I went on a retreat and all I came back with was the meaning of life

Expression, not performance. That's it. That's the whole thing.

Hello fellow traveller,

One of the outrageous goals I set myself six years ago was to be able to dance in public without alcohol.

That tells you something about where I was. I’d get so wasted I couldn't remember the next day. That's how severe my performance anxiety around dancing was — the perfectionism, the self-consciousness, the fear of being seen and found wanting.

My feet felt like they were encased in concrete.

The thing is, I'd given up alcohol and discovered something unexpected. It hadn't been a crutch.

It had been a barrier.

Without it, I connected to an inner joy I hadn't known was there. A joy that wanted to express itself through movement. I smashed that goal. Dancing became something I did freely, without a second thought.

Then I went on a retreat in Portugal.

One of the exercises was singing around a fire pit.

My internal reaction was immediate and visceral. Singing in public? In front of people? Sober? Everything I'd worked through with dancing came back in a different form — what would I sound like, I wasn't good enough, shame, the whole familiar chorus.

I didn't volunteer. I was gently pressured into singing a couple of solo lines.

The next morning I sat with what had happened.

With dancing, I'd broken through by connecting to my inner joy and expressing that. Not by performing. Not by trying to look good or sound good or be good. Just by letting something from inside come out.

But with singing, I'd immediately reverted to performance mode. The internal judge was back in the room, louder than ever.

And then a simple sentence arrived from nowhere.

Expression, not performance.

It opened something up. Later that day I volunteered to dance in the middle of a group circle — and added singing. Completely voluntarily.

It was an expression of joy. Who cares what anyone thinks.

The frontier keeps moving

Just over a year later I found myself in Ibiza with an ex-client now friend, 3 weeks before Christmas.

He took me to something called a voice activation. I had no idea what I was walking into and it was so extreme for me that it had to be a sign from the Universe!

About fifteen people turned up — beautifully dressed, clearly at home in this world. When they introduced themselves it was things like "I'm a singer and I want to access a deeper level of expression." Every one of them had come from a singing background.

When it got to me I said: I have no idea why I'm here. I wasn't expecting to be here. And it turns out that singing in public is even worse for me than dancing ever was.

Everyone in the room was so supportive. The whole experience was safe, non-judgmental, and in the end — beautiful.

The same feeling I'd found in ecstatic dance. Where I did a full three-hour outdoor dance in Regent's Park — my first public dance outside, no alcohol, completely present. Then a three-day Five Rhythms intensive. Then more sessions after that.

Each time, the frontier moves. Each time, something that felt impossible becomes just another place you've been.

Tomorrow I have a Zoom session with Joseph. A beautiful human who’s in the middle of the woods in Sweden— the facilitator who led that Ibiza voice activation. I reached out to him because I felt I needed a new challenge. I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. Singing, maybe. Or just connecting to sound and emotion and embodiment. Or simply leaning into discomfort because that's where the growth lives.

I have no idea how it's going to go or where it’s going to lead me. I’m just knocking on another door….

But that's exactly where I want to be. Right here.

I’ll let you know how I get on!

The question I come back to

Where's it coming from?

If it's coming from within — from something genuine, something alive in you — it's beautiful. That's all you need to know.

Performance asks: how do I look? How do I sound? What will they think?

Expression asks: what's alive in me right now?

They feel completely different from the inside. And they produce completely different results — in a dance circle, in a conversation, in a business, in a life.

The meaning of life, at least as I've come to understand it, isn't complicated.

Being, not performance. Expression, not judgement.

Where in your life are you performing when you could be expressing?

Best, Hugh

"You've lived many versions of yourself in this lifetime. And there are many more still to come."

P.S. If this landed somewhere — if there's a place in your own life where this distinction feels alive — I'd love to hear about it. Just hit reply.