I have been journaling for years. It’s been part therapy and part collection — ideas, art, scrapbooking, documenting experiences, lessons, affirmations, faith, and inspiration. I had no idea that what I was working on was actually the roots of planting an entire forest. Years later, I can finally read what I was trying to tell myself.
I had no idea what I was working on was actually the roots of planting an entire forest.
As I’ve been pulling old journals, sketchbooks, and annotated books off my shelves, I expected to find memories — some, honestly, I’d rather not visit. Instead, I found patterns. And so many of them are trees. The same tree style appeared over and over.
Roots wrapping around printed paragraphs. Bridges connecting ideas. Flowers growing through old book pages — literally, or cut out and pasted into a journal. Handwritten notes squeezed into every available margin. Some pages are beautiful; others are mostly messy.
I wasn’t trying to create a style, or anything for anyone else. At the time, I was mostly just trying to get my brain to zen out. Journaling, art, reading, and writing are all part of my daily practice. It’s wild, though, to look back and connect it all together — what I was really doing was responding to ideas that mattered enough to stay with me.
A friend who has interviewed me on a podcast a few times always says I “drop them diamonds.” It made me chuckle on the live feed, but he’s right: I never notice it in the moment, but when I look back I think, damn, I said that? I’ve done it in meetings, in journals, in decks, off the cuff. I guess that’s how long I’ve been doing the work — not just work-world work, but the work on myself. And for those of you who haven’t gotten there yet, if it feels like the work isn’t landing or you’re doing work you don’t want to clap for — and for those of you who have been there — I see you, and I’m always cheering you on.
In my latest review of the journals, I found a page that wasn’t about trees at all. It was a printout of something I’d been reading and studying. The book described a community facing an impossible problem. No single person or company could solve it alone. Progress only happened when everyone who benefited agreed to share part of the responsibility. Instead of looking for one hero, they built a bridge together — a real bridge, not a metaphor.
Funny timing. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately: the co-creation, the co-operation process, asking how I can work and collaborate with all of my amazing friends in business, together. Reviewing that page, it was cool to see that almost subconsciously, as I read the passage, I drew a tree around it — and the roots spread across the whole page. In the margin, I’d written one word:
Success develops…
Seeing it doodled out, I also thought about how ironic it is that I’m so drawn to systems thinking — because I hate working inside any box. I’m really good at building systems and operations structure, and I hate staying in it. One of my defining “God’s got jokes” observations.
Studying my own work has made me see, through my own experience, that the work that changes our lives is rarely the work anyone celebrates or even notices — sometimes not even us, until years later.
It’s easy to celebrate the branches: the promotion, the new business, every milestone. A book, a title, or something else entirely. Even when I look at my own accomplishments and lessons, it’s easy to see the finished painting — a confident leader, an award, a happy picture on social (or, in my case, a little dark humor; when it feels like my world’s on fire, I cope with stickers and sarcasm). But those are the visible parts.
There’s a completely different layer when you go down to the roots. The roots tell a different story. They don’t compete, beg to be seen, or announce themselves. They don’t ask whether anyone noticed another inch of growth today. They just keep building the foundation that makes everything else possible.
The same is true for people. Character grows where — and when — no one is watching. Wisdom grows in the margins of books. Leadership grows in ordinary conversations no one will ever post online, in the hard moments of helping someone else. Boundaries grow every time you choose not to carry what isn’t yours. Systems grow one small improvement at a time. Most of the work that defines us happens long before anyone notices the results. (In my case, some of the most profound ideas arrive when my brain refuses to sleep at 2 a.m.)
An unexpected blessing of revisiting these pages: my hand understood things before my words could keep up. Before I built leadership frameworks, I drew roots. Before I talked about systems, I drew bridges. Before I wrote about shared ownership, I kept circling the same ideas in old books. The sketches weren’t separate from the thinking. They were part of the thinking.
I wonder how many of us dismiss our own evidence because it doesn’t look important yet. A notebook full of observations. One video you post online. Old photos, marginal notes, a sketch, that half-finished idea you don’t know what to do with. They’re easy to overlook because they don’t look like accomplishments. But don’t underestimate them. They might just be the roots.
Even after years of helping organizations think in systems, we admire visible success and underestimate the invisible preparation everything else requires. And just like the forest — which doesn’t begin when the branches appear — it begins underground. Way before anyone notices.
People need that foundational prep too: the small growth moments that turn into roots, whether in business, leadership, relationships, launching something new, or reinventing ourselves.
Forests, and people, are built underground — way before they’re admired above.