'Every single one of my biggest ideas would happen when I was out in nature.'
Tanya Wilkinson on burnout, the F1 and finding nature beyond her neighbourhood.
Founder of Green In The Grey, Tanya Wilkinson, is someone that pretty much lives and breathes nature. But it wasn't always this way; in her pre-pandemic life, Tanya was responsible for huge projects like the headline sponsorship of V Festival and was one of the global heads of marketing for Formula 1. It was a constant hamster wheel of late nights, deadlines and travel she never thought she'd step off, until she moved out of the city to Epping Forest, where she now lives next to forest, woods and rivers that she can explore with her two dogs. With that much green access at her doorstep, we were keen to see how Tanya found going totally off-grid and into the vast Unyoked experience.
Unyoked: So you've had big change from where you are to where you were. Did you kind of get to a point where you just burnt out and you were like, 'I can't do this anymore?’ Tanya Wilkinson: Until last year, my career was a whirlwind working in sports & music entertainment and advertising. I definitely experienced a lot of burnout and lacking in boundaries between work and personal life. It was fast paced and with F1 saw a lot of business travel, long hours and always on due to a very busy events calendar. I was very 'un-boundaried'; I believed that my career in entertainment was my ‘everything’ and ‘purpose.’ I gave it the very best of me, mentally and physically, and it defined me way too much. This caused a huge disconnect between who I thought I was and the true essence of me. During lockdown, we had just moved out to a house near Epping Forest from our tiny shoebox flat in London. So that was sweet. But I didn’t realise just how much moving out to nature would transform my entire world as I knew it. 2020 was literally going through a whole year plus of being able to take two walks a day in nature. We did the typical things; I started baking sourdough bread, we got two dogs, that stuff, all while I was working. Getting the commute back into town in mid 2021, I was suddenly like, 'My god, this is a different life, and one I don’t want.’ It's kind of a conveyor belt, isn't it? And I think I got to the point where I was kind of doing four jobs at once and just kind of thinking, 'I don't really care enough about this.' I think it's interesting that you also genuinely moved out closer to nature. Is that where the business name came from? It's actually from when I lived in Brixton. One summer, I was watching a chamomile plant growing through the crack and in a grey courtyard that was also covered in algae and mould. There was just a little chamomile plant growing through the grey slab and I had a realisation that like the plants that grow through the cracks in pavements, there's opportunities for greatness that is generous in spirit everywhere. Because obviously that plant is giving back to however many local bumblebees or whatever there are in Brixton - and to me in that moment, as I was just watching it grow. Nature really was the catalyst here. It connected me to a source that I’d switched off since childhood. It transformed who I was, how I showed up, how I saw the world and opened up an intuitive and creative source. It set me on a spiritual path from that point that led us to move out to be closer to nature. We’re so lucky that we've not just got a forest, we've got another woods, we've got rivers two streets down, and we've got two nature reserves, and all of them are within 15 minutes walking distance in different directions. So we lucked out in that kind of divine timing and divine light; everything I felt like it was meant to be because then it was me just exploring nature during lockdown. That was what set me on that path of just thinking hard about things like, what am I going to do? Tell us a bit more about Green In The Grey. Green in the Grey is a business that is founded on finding deep and aligned connection, purpose, fulfilment and joy. In my corporate life, I always loved working on the DEI [Diversity, Equity & Inclusion] and sustainability strategy and implementation. I feel really passionately about the power of leaders and organisations to drive true transformational change, but the reality is that the majority of organisations are only scratching the surface of what needs to be done. I was originally thinking of becoming a DEI/Sustainability consultant only. It was in the forest, by a lake, that I had this realisation guided by my intuition where I was like 'Yes, mindset coaching!' Because without the coaching element to expand leaders and organisations, if I go in there and do consultancy, I will just be handing the work off to an organisation and perhaps in about 18 months time, the work might have hit roadblocks, stalled, been watered down etc. Grace Lee Boggs said “Transform yourself to transform the world,” and I truly believe that. What the world needs right now is transformation. And it needs leaders to step up and commit to their internal transformation to be able to drive true transformational change through their work for the good of people and the planet. So my work brings together leadership coaching plus consultancy and mentorship.
Nature is the biggest unlocker of your intuition.
