Treasures in the Mud / June 12, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Drop you back 300, 3,000, or even 300,000 years, and you’d stun anyone who cared to listen.

You’d look around, horrified, and say, “Why all this suffering? Let’s fix your life fast. Everything you need lies at your feet or in the mud.”

Picture your listener—a hunter, healer, or born builder. He’d grasp your advice and make it real. His comfort, safety, crops, health—everything would soar.

Every thing is a pattern turned solid. For example, hammer-ness becomes a hammer. Knowing the pattern matters more—you can craft a tool from nothing.

What once seemed trash or trouble turns out to be raw material. We walk knee-deep in mud every moment, stumbling over gold nuggets and whining about scarce resources.

Interestingly, the same happens inside a man. He aches for something—safety, understanding, energy, respect, purpose, health, abundance, connection, or love.

It’s all there inside him, but cloaked in forms his ego calls weird, ugly, scary, or just wrong.

The task is to hunt gold in your own mud. Then you not only fill your voids but help others find their riches.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

When Life Stumbles / June 11, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

In Evernote, you type a word, and it crawls out, sluggish, a second or two late. Or in a bank’s support chat, you ask a question, and no answer comes, none at all.

Seems trivial. So why the irritation, the anger inside?

It’s simple—your life stumbles. A micro-abyss opens between action and response. Tiny, sure, but it’s uncertainty. The familiar world cracks. Anxiety seeps in.

A heavy dose of uncertainty sparks not irritation but shock. Say an investor stalls on signing the agreed term sheet. Is he just busy, or did he pick your rival at the last second?

An entrepreneur handles delays differently. He refuses to endure them. He attacks uncertainty head-on. “Action is information,” said Brian Armstrong, founder of Coinbase.

Doing something, anything, forces reality to respond sooner. That cuts your anxiety. That’s why founders worry less and stay calmer than employees, though their risks tower higher.

How to keep life simple?

Avoid anything or anyone that muddies clear, quick feedback.
Choose activities where most depends on you.
If no response comes, don’t wait. Act.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Why Beast Is Calm? / June 9, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Hypnotic video of a bear wandering into the Arctic nowhere.

No solid ground beneath him—just ice floes sinking under water. Each holds his weight as he steps. If the floes stayed still, fine, but no—waves churn wildly. Yet the bear keeps walking.

Why doesn’t he panic? Chew his claws? Pop Zoloft?

Some say a wild beast lacks consciousness. So he can’t suffer like we do. But I think it’s something else.

Even this predator turns into a drooping teddy bear if you drop him in a world alien to him.

But this world? It’s his home. More than that, the Arctic wouldn’t be itself without the polar bear. And, of course, the other way around. The bear is bound to the ocean, the ice, the seals, and so on.

Ursus maritimus—sea bear in Latin—stays calm. This is his iceberg, his water, his land. Let the stranger swept here fret.

Mankind, as a whole, has a stunning knack for mastering any habitat or moment in history. No matter what chaos life throws at us, we ultimately turn it into a safe, cozy home.

Inside you, too, lives a beast, drawing strength from its bond with the world.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

In-between Extremes / June 9, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Every polarized phenomenon, once it reaches its peak, shifts into its opposite. This is how nature maintains the balance of things. Heraclitus wrote: "Warm things cool down, cold things warm up, wet things dry out, and dried things get moist again."

Carl Jung introduced the term "enantiodromia" into psychology, which literally means "running backwards."

Example: A passionate desire for universal equality and love for the planet leads to intolerance and terror toward those who don’t share the "noble" goal. And the workaholic CEO, who has prayed to GTD and ROI for years, suddenly drops everything for surfing in Bali.

One should avoid extremes like the plague. Otherwise, the subconscious will play a cruel trick on you. When Yin is forced into hiding, he will commit sabotage by derailing your train, which is loaded only with Yang.

Your eyebrow should automatically rise at any dogma:

"Work hard, and success will come"
"Technology will save humanity"
"Money solves everything"
"Love rules the world"
"No pain, no gain"
"Life is a struggle"
"Follow your dreams"
"People are the cancer of the planet"
"All people are inherently good," and so on.

Feeling "righteous anger"? Look for mental lameness.

