Alexander Lyadov

Know Your Dragon / March 21, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

In crime movies, there’s a classic scene: the “good” gangster looks into his lover’s eyes and swears, “Baby, this is my last job. We’ll be rich, free as the wind, and gone from this place forever.”

He’s not lying about the last job.

The story resonates because it’s archetypal—every viewer recognizes the same drama within himself. A powerful force takes hold of a man, making him obsessive, apathetic, furious, or addicted—to work, relationships, or alcohol.

The greedy dragon won’t stop until it devours him whole.

At first, it doesn’t seem that way. After all, grabbing the dragon’s tail can launch you high into the sky. The world is full of gifted musicians, extreme athletes, and bold entrepreneurs who soared to greatness—only to crash just as fast.

The bad news? There’s a fire-breathing reptile inside every one of us, millions of years old. It is strong, cunning, and endlessly patient. You know nothing about the dragon. The dragon, however, knows everything about men.

Ignoring it is foolish. Those who try become its puppets. They keep landing in the same traps, muttering, “There was nothing I could do.”

Some dream of taming the beast, neutering it, or locking it away. But every experiment ends in an explosion—whether in a person, a company, or an entire society.

The good news? There is a way out.

Recognize the dragon within.
Respect its power.
Study its needs and instincts.
Forge an alliance—a partnership, a symbiosis.
Learn to fly together and take the best of both worlds.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

How can I help you?
If you've long been trying to understand what is limiting you and/or your business and how to finally give important changes a push, then The Catalyst Session is designed specifically for you. Book it here.

From Flaw to Flow / March 20, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Some founders have a nuclear reactor inside them. They radiate energy nonstop, saturating everything and everyone around them.

Their problem isn’t how to start something new—it’s how to focus, realize full potential, and then not lose it all.

Other founders and CEOs don’t have a reactor. They have a fire. Sometimes it blazes high into the sky, and sometimes it nearly goes out. Either way, they must constantly feed it with wood.

They have the burning process mapped out to the fifth decimal place. Their main worry? Finding a steady supplier of firewood, peat, or coal.

Failure looks the same for both types—after a decade of effort, they have neither a major business nor financial reserves.

So what’s the secret of those who succeed? They recognize their "limp"—the hidden flaw that keeps their business from moving straight, causing it to drift left or right.

A superpower (Plus) always creates a vulnerability (Minus).

It feels like a curse—no matter how hard founders try, they always seem to attract the “wrong” people or face obstacles stacked against them.

Everything changes when they humbly admit: “This is just how I’m wired—an excess of X and a shortage of Y.” From there, it’s just a technical problem—how to make up for the shortfall. And there are plenty of options.

The key is to build a systematic “safety switch” because your natural weakness, Y, will keep showing up again and again.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Master the Basics / March 19, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

When it comes to health, fitness, and sports, I listen to a handful of experts:

Lately, I’ve noticed a pattern. They increasingly urge people to return to the basics—to stop chasing novelty. And I see why.

Social media algorithms only promote creators who churn out fresh content. Meanwhile, audiences don’t crave truth as much as they crave entertainment.

Put those two forces together, and you get an endless stream of artificial "breakthroughs." Fitness influencers scramble to keep up, pushing exotic exercises, “progressive” methods, and “revolutionary” supplements.

It’s exhausting. The overload of stimulation spins your head and turns your stomach.

But here’s the truth: unless you’re training for the Olympics, you don’t need much to stay healthy, strong, and in great shape. Just a few things:

Sunlight
Hydration.
Quality sleep.
A protein-rich diet.
Daily physical activity.
Basic supplements (Magnesium, Vitamin D, Omega-3, and Creatine).

Want to optimize mental health? Add stress management, cold exposure, strong relationships, and some kind of spiritual practice. A thousand other things can be tossed in the trash—they barely move the needle.

Even the old myth about muscle growth needing constant variation has been debunked. Turns out, you can repeat the same workout for years—as long as you keep making progress.

