and overall well-being. As she often does in her interviews, she talks at length about a concept called biomimicry (also called biomimetics), which is an interdisciplinary field that draws inspiration from nature’s forms, processes, and systems to solve human technical and design-related problems. A popular example of this is the invention of velcro, invented by George de Mestral after he studied how burrs stuck to his dog’s fur using tiny hooks.
However, when discussing environments and contexts that mimic nature, people often note that Gaudí drew deeply on the natural world for inspiration, incorporating its organic forms and structures into his architecture. From the branching shapes of trees to the curves of seashells, he looked to nature not only for its beauty, but also for the principles that make it work.
He profoundly explored the connection between nature and human well-being in many ways.
Nothing symbolizes this better than the recently finished Sagrada Família. I had the joy of visiting this masterpiece a few years ago, before it was finished, and I have to say I wasn't very well read on the building before I went. When I come up out of this rabbit hole, another revisit is for sure due.
Gaudí rejected the rigid geometry of conventional design, famously observing that “straight lines belong to man, curved lines to God,” and instead drew inspiration from the organic forms of trees, caves, bones and seashells. His vision for the Sagrada Família was to create a space that feels almost like stepping into a stone forest, where branching columns resemble tree trunks and coloured light filters through the windows like sunlight through a canopy. This offers a beautiful illustration of the fact that our connection to nature is not simply aesthetic, but deeply rooted in our biology. Natural light, organic forms and environments that evoke the natural world may help support our sense of calm and wellbeing. In this sense, Gaudí’s architecture feels remarkably forward-thinking, anticipating many of the ideas that underpin biophilic and climate-responsive design today- creating spaces that work with nature, rather than against it.
“Perhaps the most interesting thing about Gaudí isn’t that he made architecture look like nature. It’s that he understood nature well enough to learn from how it actually works. And I wonder how much we could change if we approached our own lives and businesses in the same way.”
We have become accustomed to thinking of business as a machine: something to optimise, scale and keep running at full capacity. Growth at all costs, productivity measured by constant output, and people expected to fit into systems designed around efficiency rather than human needs. Success becomes synonymous with doing more, faster, and bigger. But nature offers us a different way of thinking.
Growth has its limits and its seasons; not everything flourishes at the same time, and rest is as essential as activity.
Healthy ecosystems thrive through diversity, interdependence, and balance, with each element contributing to the resilience of the whole. What if we approached our businesses in the same way? What if we created systems that allow people to thrive, respected the natural rhythms of work and life, and measured success not simply by efficiency or scale, but by our capacity to adapt, contribute and create something that remains healthy over time?
Perhaps building something sustainable, whether a business or a life, is less about keeping the machine running and more about cultivating the conditions in which something meaningful can grow.
“Perhaps building something sustainable, whether a business or a life, is less about keeping the machine running and more about cultivating the conditions in which something meaningful can grow. ”