Sincerely yours,

-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 King of Questions / June 8, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

One of the scariest questions is “What for?” Until a man asks it, he can do plenty on autopilot. Especially when life’s energy surges with nowhere to go, and a clever charmer appears, ready to sway someone eager to be swayed.

In essence, it’s a betrayal of man's own interests. But first, he must shape those interests into clear words. And before that, he has to trust the uneasy twist in his gut: “Hmm, something’s off here. I’m out.”

Otherwise, he’ll waste colossal effort on someone else’s goals. One day, the sacrifice will loom so large that shock and clarity spark a reckoning of what matters.

His body, mind, and soul unite in a single cry: “Go #@*! yourselves!”

Despite its raw edge, this is a hopeful sign. Sometimes, truth shines clearest through negation. For a mighty oak tree to grow, you must dig a hole for the seedling “Yes!” with a shovel “No!”.

From a life spent in vain—or worse, in harm—remains a scar. It’s a reminder of the price of maturity, like a knocked-out tooth, a severed finger joint, or a tattoo from an ancient rite of passage.

So the question “What for?” rises to the peak of meaning’s pyramid.

Asking it doesn’t make life easier—quite the opposite. But inside, a core strengthens. He stumbles and falls? No problem! Grab that core and stand up fast.

In the horizontal plane of existence, “For what?” is the vertical of meaning.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Create, Don’t Search / June 7, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

There’s a big difference between finding something and creating it.

Take this: it’s easier for me to write an article on a topic from scratch than to dig through archives or search the internet. There are thousands of articles published over there. Skimming them would waste hours.

Instead, I wrestle with the void for fifteen minutes—and boom!—“You’ve got mail.” Sure, the tone, the phrases, the words shift. But the text captures “me-in-the-moment” better, because both of us—me and the context—have inevitably changed.

Here’s a theory: this is how entrepreneurs, composers, designers, engineers, and all creators think and act. They don’t hunt for perfection. They reshape reality to bring it closer to the ideal.

A man experiences ecstasy when he encounters the embodied ideal. The harmony of nature, the beauty of art, or the purity of a soul’s impulse—they’re flawless. Nothing to add, nothing to take away. He can only stand in awe.

But those moments are fleeting and unpredictable. Chasing them risks wasting energy. Waiting for them squanders time. No thanks—creators are too restless for that.

So, he looks around and grabs what’s at hand. Then he starts shaping, forging, blending—giving raw material the form he wants. In a master’s hands, that form nears the ideal.

Even a novice creator wins. Neuroscientists say dopamine, the hormone of satisfaction and joy, flows from steady progress toward a goal, not from reaching it.

Want more joy in life? Stop searching and waiting. Take what’s there and make it better with your own hands.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

P.S. I drew the illustration for this article myself using PowerPoint.

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.

Mission Worth Mud / June 6, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

I admire entrepreneurs, warriors, athletes, stand-up comics, musicians, artists, and others who push beyond themselves. Whether they say it or not, they have a mission worth great sacrifice.

A mission doesn’t have to be lofty. Take business, for example. Nothing seems more grounded than money. Many want to build a business but can’t because they’re too focused on themselves.

A founder sees his company like a mother sees her child. Sometimes, this even stops him from selling the company at the right time. But as the business grows, the founder serves the business, not the other way around.

Serving means putting the business’s needs above his own. In practice, that means diving face-first into the mud, again and again. Each of us has our own version of what stains our purity.

What sparks fear, shame, irritation, or disgust in you?

Adjusting your life and family’s rhythm to the business’s needs,
trusting a faint gut feeling when the world stands against you,
containing the anxiety of employees, investors, and clients,
becoming the face of the business, risking your reputation,
shamelessly praising yourself or downplaying your role,
finding a bold solution when everyone’s written you off,
acknowledging your vulnerability and asking for help.
standing firm in conflict to protect your boundaries,
chasing one “useless” possibility after another,
sharing an imperfect product for all to judge,
sitting in the void of “I have no ideas!”,
acting when nothing is clear, and so on.

The takeaway: find a mission worth getting dirty for.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Hunter’s Gaze / June 5, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

A curious video from the zoo. A child studies the life of lions. And the other way around. A young lioness is eager to get closer. Luckily for carefree people, they are protected from violence by thick glass.