The more chaos around, the sharper your focus must be.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Dolphin’s Dilemma / March 18, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Unlike an adult, a baby can’t eat just anything. For healthy growth, he needs his mother’s milk—pure, free from allergens, mold, or alcohol.

The world offers the infant an endless feast, yet he can’t grasp it, digest it, or even recognize it.

My therapist once said, "In therapy, you can’t give—only take." The same is true for life. A person must develop a “container” to hold and absorb something new.

Without it, the horn of plenty will serve only filth, poison, and garbage.

Comedian Ismo Leikola has a brilliant bit:

“Dolphins are so intelligent. They have such big brains. They could actually have a civilization and a culture just like people. They have the brains for it, but they don’t have it. We can see that they don’t have it. But the reason is not the brain. The reason is that they don’t have hands. So they can’t really do anything. But they can think. So they must be really pissed off.”

Feeling stuck means your inner self has turned into a dolphin, and your adult self has become an infant. The world's vast resources have shrunk into a single dilemma: "Either milk or nothing."

It’s as if you’ve been put under a spell, unable to see the opportunities around you. But they are everywhere, always. To seize them, you must first break the enchantment.

That spell is nothing more than false beliefs. Like warped mirrors, they distort both the outer and inner world. That’s why opportunities exist in abundance—but only in potential.

Our mission is simple: wake that sleeping potential and bring it to life.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Be In-Between / March 17, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Imagine your palette has only one color—black. What could you paint? The darkness of night? The depth of an abyss? A black hole?

Even the simplest act of creation needs at least one more color. Add brown or gray, and you get shadows. But the most freedom comes from mixing black and white.

The strongest force is the synthesis of opposites. You need both extremes, even risking their clash. When polarities meet, something new is born.

And where are you in this process? You’re in-between, holding the center.

Now, imagine not just one dichotomy, but many. They surround you like seats on a carousel. You, the central axis, dynamically balancing them all.

What happens if an eagle despises its right wing? How far does a racer get if he bans left turns? What happens to nature if the world is drowned in eternal darkness?

Yet people do this all the time—choosing one side of a phenomenon and rejecting the other. No surprise that companies wither, people fall ill, and families break apart.

Animals don’t make this mistake—their instincts keep them balanced. But humans? Too intelligent to rely on instinct, yet too blind to maintain symmetry in life.

If something in your life or business feels off, ask yourself: Where and why is there a limp on one side?

And if you need an outside perspective, just ask. I’ll be happy to help.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Second Birth / March 16, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

I had to bungee jump twice.

The first time, I barely understood what had happened. Fear kept me frozen at the edge of the platform, staring down at the swaying treetops. Then, suddenly, the crew counted down: “Three. Two. One. Go!”

Sasha jumped. I stayed put.

My friends cheered from below, but I felt nothing. The next morning, I jumped again—this time, body, mind, and soul together.

We enter this world unconscious and against our will. Until that moment, everything had been safe and calm. Then—bam! Someone kicks us out of the nest, making the leap for us.

“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground.” — Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Years pass, and we get used to falling. But at some point, a vague dissatisfaction creeps in, growing stronger by the day. It’s the need to leap again—but this time, by our own will, with our own mind.

We need to be able to say, “I did it,” and hear, “Yes, you did.”

This is about a dialogue with Reality, the Cosmos, God—something far greater than us. To be reborn, we must create a “We-space”, a place where we can shape our own μεταμόρφωσις at our own pace.

Despite 175 billion terabytes of digital data in the world, the knowledge of how to reinvent oneself must still be gathered piece by piece. Then again, the very hunt for insights changes us along the way.

Being consciously reborn a second time is not the limit either. That skill, once gained, stomps impatiently for another run. After all, self-discovery has no ceiling above, no floor below. A never-ending process of R&D.

“Creativity is nothing if not change.” — Robert Moore

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

The Energy Block / March 15, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Right now, I’m interested in energy problems. Not on the scale of a country or the planet, but at the level of a “body”—a corporation or an individual.