That's interesting. When you talked about mindset and changing perspectives, I was wondering if your twice daily forest walks played into that. It was huge. Nature is the biggest unlocker of your intuition. And a lot of the work that I do with my clients is around that. You need to start by taking your headphones out. Like, that kind of classic unplug, put your phone away, don't take it for any of your walks, or when you're cooking. Just listen. Because in those moments, that's when your inner GPS, your intuition and that authentic voice will speak through to you. It got me wondering what life was like before. My life was obviously travelling a lot to F1 races. Even when I was on planes, I’d be constantly watching a movie, catching up on a Netflix series, listening to a podcast…I got to the point where even brushing my teeth, I'd be listening to podcasts, a lot of which were about nature and sustainability and stuff. But still, I wasn't giving myself time for those messages to surface. Even if you're just working from home, you don't really have that interaction. So I’d say alright, sod it; I’m taking the dogs out, let me go for a walk and guarantee I've got the solution by the end of that walk.
What do you think it is about being out in the forest that sparks that creative thought process for you? I think we as humans were born for connection. For me, I describe it as feeling like I connected to a source I'd switched off when I was quite young, that always loved nature. My granny who lived with us, was very much sort of Sri Lankan Grandma; get out in nature, protect our resources. I was so connected as a child. I think as a child, you're really intuitive. So it sort of almost goes hand in hand. For me, there's something in that connection with nature, like the way I've actually got that kind of co-creational aspect with nature. So you're taking the energy of nature, and there's that stillness, the kind of awe that nature brings that can just stop you in your tracks or just bring you back into the present moment.
I don't know what it was, but equally, once you [return] to the city, you realise you've been programmed. As soon as I went back into the office, I was like, I don't fit here. I'm quite creative. I could always come up with ideas. But it was just different. I guess it's more authentic ideas. It feels like the ideas that came through in nature were more authentic to me as well as bigger and needed versus I suppose like, from the advertising perspective taking a brief and giving them the solution that they want. You mentioned awe which is something that we try convey to people quite a lot. But I think it is quite a difficult concept to grasp. The idea of realising how small you are in the scope of the world - and how it lives and breathes all around you. You're right, because in a city, everything is so structured and also so isolated, everything is the same component. It is that organic, interweaving of the living ecosystem. I love biomimicry, and looking at the structures and the symmetry in nature as well as the organic-ness of it. You've really got to look at things differently. You can't just be like, ‘Oh, it's cool, I'm sat by a nice lake surrounded by some trees. Isn't this nice?’ It's almost that appreciation for the depth of your surroundings. It sounds obvious, but when you’re out in proper nature, as soon as you look in each of the cardinal directions, every single direction looks different. Actually being able to look at each of those from the perspectives that they give them can really then help you to start to expand your mindset.
It feels like the ideas that came through in nature were more authentic to me, bigger and more needed.
We normally send people out to Unyoked who don't have the level of integration with green surroundings that you do. So I'm curious to hear about your experience given that background of being surrounded by it all the time. What's cool is I can see Unyoked as being that start of the journey for someone, because I completely switched off and disconnected. It came at the perfect time. I said to my partner, 'I need something different because it's all well and good, walking the paths that we know through Epping Forest, we’ve kind of done them all and actually walking them and then coming home is different.'
And actually that realisation that you still come home and then you're on the couch watching Stranger Things and flipping through Twitter. It's not it's not the same it's not really living with nature. That for me was the thing that Unyoked offered that was real. That kind of proper deep immersion like, 'Right. We're here.' You don't even feel that anywhere else. That's interesting, because you're kind of talking about being like nature-immersed versus nature-adjacent. I lived in East London for a couple of years, down the road from Victoria Park. So I'm nature-adjacent, because there's Vicky Park’s beautiful and it's big and sprawling. But there's also a Tescos at every exit.
Lockdown really changed it. I think wherever you were nature-adjacent, if you can't go to the pub, the usual stuff, suddenly going into the park is what you need. In general, I feel like there was, I don't know, energy -wise in the world given and where the powers-that-be are taking the it, there felt like there was that real kickback against it. I think that's where people are naturally migrating back to that appreciation of indigenous cultures, those people who've tended for the land, that wisdom that we potentially lost. So to wrap things up, how does this work practically? How do you get started if you don't liver near a forest?
A lot of the conversations I have are around the idea that one of the easiest routes to get some clarity is literally bare feet on the ground and go spend some time in the stillness of nature, looking at a tree or whatever it is. It's interesting, because if you looked like 5-10 years ago, the wellness movement was really centred in hot yoga studios and expensive programmes and stuff like that. But I feel like there's a been [a shift], people realising that actually, the best medicine for us is not going to a hot yoga studio in London. It's yeah, take a weekend out in nature. If you want to do yoga, do it, but do it surrounded by trees and see how you feel at the end of it
Tanya stayed at Rex, just outside of Norfolk. Learn more about Green In The Grey here.