The moment the child looks away, the lioness creeps a few steps nearer. The predator stays still only while eyes are on her. In the jungle, it’d be a tragedy. Here, it’s a scare and a laugh.

This illustrates the power of the gaze — that is, focused attention.

Symbolically, the predator is a messenger of Chaos. Its nature craves to shatter human order, to steal what’s most precious—young life. It pursues its mission relentlessly, like fate.

A man can protect the world of Order. That’s how he unleashes his creative spark. But even the smallest act of shaping order demands a chosen aim.

A four-legged or two-legged predator avoids wary prey. The risk of injury or wasted energy is too high. Why bother? Plenty of fools wander straight into its jaws.

This insight applies to all messengers of Chaos, within or without. Something troubles you, unsettles you, scares you? Here’s the plan:

Pick a moment when you’re strong and alert.
Lock your focus on the object of fear.
Explore its behavior through micro-steps.

This is transformation: now you are the hunter, and the object of fear is the prey.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Crossroads of Wisdom / June 4, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Sanity is a social phenomenon. A man alone, sooner or later, loses his mind.

Isolation isn’t always an island. You can be isolated in a city, in a crowd, or even in the company you built. An entrepreneur is surrounded by people, but the truly important questions? There’s no one to discuss them with.

For a while, he believes he can handle any problem alone. Especially when the market is booming, and everywhere he looks, golden coins sprout like weeds.

But one day, the context changes, and the founder realizes he is not God. Jack London vividly described the shift from omnipotence to powerlessness in his 1904 novel The Sea-Wolf.

Here’s a curious fact: if an eye starts seeing itself, it’s sick. The lens protein denatures, clouds form, and suddenly there are glares, halos, streaks, and spots.

If a healthy eye “wants” to see itself, it needs another person. Ideally, a synthesis of different viewpoints, because everyone is flawed in some way.

No wonder ancient navigators used the compass rose. To know the world, you need not one, not two, not three, but all four cardinal directions.

Navigating the outer world and the inner world is much the same. Feedback from the basic directions—left, right, forward, backward—makes your decisions and actions steadier, stronger, wiser.

Where do you want to be? At the center of the cross, where the axes meet.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Opportunity’s Calling / June 3, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

An unrealized opportunity gnaws at an entrepreneur like a physical ache. It’s like an inventor hiding a breakthrough or a poisoned man fighting the urge to vomit.

The founder feels an urgent need, almost desperately, to do something about it.

This matters, because others might see the problem too. The sharpest even spot its hidden promise. But that’s not enough. The challenge must match the skill.

Think of psychologist Csikszentmihalyi—a man only feels Flow when life’s test aligns with his mastery.

I saw this again, talking with a European serial entrepreneur. He described a stunning business chance, then asked, “Am I crazy? Does no one else see it?”

I reassured him—his gut’s right. A new trend’s taking shape before our eyes. But few have the know-how to leap onto this young dragon, avoid its jaws, and not fall off.

This entrepreneur’s trained for it, building businesses on shaky, turbulent markets for over twenty years, investing boldly, embracing the new. He’s like an athlete who’s spent a lifetime prepping for this fight.

Others shrink from the chance. He doesn’t.

Still, he’s painfully alone. Finding a co-founder, investor, or even a kindred spirit won’t be easy. But his solitude marks the moment’s rarity.

History’s whispering to him: “The time’s now. You can do this.”

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

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

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Synthesis of Polarities / June 2, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

For a decade, I toiled in advertising, and our team crafted projects for all sorts: global giants and local startups, corporate suits and roughneck entrepreneurs, hired managers and visionary founders. Some campaigns sparked a “Wow!” Others? Just a shrug, “Meh”.

Why the difference? Think of that animated flick, Hotel Transylvania. The magic happened when a “click!” sparked between the client and our team.

In therapy, they call it an “alliance”—a bond built on trust, respect, and, most crucially, embracing the other’s difference.

Something about the client had to ignite us: a leader’s bold ambition, a product’s cutting edge, or a business’s sharp system. After that first meeting, our creatives’ enthusiasm revealed whether the client would likely become an Olympic champ.