Working with founders, I don’t see business problems. I see dams blocking the flow of charged particles. Disruptions in generating, converting, distributing, or using energy.

One is drowning in the current, carried who knows where. Another is scraping drops from the bottom of the fuel tank. A third has burned out. A fourth is spinning his wheels, burning rubber on the asphalt.

At first glance, it looks like a problem of control, teamwork, creativity, leadership, strategy, or investment. But in reality, the free flow of energy is getting snagged somewhere in the body.

The body acts as an insulator, not a conductor.

My job is to help founders find the blockage and clear the way. Funny thing is, the solution rarely comes from the outside. It’s not about buying new software, bringing in an investor, or replacing the CEO.

What’s jamming the flow? Mental beliefs that once served you but are now obsolete. The serpent will stop chasing its own tail in vain once you drive a new meaning deep into the ground.

That’s Logos.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Sudden Reversal / March 14, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

We tend to underestimate how sudden change can be.

When everything is thriving, growing, and flourishing, we assume the bounty will keep multiplying—tenfold, year after year. We declare an era of prosperity and admire our reflection in golden mirrors.

In ancient tradition, hubris leads to the loss of fortune (peripeteia), which in turn brings divine retribution (nemesis).

Then comes catastrophe—whether in the world around us or within our own souls. Growth halts abruptly. Resources dry up. Progress turns out to be hollow, values false, and stability an illusion.

At rock bottom, a man gasps for air, flailing in thick mud. Hope is lost. It feels like things can only get worse.

But that, too, is an lie—just like the arrogance of success at its peak.

No matter how hard things seem, everything can change in an instant. In fact, the worse it gets, the better. The sharper the crisis, the closer the collapse of the status quo.

"The king is dead, long live the king!"—declared the regent, the Duke of Orléans, on September 1, 1715, upon the death of Louis XIV, proclaiming the five-year-old Louis XV as the new ruler.

The summit has been crossed. The crisis has passed. A new horizon opens before you.

You’re dealing with a force infinitely greater than yourself. Defy it, and it will crush you. Turn away, and you’ll wither.

But he who humbly learns to wield this fire will be rewarded beyond his wildest dreams.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Look Up / March 13, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

The world seems to be losing its mind. Not just the masses — some of the sharpest minds behave as if a cat had infected their brains with toxoplasmosis.

Anyone hoping for a return to the old order or the arrival of a new messiah is watching their illusions melt like an ice pop in the sun.

History is twisting into a vortex, ripping logic, civility, and culture from their moorings and swallowing them whole.

Look around, and your head spins. Your stomach turns. Some shut their eyes. Others keep their gaze locked on the ground. That’s survival. But how do you live like that?

Years ago, on a parenting website, I came across advice for women in labor: Push into the point of greatest pain.

Some forces can’t be stopped. Fighting them only makes things worse. The best strategy? Let the inevitable happen. Or better yet—clear the obstacles to speed it up.

Pain flares up when reality isn’t what I expected. A wave washes away my sandcastle, the one I cherished.

I had a false belief: I know what’s best for me.

Looking back, I see how many of my “well-reasoned” choices were mistakes. And how my best decisions were the ones I only understood years later.

Therapy keeps proving how little I know about myself. I am getting used to finding the truth where I swore it couldn’t be.

When I think about my path, my eyes turn to the sky.

Looking down or sideways? That’s nausea, fear, and futility. But as long as I hold my vertical, the raging ocean pulls back, revealing a quiet island of clarity and peace inside me.

When everything falls apart—look up. Too hard? Find those who can help you.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Ride or Burn / March 12, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Deep inside each of us lives a colossal force.

It doesn’t belong to us. It’s the accumulated power of our ancestors. An archetype.

If you don’t recognize this force, it can consume you. Obsession, mania, possession—these are the states of a man seized by a supernatural entity. He becomes its slave.

The force pulls a person along like the wind dragging a plastic bag.

