The Best Assets? /  by Alexander Lyadov

When it’s not your car, the rust on it can be beautiful.

You can spend years watching oxygen and water tirelessly eat away at the metal.

So many colors, such a wide palette of shades, such a unique and intricate pattern!

So perhaps it’s all about owning the object. If it isn’t mine, I have nothing to lose, right? All that’s left is to admire it and appreciate it.

With material objects the problem is especially clear.

The moment you pull it new out of the box, rust immediately starts eating away at it. So you have to promptly fix the damage inflicted by entropy. Hence the anxieties, cares, expenses, and the feeling of eternal dissatisfaction.

Worse still, besides the lifeless forces, there are also people trying to stain, break, or steal your object. Out of malice or naivety — it doesn’t really matter. Alas, you have no peace.

It’s different when the object is immaterial. A lived experience. A dream. A creative insight.

It, of course, also has a lifespan and fades over time, but no one can take it away from you. In terms of possession, such an object is paradoxical: it’s sort of yours, and sort of not.

And there are better objects still. Their value grows with the number of people “possessing” them.

Trust. Hope. Play. Friendship. Love.

They give the highest return on invested resources.

That’s where it makes sense to invest, what is worth growing and multiplying.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Act It Out? Let's Not /  by Alexander Lyadov

There are no people without inner conflicts.

Life itself is imperfect in all its living and nonliving forms.

This generates one contradiction after another in our psyche:

  • individual vs collective

  • belonging vs autonomy

  • stability vs change

  • known vs unknown

  • finite vs infinite

  • letting go vs holding on

  • safety vs freedom

  • action vs waiting

  • pleasure vs meaning

  • present vs future

  • control vs trust

  • familiar vs new

  • function vs form

  • explicit vs implicit

  • order vs chaos

  • Ego vs Self

  • life vs death

  • part vs Whole

  • Self vs Other

  • body vs spirit

When left unresolved, a specific dilemma unsettles the soul, poisons the body, and tears the mind apart. And you can’t just brush it aside.

What do most people do? Right: “Well, at least something.” This means acting out an inner conflict in the outside world.

Sometimes this is acceptable, as in the case of a soccer championship. You go to a game, live through someone else’s drama, and life gets a little easier.

Some, however, choose a much worse form. This is when a person “for some reason” gets into a road rage confrontation, starts a family scandal out of nothing, or “reports” a business competitor to the FBI.

Read Greek tragedies or folk tales from around the world. How much suffering was inflicted on everyone involved in the conflict because the protagonists were not ready to figure themselves out in time.

And yet humanity has accumulated so many tools for exactly this:

  • active imagination and dream analysis

  • individual and group psychotherapy

  • dance and body practices

  • athletic challenges

  • religion and prayer

  • creativity and art

  • meditation

  • philosophy

  • rituals and retreats

  • an honest conversation with yourself, etc.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Nano-asceticism /  by Alexander Lyadov

On Sundays my newsletter will now have a day off.

No, I still want to write just as much and there are tons of topics. But something inside keeps telling me: “Everything needs regular pauses.”

Remember the ​article​ about the importance of training antagonist muscles? Just as with breathing, eating, or sleeping, there is a rule:

For Y to effectively perform its function, -Y is necessary.

If you look closely, living nature is rhythm, cycle, and pulsation. Even atoms, molecules, and crystals have oscillatory modes.

And besides, the second pattern is much more fun and beautiful, isn’t it?

11111111111111111111111111111111111 VS 11111101111110111111011111101111110

Such a step resembles voluntary self-restrain. Which is easy to justify for uncomfortable activities. Like, you need a smoke break.

But it is even more valuable for things that feel really good. Psychoanalysis noticed long ago: enjoyment is deadly because it has no bottom.

So introduce a pause everywhere, and especially where you really don’t want to.

Call it whatever you like. A micro-vacation? Nano-asceticism?

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

The Missing Piece /  by Alexander Lyadov

Imagine that you are a tiny piece of an enormous puzzle.

But you don’t know it because someone dropped you somewhere long ago.