But the client had to leave stunned too: “Whoa! These guys are wild. They flipped my perspective upside down. We might just blow up the market with them!”

Sometimes, we seemed like aliens from opposite planets. A renowned artist turned art director versus an oligarch-merchant. That moment when opposites clashed—chaos and order, yin and yang.

There were two options: either conflict or the birth of a universe.

We had the edge, wired for openness to the new. So, the ball was in the client’s court—could he forgive our weirdness because we brought what he lacked?

For the sake of growth, clients stepped past discomfort, betting these “freaks” could work miracles. Fueled by their trust, we did what seemed impossible to the entire market.

The conclusion: Want your business to soar? Seek those who think differently, then cherish their unexpected spark.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Listen to Future You / June 1, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Arnold Schwarzenegger taking ballet classes with Marianne Claire, 1976

If you truly want to help someone, you need to understand their context. It’s not about simple transactions, like buying a massage, ibuprofen, or an ice cream.

Sometimes the stakes are high, and the problems — and therefore the solutions — aren’t universal:

Launching a new product with a tight ad budget.
Resolving a corporate conflict that could drag everyone down.
Exiting a business when the co-founder’s burned out and buyers are scarce.
Raising funds for a startup with only six months of runway.
Breaking a barrier that’s kept a company from the big leagues for years.
Growing a major business when the owner’s half in, half out.

What a person complains about matters, but it’s just the paw caught in a trap. Pain, pressure, and fear don’t explain why he’s stuck here. More importantly, they hide what he was chasing and what he refused to see.

Listen up: only a guest from the future—you —can save you now.

The future you is your hidden potential, itching to break free. Like water condensed in the mountains, it pushes downward to join the sea. This flow happens, even when you don’t notice. But when you’re blind to it, it gets stuck.

That’s why you must let the future you speak—in words or images, like in Jungian dream analysis or symbol-drama. In business therapy, my client and I first meet his or her desired future.

It’s not easy. Most people’s first urge is to doubt, dismiss, shrink, or feel shame, hiding the truth even from themselves.

Not every child grew up in a home that blessed him for being himself. Many buried their desires to scrape by on crumbs of attention.

But the future you is patient. Call it to the mic, and it speaks. It’ll show you where to turn, how to free the paw, and how to heal the wound.

Start by building trust. If you lack it inside, find someone who doesn’t rush to fix the symptom but lifts you to a meta-level. It’s not so much about the profession or method, but about the worldview. You need someone who will see in you what you’ve always felt — the divine spark.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Parteting with Dragon / May 31, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Our ancestors were wiser than us in matters of the mind. They knew a secret: Dragons live inside every man. Not cartoon characters, but symbols of a wild, unknown force.

The Dragon strikes without warning, burning everything, swallowing life whole. It shows up in society, in groups, in a single soul: cold detachment from life, hunting down free thinkers, fear of losing power or place, crushing spontaneity, every kind of addiction, scapegoating, rejecting criticism, working to collapse, terrorist acts, neglecting the body, road rage, sudden riots, bursts of jealousy, cults and sects, delusions of grandeur, self-isolation, and more.

The ancients understood the Dragon’s ways. They built rituals to survive and thrive beside it. Rites of passage, shared festivals, prayer, pilgrimage, and disciplined practices tamed the chaos within.

Today, the word “ritual” makes people sneer: “Ugh, we’re modern!” Then they compulsively turn to porn, pour tequila, or pick a fight.

In success, a man proudly claims he’s the Dragon. In the depths of depression, he feels utterly alone. Both times, he lies to himself, disrespecting the hidden force. Nemesis follows—divine reckoning.

You can’t tame this wildness, but you can build a bond. Create rituals for your soul, mind, and body: daily exercise, therapy, kindred spirits, creativity, connection to the transcendent. Become the junior partner in that alliance.

Through you, the Dragon’s energy turns from raw to real. Your strength grows a hundredfold. What seemed impossible yesterday becomes simple today.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Sparks Inside Giants / May 30, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

They say an entrepreneur builds his own business. That’s true most of the time, but it misses a key phenomenon.

It’s about entrepreneurship inside corporations. Nobody talks about it, except in PowerPoint slogans about innovation. Few corporations ever pull it off.