Fighting it is pointless. Your strength is limited, while the archetype’s power is bottomless. It has been forming for millions of years.

The irony is, there’s no reason to battle this Dragon. It may seem like it wants to scare, burn, or crush you. But that’s only because you’re standing in its way instead of climbing onto its back.

An untamed dragon brings suffering—to you and everyone around you. It appears and disappears without warning, leaving ruin and scars.

But what starts as destruction becomes a gift the moment you learn to ride your Dragon. Your ability to protect, seek, hunt, and create grows without limit.

This is co-creation. A synthesis. Now, you and divine power are one.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

The Portal Within / March 11, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Isn’t it a miracle that you’re still alive?

Doesn’t matter where you are—Austin, Seoul, Kyiv. Even in the safest conditions, disaster can strike out of nowhere:

A driver makes an illegal U-turn.
A nurse gives the wrong medication.
A bad gene wakes up in your body.

Security and stability? Just an illusion. Deep down, we know this. That’s why we cling so desperately to control.

I remember my first bungee jump. As I fell, my fingers instinctively grasped at the air, as if that could save me.

It didn’t. My mind froze. The ground rushed toward me.

But such support wasn’t needed. The moment I was truly gone, the elastic cord caught me softly, smoothly, effortlessly. The rush was incredible.

This happens all the time. Say you're at an intersection, and for no reason at all, you notice one particular car. Later, you realize the driver wasn’t watching the road—he was staring at his phone.

Your life is a chain of forks in the road. Every choice led you here. You're alive. Reading this.

But no expert—including you—could have predicted this future. Even with all the mistakes, you still made the right moves overall. The only real mystery is how?

Clearly, there’s something inside you—some kind of portal to another dimension. A place where almost any answer can be found. Almost, because you don’t control it.

The portal opens on its own. Not when you demand it, but when you’ve exhausted all options and whisper in surrender: I’m lost. Help.

More often, though, help just arrives out of nowhere. A stranger lends a hand. Inspiration hits. A dream delivers an insight.

You can shrug it off and call it luck. A coincidence.

Or you can say thank you for the gift—a doorway to another world.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Trust the Unknown / March 10, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

My dreams have changed. They're easier to interpret now—more straightforward, I guess. Almost like my subconscious decided: "Looks like his mind is finally listening. No need for flamboyant metaphors. He'll get it."

The thing is, I've started trusting my subconscious more. I can’t say exactly when it happened, but one day, I realized—it cares about me. It wants the best for me. That’s why it sends cryptic messages every night.

Unfortunately, I used to toss those letters straight into the trash, unopened. Everything about them unsettled me—their sudden arrival, the dubious sender, and, most of all, their unthinkable forms.

That word—unthinkable—is the key to the code.

Imagine you're talking to a stubborn five-year-old who refuses to accept reality. So you say, "Alright. Remember the story where the dragon kidnapped the princess? How did the young hero save her? And what’s the lesson?"

Metaphors are like water, dissolving the medicine of insight. Children refuse to chew bitter pills, even when they’re sick. Let the wound fester—just don’t pour in the stinging iodine.

A mature person can endure discomfort if he understands its purpose. His mind knows how to find gold, even in the darkest, filthiest muck.

Ultimately, it all comes down to trusting yourself—or rather, the part of yourself you don’t yet know. The stronger that bond, the clearer the messages from your dreams.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Sacred Ritual / March 9, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Yesterday, for the first time in years, I had some wine. This morning, I paid the price. A heavy head, aching joints, and a recently adjusted neck—plenty of reasons to skip my workout, especially at home.

But like clockwork, I rolled out my yoga mat, lowered the weights, and went through the motions with kettlebells and resistance bands, joyless but steady. A new podcast episode helped clear the gloom.

The workout was only 30% effective, but the symbolic act? 100%. The real goal is to uphold the ritual—only then does the body follow. Abandon it, and the neural jungle will swallow the path.