Wherever you try to fit, you feel that you don’t belong. This strange shape with its convex and concave edges. This incomprehensible image, some kind of nonsense. Some places tolerate you, others push you away.

And yet, inside yourself, you feel a vague pull. As if, despite all the obvious disorder of your life, there is an alternative.

You can’t prove it, but you are convinced that you weren’t born by accident. Somewhere, there is a world that needs you exactly as you are.

Yes, right now you are incomplete, but there you will find the Wholeness you long for.

The pull may be vague, but over the years you learn to hear it. Gradually, you begin to sense whether each step takes you farther from Wholeness or closer to it.

From the outside, it must look ridiculous: you poke around in every direction like a blind wolf pup searching for its mother’s teat. The destination has not yet been reached, but every move closer brings joy to your heart and your gut.

If you don’t lose heart and stubbornly search, the desired meeting is inevitable.

Then Everything will literally and symbolically fall into place.

But how not to confuse your own puzzle with ones that are ideally beautiful, yet foreign?

Despite everything around, a sense of peace grows in your soul.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

All or Nothing Trap /  by Alexander Lyadov

An interesting paradox.

Sometimes we forbid ourselves exactly what we want most.

For example, a founder builds his business 24/7/365. His health is falling apart, his family relationships are getting worse, and he keeps muttering to himself:

“Just a couple more years of pushing hard, then I’ll make an exit, and then I’ll rest.”

He may even be right about some of it.

During harvest season, farmers sleep in the fields to bring in the crop faster. Although for a workaholic, unlike a farmer, there are no seasons other than an endless summer.

The founder is insanely tired because he has been living this way for XX years. With every year, his dream of rest becomes more grandiose. The stakes have grown so high that now only the Garden of Eden will satisfy him.

This is a dangerous illusion because its very design prevents it from becoming reality. Stories like this rarely have happy endings. More often, they end in a hospital bed.

The founder’s mistake is that he has attached himself to a rigid form. He has trapped himself in an artificial dilemma:

“All or nothing.”

The irony is that a person actually needs shockingly little. A microdose of rest, not a year, but one day. A complete one. A day when you forget about everything. And nothing is allowed to intrude or cancel it.

The key is regularity. It doesn’t matter whether it’s once a week, once every two weeks, or once a quarter.

What matters is that the subconscious knows:

“It’s hard right now, but Day X is coming soon...”

You’ll be surprised how much energy and how many ideas “just” one day can give you.

Your sacred ritual of renewal.

What you want is closer than you think.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

You Are Not Alone /  by Alexander Lyadov

Modern culture glorifies the individual in every possible way.

Did it himself.
Made it alone.
Against all odds, survived, won, became successful on his own.

Batman. Spider-Man. Rambo. Jason Bourne. John Wick.

All these images emerged for a reason.

Probably most people have a secret dream of being autonomous, invulnerable, omnipotent.

Well, that’s in fantasy. What about reality?

Today I was doing a barbell bench press, and my training partner said, “Next time, let me spot you. You clearly had more reps in you.”

I smiled. “Yeah, I probably had a couple left in reserve.”

And sure enough, this time I was able to lift the weight more times, even though my partner never touched the bar and simply stood beside me.

With a barbell, it’s obvious: when I press alone, I hold myself back. Intuition is right: getting pinned under the bar is both unpleasant and dangerous.

A safety line, a backup parachute, or a friend’s shoulder allows you to commit more fully to the activity and reveal more of your potential.

Let’s take this idea to the extreme.

When does a person face the Unknown openly and courageously?

Even when no one seems to be nearby, he knows with certainty:

“I am not alone here.”

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Manage, Not Own /  by Alexander Lyadov

Twenty years ago, I gained experience in the wealth management industry.

The concept of fiduciary management was key there.

An owner entrusts you, a professional manager, with his money or assets so that you preserve and grow them in his best interests.

The manager’s cardinal sin? Forgetting who owns the asset.

Cases like this are everywhere, not just in finance.

Anyone entrusted with something of value, whether a CEO, a public official, or a limousine driver, faces a powerful temptation to decide that frequent use matters more than legal ownership.

