The best part of living in Finland were probably the summers. And I still miss them.

Those magical days when the sun never set. When you could have the sweetest strawberries, the most mosquitoes and the least amount of sleep.

I always thought of those summer nights as being somewhere between nowhere and everywhere. Not a place, but a feeling. It’s hard to explain. It felt like time dissolved and you were just present, caught in the timelessness of a particular moment.

Because summers are so short in the north, you tend to surrender to them completely. They remind you of how everything comes and goes, and how little control you really have.

I miss the summer nights in Finland.

A holiday at a cottage, no phone, no internet. Just the vastness of nature, the silence that speaks. And the space to reconnect with the silence that is always there.

But it also meant putting bedsheets or thick curtains over your windows, to avoid light at night. It also meant waking up in the night and not being sure whether it was the middle of the day or truly the night.

Sometimes I would just roam around with friends, along the coast and those memories are some that I truly cherish.

The beautiful thing is, that you know that it’s the middle of the night because it is quiet. Birds are not singing, the wind is not blowing, something just tells you that things are different than during the day.

How does this link to leadership?

What does this have to do with leadership, you might ask? Everything.

In our fast-paced, digital world, we’re constantly bombarded with information, demands and distractions. We’re always trying to control, plan, predict. We’re always chasing the next goal, the next achievement.

But what if, like the Finnish summers, true leadership is about surrendering to the present moment? What if it’s about recognising the timelessness that exists within us, the stillness that underlies all activity?

Just as Finnish summers teach us about impermanence, leadership teaches us about the futility of clinging to control. The best leaders aren’t those who try to manipulate every outcome, but those who can remain present, centred and grounded even in the midst of chaos.

• Find your inner summer: You don’t have to travel to Finland to experience this. You can find your own ‘Finnish Summer’ in the space between your thoughts, in the silence that is always there, waiting to be recognised.
• Allow time to dissolve: Instead of rushing from one task to the next, take a moment to pause, to breathe, to simply be present.
• Surrender to the moment: Let go of the need to control every outcome. Trust that things will unfold as they are meant to. Recognising the Silence: In the midst of noise and activity, notice the silence that speaks, the stillness that is always present.

Just as the Finnish summers remind us of the beauty of impermanence, these practices remind us of the beauty of presence. And it is from this place of presence that true leadership emerges, effortlessly.

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