When I walk my dog, I often see an old man shuffling toward the tennis court. I’ve never seen him play with anyone. He just hits the ball against the wall, shuffles to retrieve it, and hits it again. Over and over.

Willpower and habit make this elder more active than 99% of his peers.

Legendary investor Charlie Munger loved to read. When cataracts took one eye, he faced the risk of total blindness. “Well,” he said, “this is a chance to learn Braille.” So he did. Ultimately, he kept his vision and gained a new skill.

Hold fast to the vector of meaning, and reality will align itself.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

The Spiral of Union / March 8, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

In the beginning, there is no division—only a formless Nothing.

Step by step, distinctions emerge: girl and boy, woman and man, female and male.

Later, a hidden force pulls these opposites back together as if on a higher spiral turn. The lucky ones are those who recognize and cherish each other's differences.

When a couple has children, the spiral rises again. A mother shares a special bond with her son, just as a father does with his daughter. "A girl loved by her father grows strong," a therapist once said. I believe a mother’s love awakens creativity in her son.

But there is yet another level—a place the soul longs to reach. The sacred union. For a woman, it is with the archetype of masculinity, the Animus. For a man, it is with the archetype of femininity, the Anima.

This is not a collapse back into sameness but a fusion of opposites—each aware, each in love with the other's uniqueness.

The relationship could have collapsed into pointless conflict. But instead, the tension between opposites becomes an endless source of life force.

Such a person is whole, magnetic, and radiant.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Let Yourself Be / March 7, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Helping another person is both hard and easy.

All it takes is letting him or her simply be. Period.

Unfortunately, 99.99% of the people around you can't do that. Why? Their idea of goodness, reason, and health is too narrow.

In their little pot, the acorn of your uniqueness won’t take root. There’s no room for an oak to grow, no rich soil, no essential nutrients.

They'll be kind and patient with you—until the moment X. Then they’ll start to crumble, revealing embarrassment, irritation, resentment, fear, anger, and so on. That kind of “help” only makes things worse.

Sensing their fragility, you won’t entrust them with what no one else knows. Why? Because you are also puzzled by what’s happening inside you. You need a gaze like a lighthouse—one that guides a ship through the night, the storm, and the waves.

Where does that 0.01% of people get such a gaze? Someone taught them to love themselves in every form, to treasure their own essence, and to recognize gold even in the dirt.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Eternal Dilemma / March 6, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

I used to believe that dilemmas in business and life could be solved. Like untangling or cutting through knotted shoelaces.

After all, finding a solution brought real relief, removing danger and opening new doors for growth. It felt like the dilemma had been conquered once and for all.

But after going through this process a hundred times, across countless cases, people, and circumstances, a curious pattern emerges.

It’s always the same drama—just in different forms!

It’s like burning wood, fermenting grapes, or tarnishing silver. Although these seem unrelated, they share the same chemical process: oxidation, the loss of electrons during a reaction by a molecule, atom, or ion.

But don’t be too quick to see unbreakable dilemmas as bad news.

First, they exist for a reason. You can’t change your personality, erase the past, or wipe away childhood wounds. Everything you’ve inherited and experienced makes you who you are.

Second, knowing your core dilemma helps you anticipate obstacles. The hooks of your personality will always find loops to latch onto, in every shape and size. That means you already know the way out.

Third, studying your dilemma helps you understand yourself. Inside you, two equally strong but opposing needs clash. This tension points to what truly matters to you in life.

You can’t escape your dilemma, but you can rise above it.

“The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This ‚outgrowing‘ consist of reaching a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency.”

— Carl Jung

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Between Earth and Sky / March 5, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Why were we given a body? It demands so much. It tires, ages, and needs constant care.

Some resent this dependence. They dream of a future where technology extracts and uploads their minds to the internet. Then, they imagine, they’ll soar forever like an eagle. Or maybe more like the Holy Spirit.

Others, in contrast, dig deep into the physical—like roots burrowing into the earth. They cherish sensations, emotions, and feelings. Massages, yoga, scents, supplements, delicious and healthy food—this is how their days fly by.

