To start this piece, which could very well turn into a rant, I am going to tell a very long story in one sentence. For years I was told that as an entrepreneur, founder, or solopreneur, I was living a life on the edge.

Let me get into it. There were always questions. How do you find customers? What about your pension? Where is your sense of belonging? And to be fair, these are not bad or invalid questions. They are important. What I have struggled with, however, is the solution that was always presented on the other side. Employment. The same secure, stable, forever path.

I can write about goal setting, discipline, and routine all day long. It comes naturally to me. Trained as an elite athlete from a young age, I learned to do, to do a lot and always in the service of a goal. Everything had meaning: sleep, food, training, all of it mattered, and all of it counted.

When I was about 25, someone asked me what I liked to do in my spare time. I remember feeling genuinely confused. Spare time? What was that? And more importantly, who cares what I like to do? I do what I should do.

We’re told to “find balance.” As if life and business are two sides of a scale we’re meant to keep perfectly level at all times. Work on one side, family on the other. Growth on one side, peace on the other. Ambition vs. rest. Strategy vs. soul. And when one side tips too far, we panic, as if something has gone wrong.

But what if that whole metaphor is broken?

Life isn’t a scale. Neither is business. They’re not meant to be kept in rigid equilibrium. They’re more like a meadow: wild, alive, seasonal. A space you get to shape intentionally. A place you can plant the things that matter most.

There’s a quote I come back to again and again, first heard on a podcast with Naval Ravikant.

“We’re not meant to graze like cows. We’re meant to hunt like lions.”

Although it sounded silly- I instantly got it. I recognized myself right away in that single sentence. My tendencies to work like a madwoman for two days to then being incapable of anything for the following three. It had a name and I’m not crazy.

In our fast-paced, screen-saturated world, we often forget that nature is not merely a backdrop to human life; it is a vital part of us. Trees, parks, and green spaces do more than beautify our surroundings; they quietly sustain our mental and physical health. A growing body of research reveals that exposure to nature, especially trees, can sharpen our minds, lift our moods, and even help our bodies heal.

This is not one of those lists that has the only 5 famous social entrepreneurs to ever have existed, it seems, such as Bill Drayton, Blake Mycoskie Muhammad Yunus etc., just so I can boost my SEO. If you don’t know who they are then just check one of the exhaustive lists of the top 5 social entrepreneurs out there. This is a list showcasing, as the title suggests, the lesser known social entrepreneur, the guy, girl or non-binary person that shows us that ‘We We All Needed’ (see what I did there?) regardless of our means.

I recommend you read through the report but one of the biggest takeaways for me was that 50% of social enterprises, the world over, are led by women. So, maybe it is that as more traditional businesses shift to include social upsides that women and those that need help most in our societies (on a truly global scale) will benefit? The jury is still out on this obviously, but the possibility is there because this is why businesses existed in the beginning, to create value for all stakeholders not just shareholders.

What Is a Social Entrepreneur? According to the dictionary a Social Entrepreneur is a person who pursues novel applications that have the potential to solve community-based problems. I would add that there is often a systematic thought to their approach.

We don't need the title of “social entrepreneur,” “impact leader,” “ecopreneur” or “changemaker” to do something that matters. We are all needed on this journey towards a healthier planet and humanity. Often we have skills or connections that are too obvious for us to realize that we can create impact with.

The WHY, the purpose, the calling, the quest, there are many words for the same concept. We spend so much time pondering this as business owners, because perhaps we are convinced that this is where the rubber meets the road. But have we forgotten to peel off the last layer? Is there something beyond the WHY? I like to believe so, and let me tell you why.

I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like and how I wanted to feel tending to it, however I was acutely aware of the fact that if I planted beetroot I would (at best) get beetroot and not cucumbers. The seeds you choose matter, because what you plant will (hopefully) grow.

Meditation Challenge

Some of you might know that we bought a house about 6 months ago. We bought what some would say “the worst house on a good street.” Having said that, coming from living standards further south in Europe I'm not quite sure what is so bad about it. Yes it isn't huge, the floors aren't exactly the same in every room, there are no folded doors out to a beautiful patio, and granted the farmer that built the house originally had his own methods. As we moved into the house we had grand plans and kept saying ‘yes it is a good house but it needs work’ to everyone that came over for a house tour.

According to the Princeton Seminary Experiment conducted by Princeton social psychologists John Darlet and Dan Batson in the 1970s this can be difficult. The study was conducted on students studying to become priests as they were asked to deliver a sermon. They were asked to hold a sermon in a building across campus and would be evaluated by their supervisors. The researchers were curious about how time pressure would affect the student’s “helpful nature.”

I awake to the sound of the rain pounding against the vegetation outside. After my daily meditation and yoga, I manage to get through to my little girls and husband. The distance is magnified when my oldest doesn’t show any interest to speak to me, my husband says it’s because she misses me too much, but it hurts all the same.

After surviving Neil Armstrong’s lobotomy, which I presume is a control for Ebola or yellow fever, I move into what I assume to be the next room, but later discover is the main body of the airport. The room is like an over-packed club where the doorman has let in too many people,

As I sat myself down in my seat next to Björn, the Swedish Opera singer, on the first leg of my journey that would culminate in my landing in Bangui, the capital city of the Central African Republic, I reflected upon the road that has got me to this life-changing point.

Normality is a paved road:
It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow.

-- Vincent van Gogh