Hi friend,
I’ve just finished running a retreat here in Ibiza and I’m still trying to find the words for what happened.
Sixteen of us arrived as individuals, each one taking a courageous step into the unknown. And by the end, something profound had shifted. Separate people had become a powerful community. Fear had softened into trust. And the unknown had become a doorway in an aligned future. And that’s what I see again and again on my retreats.
The life we long for rarely appears when we’re trying to stay safe. It reveals itself when we’re willing to step beyond the edge of what feels familiar or comfortable.
It reminds me of something I experienced recently - an email that I almost didn’t send. Not because it wasn’t good enough or I didn’t believe in it, but because I was afraid.
Afraid that people might tune out, unsubscribe, or read it and think, “this isn’t really Tristan… it's AI.” As it happens, a few people reached out and shared how struck they were by it, but there was a visceral reaction as I hit send. A tightening in my chest and breath, along with a second-guessing in my mind - that familiar voice asking something akin to “What have you just done?”
And in that moment, I saw something clearly - the belief informing my reaction - that if take a risk and speak my truth, I might be rejected, or worse still, attacked. Over the years I've learned to adapt, like most of us. I realised that for a long time, I had to edit parts of myself in order to fit in, or belong in my family system and my school in particular.
Over the last 20 years, in my coaching and retreat business, I’ve softened messages, shaped them so they landed safely and made sure they wouldn’t challenge or disrupt too much. And it worked. People stayed, many approved and nothing really broke. But nothing really moved either. And then I realised, that is not leadership, it's driven from a deeper pattern of survival and seeking acceptance.
Many of us think the work or goal is to get rid of fear. It isn’t. The work is to stop organising our lives around avoiding it, because the moment we decide to be more visible, to say what we really think, to create something that actually matters, fear shows up. And not as a sign we’re doing something wrong, but as a sign we’re no longer playing small. That we're actually on the right path.
So this year, I made a different decision.
To be more direct, more honest and more willing to be seen. And to use things like AI, not to hide behind, but to amplify what I’m actually here for. And yes, that comes with risk. People may unsubscribe, people may not like it and they may misunderstand or reject me. But that’s the price of not filtering ourselves into something smaller and 'safer'.
The alternative is quieter. You stay the same, you stay acceptable and slowly, almost without noticing, you disconnect from who you truly are. Over time, something in us dulls when we hold back from the courageous act.
Photos below: People taking the courageous act of joining a retreat with strangers last week... and making life-long friends in the process.
Recently I came across this remarkable podcast with Gavin de Becker, which reframes fear in a powerful way. Not as something to eliminate, but as something to listen to. There’s a difference between intuitive fear, which protects us, and psychological fear, which keeps us stuck. Most of what stops us isn’t danger… it’s anticipation and psychological fear.
That landed. Because what I felt after hitting send, wasn’t actual danger... It was the fear of exposure. And there’s a difference.
So if you’ve been waiting to feel ready, confident, or certain before you take the next big step, you probably won’t. You take the step, the fear comes with you... and then you learn to discern what’s real and what isn’t; whether it's a genuine intuitive fear you need to listen to, or simply False Evidence Appearing Real - trying to protect you from exposure or rejection.
How about you? Are you avoiding something because it’s dangerous, or because it’s uncomfortable?
I used to be petrified of public speaking. Now some of the most powerful, transformational work I do happens on retreats, standing in front of a group, holding space for people for days on end.
That didn’t happen because I waited for the fear to vanish. It happened because I kept taking one courageous step after another, until the thing I feared became part of my growth and gift.
I’ve come to realise that most of our dreams live on the other side of our fears.
We don’t achieve our dreams by avoiding fear.
We achieve them by walking and growing through it and because of it. And choosing the courageous thing again and again.
And somewhere along the way, we discover that we are far more powerful than we ever thought.
Love,
Tristan