It’s easy to see the flaw in both approaches.

The first locks a person out of life, trapping him in an artificial framework. The second drowns the salt of individuality in the waters of mere existence. The person lives but barely notices.

We need a bridge—between thoughts and feelings, the hidden and the obvious, heaven and earth. Synthesis is the way to unite opposites into something whole. Our body is the vessel where this metamorphosis unfolds.

A tree stands for a thousand years because it has not just roots and branches—but a trunk.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

The Dance Awakens / March 4, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

What makes dance, walking, and movement beautiful?

Skill matters, but it’s secondary. Mood, inclination? Yes, but that’s not it either.
The key is personal freedom and ease. The body moves with grace when a person doesn’t stumble or hesitate within.

Like a yawn or a dream, dance can’t be forced. It needs a spark, an impulse that turns movement into a kind of speech.

But this is where things usually go wrong. The mind injects its poison: “Is this the right moment? Do I look good? Am I making mistakes?” Doubt stifles spontaneity. The body doesn't sing, it mumbles instead.

Feeling relevant in this world is a precious gift. Not because of something. Not under certain conditions. Just because. It’s the deep recognition that your unique mosaic of inherited traits was meant to be.

If you understand this, someone must have loved you deeply. That gaze of love—once seen, it can’t be unseen. Your body remembers what it’s like to be cherished simply for existing, for being exactly as you are.

It doesn’t matter how many years have passed. When the right moment comes, you’ll recognize that gaze again. And something inside you will awaken, filling you with a force as vital as water.

The body will begin the dance the whole world has been waiting for.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

We Are / March 3, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Yesterday, I wrote my hundredth article in the “Time for Transform Yourself” category. There are other prolific themes too—“The Mechanics of Successful Partnerships,” “Energy Management,” and “Creativity in Negotiations.” But self-renewal is the one I return to most often.

Looking back, it’s clear this subject has fascinated me for a long time. In 2001, I sent an internal company email about my first skydiving experience. That same year, the newspaper Business used my words as a headline in an interview: “I collect new experiences.”

If you fed a few thousand of my published articles into an AI, I bet it would reach the same conclusion:

“Personal Metamorphosis at the Crossroads of Harmony and Chaos.”

And if you analyzed my newsletter subscribers and social media followers, you'd see a core audience that has remained surprisingly consistent over the years. That means a circle has formed—people who are just as intrigued by this topic as I am.

I don’t know about you, but that thought warms me. It’s one thing to feel alone in your search for answers. It’s one thing to feel alone in your search for answers. It’s another to know that there are plenty of people out there who are closer to you in the spirit of questioning than in form.

In a way, we’re a secret order, a closed club. But we don’t restrict entry—a person’s false beliefs block it. That’s how new members find their way here, naturally, through self-selection.

I'm sure you have no desire to rebuild the world or change people either. A lifetime isn’t enough to figure yourself out. But years from now, you'll be surprised to see how your transformation has affected those you've met.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.

Life is in-Between / March 2, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher captured the process of meaning emerging from nothing better than anyone else. We have the chance to witness this mystery up close.

Contrary to popular belief, something doesn’t appear from nothing in an instant. The ever-rushing, unrefined gaze of people only notices a new phenomenon when it’s already nearly formed.

But the young pattern had been growing in the soil of reality for quite some time. This is the paradox of the “in-between” state—being and not being at once. At this point, you can’t know, only believe.

M.C. Escher understood this transitional state well because he lived in it himself:

“I don’t belong anywhere any more… I hover between mathematics and art.”

True life can only be grasped at the intersection:

conscious and unconscious.
transience and permanence.
structure and improvisation.
symmetry and distortion.
knowledge and mystery.
limitations and freedom.
randomness and order.
reality and imagination.
seriousness and play.
turbulence and calm.
form and emptiness.
logic and intuition.
truth and illusion.
matter and spirit.
light and shadow.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

About me:
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.