My full name is Tristan Lim Yang Jun (林扬骏) but people closest to me affectionately call me Tris.
I was born in Australia and spent my childhood growing up in Malaysia. I speak 5 languages including Mandarin & Italian. At 15, I was lucky enough to attend United World College - a pioneer of modern holistic education.
For 2 years, I lived in the New Mexican dessert with 199 other teenagers, some of whom became my closest friends. It was a turning point in my life and I learnt lifelong lessons about love, compassion, and community. I talk about it in my TEDx talk on education.
Soon after, I enrolled in Bocconi University in Italy; graduating with a degree in International Economics, Management, and Finance. While struggling to fit in with classmates destined for careers in finance, I fell in love with my classes on entrepreneurship and organisational development.
Despite my career feeling like it was taking off, I found myself struggling with anxiety, stress, and insomnia. This led to me starting therapy with Marianne.
Therapy changed my life. Marianne helped me uncover the root of my difficulties and demonstrated what happens when you lead with curiosity.
At the core of our work were questions - invitations really - to dive a deeper. Each therapy session was a practice to go deeper. The more often we practiced, the deeper we could go. The deeper we went, the more clarity it brought. With clarity, eventually, came peace & acceptance.
Over the next months, my anxiety & stress would melt away and I’d begin to sleep well again. My transformational work with Marianne would be the catalyst for me to build my first company - Closer.
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When I met Tapas, I just knew we had to work together. Similar to me, he believed in the power of questions to bring clarity & spark healing; that even just an attempt to answer a tough one, you were taking your first step towards peace & acceptance.
Together, while still holding down our day jobs, we launched Closer - a set of question cards that challenge you to be brave and in return, help you to connect with yourself. We’ve just launched the 5th iteration of the game & in 2023 hosted 14 paid Meetups. You can follow our journey here.
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🟢 I’m currently looking for full-time roles that intersect People & Coaching; ideally teams building in the personal development / social impact space.