“After all, who protected the asset without sparing himself? Who stayed up at night figuring out how to make it bigger? Who knows and loves every little detail?” the manager torments himself. “No, I do everything. And that other guy does nothing.”

Obviously, if thoughts like these turn into actions, sooner or later everyone suffers: the client, the manager, and the asset.

In other words, the thought itself is treacherous: “I am the real owner!”

Hmm, what if the same logic applies to you personally, to me, to all of us?

At your disposal are your life, abilities, time, and body. Obviously, you didn’t create them. You received them. From whom? Pick whichever answer you like.

For decades, you have managed them almost entirely on your own and casually said, “my life,” “my talent,” “my body,” and so on.

Some people take it much further: “I’ll do whatever I want.” And then they neglect their health, hide their talent, or do something even worse.

Suffering along this false path is inevitable.

Look around. There are far too many examples, both in society and among the people close to you.

What does a manager do when he catches himself in time and becomes frightened by where these thoughts can lead?

He remembers: “I own nothing, I only manage. But I want to become the best at this Great Work.”

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Protect the Process /  by Alexander Lyadov

Talking with a beginner, I remembered how 11 years ago I first stepped onto the tatami. What main rule could I extract from all the experience?

“Paranoidly avoid serious injuries.”

If he follows this rule relentlessly, even in the short term, the beginner will tap out more often than his peers. But with every year, his advantage will compound.

Why?

Others will regularly drop out of training because of moderate or serious injuries, and some will leave the sport altogether. Their path resembles a spawning salmon swimming upstream.

Our beginner, meanwhile, thanks to the cumulatively greater volume of training over the years, will be able to build mastery in the spirit of kaizen: methodically and relentlessly, like a ratchet mechanism.

Interestingly, this empirical rule from grappling echoes a rule from one of the world’s greatest investors, Warren Buffett:

Rule No. 1: Never lose money.

Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.

Buffett was not talking about losses in general, but about irreversible losses.

As Nassim Taleb aptly pointed out, if you lose half your capital, you need a 100% return just to get back to where you started.

It turns out that in sports and in business, the growth strategy is unexpected — take care of protecting the Process, and growth will take care of itself.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Eccentric Win /  by Alexander Lyadov

There are three ways of training with weights:

Concentric work means actively overcoming an opposing force. For example, standing up in a squat with a barbell or curling a dumbbell.

Isometric work means bracing against a force and not giving up a single inch. In the same biceps curl, this is keeping the angle constantly at 90°.

Eccentric — this is slowly lowering the kettlebell while stretching the biceps. You yield to the superior force, but you control the process.

In the last case there is a chance not only to interact with what is bigger and stronger than you, spending less energy, but also to control it.

Interestingly, eccentric better stimulates muscle growth and strength increase. And besides, it teaches braking, when you need to soften a landing, stop your own movement or an opponent.

When what is said relates to sports, everything is logical. But if you transfer the metaphor to life, no one likes the third way.

Taking a moderate weight for many concentric reps — that’s fine. That’s your typical workday. Well yes, you get tired.

Isometrically withstanding the pressure of circumstances is harder, but also familiar. Grit your teeth, summon your willpower, and hold your ground.

t’s a different story when fate gives you a “gift” that is simply too heavy to lift. It’s obvious that your “defeat” is inevitable. Morally, this is the hardest of all.

But remember the benefits of eccentric in sports. If the goal is the development of your strength, there is no better way. It’s all about your attitude.

And most importantly, controlled resistance means that you are in close contact with the alien factor. And for example, in judo there is a whole section of techniques called sutemi-waza, 捨て身技 — sacrifice throws.

The idea is that you consciously follow the trajectory your opponent dreams of: you fall onto your back, taking him with you, seemingly submitting to his will.

But since the initiative is yours, you dose your resistance, directing the system of your bodies a little differently — where you need it to go.

Of course, for the opponent these are your most unexpected throws. And you spend less energy.

In form, it looks like your defeat. In essence, it is a victory.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

P.S. By the way, in ordinary language, “eccentric” means strange, non-standard, going beyond the accepted norm.

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Conflict on Stage /  by Alexander Lyadov

“The most important thing on stage is to create conflict,” a theater director explained. Otherwise, he said, the audience will quickly lose interest.

Strange, right? Haven’t people had enough negativity in their own lives? And what about harmony?

My guess: living through conflict on the outside lets you work through it a little on the inside. The fact is that every person is torn from within by a multitude of contradictions.

But try dealing with them up close — it’s like removing your own appendix. Worse still, many don’t even realize that the horns of a dilemma are piercing their brain from the inside.

Yet recognizing your own drama out there, on the stage, is so much easier.

If the actors are talented, then for the duration of the performance the boundary between inner and outer dissolves. A vaguely felt conflict receives form, dynamics, and sometimes a resolution and meaning.

That’s why the spectator can feel relief and a rise in energy after the show. Even if just a little, his own process has taken a real step forward.

And it would all be fine if the projection of one’s conflicts outward were limited to the theater. Alas, people are capable of starting quarrels, lawsuits, and even wars.

They will go to any lengths just to avoid turning their gaze inward. Our Earth would be a much quieter planet if everyone put real effort into studying… himself.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Stay in Contact /  by Alexander Lyadov

In business, disagreements are inevitable.

So are arguments. Even conflicts.

A spiral of negative emotions is always ready to turn downward.

And with every turn, getting back to mutual understanding becomes harder.

The best way to lose all hope? Cut off all communication.

Emotionally, that step also feels more and more justified.

Instead of the good old partner, there is now a demon in the flesh.

From there, resentment, distrust, and paranoia will gladly suggest an “exit.”

So how do you stop the spiral? How do you turn it upward?

You already know: despite everything, you have to stay in contact.

Keep talking over all the negative feelings.

It sounds unnatural, even absurd:

“But I want to act (destroy, punish, teach him a lesson), not talk!”

That’s exactly what psychotherapy is for, especially in groups.

There, you can learn the “impossible” because an environment has been created:

  1. People interested in self-development have gathered.

  2. Boundaries are held by an experienced psychotherapist.

  3. Conflicts here are material for analysis.

  4. There is always a “third” observing the argument of two.

You can’t acquire these skills by reading even a dozen books.

And personal experience in business is not cheap, to put it mildly.

Look for a laboratory. A playground. A simulator. A training ground.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Stay Vigilant /  by Alexander Lyadov

Vigilance is needed so we don’t miss danger.

The idea is familiar, and we know how indispensable the Mind is here.

Less obvious is that this is also true for a favorable opportunity.

And not because a clouded or inattentive Mind might miss it.

The point is that a gift often comes in a form we don’t expect.

We may well get scared if novelty catches us off guard.

And then anything can be perceived as an obstacle, a trap, a threat.

We’ll angrily exclaim, “A curse!” while pointing a finger at our gift.

Now it becomes clear why we need to stay vigilant.

When we notice something strange, we can stay with it for a while and observe.

Early detection of an anomaly creates a buffer of time and patience.

The strange gets a chance to reveal its true meaning to us.

To pleasantly surprise us and, ultimately, change our lives for the better.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Headfirst into the Ocean /  by Alexander Lyadov

Over the years, parent-child relationships can become friendly. Then the chance appears to talk more and more from the heart. Recently in our family we shared the silly things from each of our childhoods. You wouldn’t confess that kind of thing to a little kid (bad example), but with an adult it’s fine.

I was about 9–12 years old, I guess. After New Year’s the residents of two five-story buildings threw out their Christmas trees at the dumpster, so pretty soon a tall mountain of them grew there.

My friends and I claimed that spot for our fun games. Next to the “mountain” some tall concrete slabs happened to stand for some reason. And so we climbed up on them and ran and jumped into the trees, falling into them on our butts as if it were water.

Ah, how cool the trees sprang back, how softly the needles received our bodies! But for the boy Sasha, of course, that wasn’t enough and he went further than all the other kids.

For some reason Sasha imagined that beneath him was the inviting surface of the Ocean. So he got a better running start and jumped into the trees… headfirst!

His skinny body went through the branches like a knife through butter and smashed headlong into the ice of the January ground.

Alas, memory kept only fragments of what happened next. It seems the friends led Sasha by the arms, sat him down somewhere, peered anxiously into his eyes. Luckily, it all ended well.

You can draw many unflattering conclusions about Sasha and that would be true. But if you try to squeeze out at least something good, it’s clear:

The power of imagination, and the readiness to follow it decisively, Sasha had in spades from childhood.

This is an example of a gift that looks like a curse until a person still doesn’t know how to manage it. Ha, or maybe at that moment my Sahasrara, the “crown chakra,” opened? )) Well, well, time will tell…

Did you have stories from childhood that seem impossible to believe now?

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Emerging Order /  by Alexander Lyadov

There is something hypnotic about patterns.

Especially when no one but you can see them.

On the one hand, a pattern soothes because it has structure.

On the other hand, there is excitement from the mystery: Who left it? How will it develop further? What is the meaning of this pattern at all?

Most importantly, a pattern is an example of order emerging from chaos.

Just a moment ago there was amorphous nonsense and suddenly the eye notices a design.

Such a “discovery” should have a calming effect on the psyche.

Even if just a little, the level of order in the Universe has increased.

And all the more so when you manage to notice patterns in your own world:

  • the behavior of significant people,

  • strange coincidences and dreams,

  • repeating mistakes,

  • the dramaturgy of relationships with others,

  • the movements of society, the market, and culture,

  • your own way of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Often, a pattern is the first embodiment of something that supposedly doesn’t exist.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

How’s your Source? /  by Alexander Lyadov

Mature entrepreneurs usually have no problems with discipline.

Making yourself do what the business demands? No problem at all!

Actually, those who couldn’t organize themselves dropped out long ago.

More often they face other problems — fatigue, anxiety, lack of ideas.

A vacation fundamentally solves nothing. Neither does hiring a COO.

No matter how much strength you have, the business, the clients, and the people need even more.

Structurally, something is off in the entrepreneur’s life.

I call this connection to the Source.

Imagine an oasis in the desert where water gushes from under the ground.

Everything was fine, but then a group of the dehydrated crawled in, Bedouins burst in on camels, and tourists appeared out of nowhere.

Everyone drank, no one died. Alas, the eyes open onto a dirty mess of tracks from bare heels, boots, and hooves. The Source has disappeared.

Of course, the underground rivers and groundwater haven’t gone anywhere. But now you need to make an effort to restore the flow.

The founder also draws the energy to live and create from under the “ground.” We’re talking about the subconscious, this supplier of inspiration and new ideas.

The thing is, the subconscious is in constant exchange with the environment.

Access to this source is specific to each person. The universal categories are: connection with dear people, nature, and the transcendent.

Also, everything that causes anxiety, fear, or paranoia reduces the flow.

And finally, the worst is forgetting who she is, where she is going, and what for.

Restore the connection to the Source and the business will renew itself.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Whose Trace Is This? /  by Alexander Lyadov

This photograph illustrates an important idea:

Life generates patterns that we later notice.

Here, even the form of the okra itself is primary, and only then the stamp.

The invisible process embodied itself in the stem and left a trace on the paper.

But you can’t take the process in your hands. It forever slips away. And even the dense form of the okra turns into nothing in a day or two.

Yet the colorful stamp can last for centuries. In the end the original process is forgotten. Now the okra is only an imprint.

Of course, I’m exaggerating, but I hope you get the point.

Form obscures function. This mistake is everywhere.

Replace “stamp” with any explicit, fixed form:

  • concept,

  • structure,

  • mechanism,

  • standard,

  • product,

  • building,

  • sign,

  • algorithm,

  • position,

  • regulation,

  • institution,

  • tradition,

  • law.

When someone (you yourself) tries to convince you that only the form exists…

…look behind it for Life. The Creating Function. The Original Process.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Don’t Ask Why /  by Alexander Lyadov

The most important things in life are hard or impossible to understand.

Why did you fall in love with this particular person? How did you suddenly decide on something you couldn’t do for a long ten years? Why, against all the advantages, did you change companies, industries, countries?

Adult questions are similar to children’s.

Why did one read, another ride, and a third watch beetles?

Don’t rush to answer them. That will be rationalization.

Better let them remain a mystery. Which, however, gives the key.

So childhood passions later reproduce as fractals. The toys remain; only their complexity, scale, and price change.

What’s important is not the reason for the pull toward something specific, but the general pattern itself.

Someone who loved building worlds in dreams still does. Someone who solved problems still solves them: fast, intuitively, non-trivially.

You only need to abstract a little your passion and its object.

Maybe these signals are sent by Future You. Maybe God. Or the Self.

The main thing is that inside a pull toward X appears and doesn’t let go.

What to do?

Find the simplest way to make contact with X.

The Body will lead the Mind by the hand along the chain:

Cold → Warmer → Hot.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Underground Renewal /  by Alexander Lyadov

A short ​video of a tomato’s life cycle​, and what symbolism!

A beautiful, juicy, delicious slice was cut off and committed to the earth.

Tragedy? Nightmare? Catastrophe? Only to an impatient eye.

By day five, all that remained was rotten mush, but already on day six, through Death, Life sprouts with the help of thin white roots.

Until then, the natural process had been hidden (if not for the glass). But by day nine, there’s no need to guess anymore: a green stem is above the ground.

Business and personal renewal happen in exactly the same way. Through my work with founders, I’ve seen this many times.

Transformations are difficult because their initial stage is hidden. You bury a seed, water it, and stare at the dirty soil. But the days go by, and the result is zero. The temptation is either to dig it up or say screw it and walk away.

My job is to explain the “underground logic” to the founder, strengthen his faith in the implicit, and most importantly, keep him from devaluing the first sprout.

It gets easier from there: along with the stem of Novelty, the founder’s passion, boldness, and confidence grow, spreading to everyone else.

By the way, dreams perform the function of glass for observing the underground stage. Any change first takes place in a person’s psyche and then becomes embodied in his or her real life.

The next time you start losing patience or hope, remember the tomato’s renewal. The improvements aren’t visible, but they’re there.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

Useless Baby? /  by Alexander Lyadov

Some fathers aren’t thrilled by the sight of their newborn children.

Sometimes even mothers don’t feel love for the child right away.

If you don’t try to moralize, you can understand them.

Indeed, right after birth, a baby looks “ugly”:

  • dirty,

  • wrinkled,

  • bluish-red,

  • screaming unbearably,

  • incapable of doing anything,

  • totally dependent on his parents, and so on.

A baby is the ultimate expression of vulnerability, but also of potential.

In form, he is “useless.” In essence, infinite meaning lives in him.

Paradoxically, his strength is in his weakness.

And by the way, if he were born a miniature adult, now that would be a nightmare!

Anyone expecting ready-made perfection and completeness will be dismayed.

Stumbling over its expectations, the Mind will throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. And no rational argument will change its mind.

It takes a special kind of gaze.

The gaze of one who sincerely loves the one who already is, just as he is.

And values everything that is not yet there and whose form is still unknown.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.

 

Let Him Choose /  by Alexander Lyadov

Sometimes you desperately want to help someone.

But if he didn’t specifically ask you, then maybe you shouldn’t.

“Maybe” covers help in any fire, flood, and the like.

In every other case there’s a strong chance you’re really trying to help yourself.

Some part of you is secretly suffering, yet saving that part is forbidden.

The ban can be so powerful that it feels like: “No, I’m fine.”

But certain traits of that part show up in someone else’s struggles.

And suddenly you’re already rushing at him with advice, trying to catch up and shield him.

While he stubbornly refuses, gets angry, and runs away—well, isn’t he a fool?

The worst evil is violence against a person in the name of love, care, and goodness.

Stripping a personality of free choice and forcing a “solution” down his throat.

How else can you tell that a person is running his life by his own will?

When he himself chooses to keep yearning, tormenting himself, suffering…

…even though help is always one step, one gesture, one word away.

Sincerely yours,​

​-Alexander​

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials ​here​. Ready? ​Book your Catalyst session​.