The reason’s simple—the bigger the corporation, the more it clings to preserving and multiplying what’s already there. A profitable business model feels like a given to hired managers. Nobody recalls who found it or how.

All’s fine until the world shifts. Soon, not just the CEO or board, but every top manager sees it: “The company needs a reboot, or else…”

But managerial understanding isn’t enough for transformation. You need entrepreneurial spark. And that’s usually long gone. The founder’s stepped back. The culture rewards implementers.

Such a corporation is doomed to watch its sunset. Unless a hungry Private Equity fund swoops in. Those guys know how to inject entrepreneurial fire—they need to flip the asset in 5-7 years, no matter what.

Luckily, some companies value what could be as much as what is. They milk their proven model but hunt new possibilities. Stability matters to them, but so does growth.

In these places, a different culture thrives. They carve out space for Wow-projects, built from scratch. Entrepreneurs inside get power and resources.

An intrapreneur lives in two worlds. He can spin one from zero, a magic trick. And he knows exactly how to turn one into millions.

Not every company values such people. Not every founder craves the corporate game. But when the right encounter happens, they have the chance to create immense value.

Best of luck to my client, Alex Chapko, as he navigates his intrapreneurial path!

Sincerely yours,

-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.

What You Need for Transformation / May 29, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Some business consultants gripe that their clients, company CEOs, stubbornly refuse to change. They claim readiness at the start but then beg to slow the revolution down.

It seems the problem lies in the inertia of thinking, fear of the unknown, or, worse, self-deception. But from my experience, the reason’s different.

The word “transformation” is tossed around so much it’s lost its sacred weight. Shifting to a new state doesn’t mean nudging the old aside. It means burning it down.

In other words, a man, a team, or a whole company must hit a liminal state—“in-between” two worlds. Sounds romantic, but in truth, you’re raw, lost, and weak. It’s not discomfort. It’s raw stress.

Plenty of folks get stuck in that in-between. Or worse, a shady guide exploits their vulnerability.

No wonder people craving change dig in their heels. They dream, "If only someone would guarantee a successful leap." Unfortunately, only a charlatan guarantees the outcome of transformation.

The point of transformation is to unlock your dormant potential. When faced with something new, surprise is inevitable.

So, what should you do if you or your business need transformation?

Look for:

An ordered process rooted in past wisdom.
A safe space to be nobody in the void for a while.
A strong container to dissolve, refine, and distill your core.
A catalyst for the fastest path.

When these are in place, change doesn’t scare you. It’s what you desire.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

When You Are Generous / May 28, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

How do you know your life is getting better? You become generous.

This isn’t about spreading dollars or stacking assets. It’s about the strength of your connection to the source of life within.

A man’s ego is weak, fragile, small. He thinks he built it all himself, but he can’t explain where the opportunities, ideas, or grit came from in the clutch.

People often swing between extremes. Either the unconscious floods them, and they drown it with booze, sex, work, or some other ritual. Or the fountain freezes, and depression creeps in, leaving them too weak to swat a mosquito.

With time, you admit consciousness is a schooner sailing a dark ocean. That ocean’s inside you, but don’t fool yourself—the captain doesn’t own it.

The ocean’s power is endless. The schooner might crack first.

A seasoned captain knows his ship’s limits. He’ll push his “darling” to the max, then mend the rigging in port. The ocean’s not his foe but a senior partner.

A mature ego works the same way with the collective unconscious—those archetypes. Energy flows free, but the throttle’s always ready.

No wonder such a man wants to share the Wi-Fi. He can give all he wants; the well never runs dry. So, if a wave of generosity hits you, it’s a good sign. Your conscious and unconscious are talking. Life’s water flows free.

Sincerely yours,

-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 Tough Middle Way / May 27, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Yesterday, I was at knee rehab, bouncing on a trampoline, and… I pulled my calf. A critic would shout, “See, you’d be better off lying on the couch at home!”

The critic’s logic seems flawless. Sure, if I hadn’t jumped on that trampoline, my calf would be fine. And without jiu-jitsu, I wouldn’t have torn my knee ligament. Action means injury, right?

The flaw in this logic is that total rest equals safety.

So why is there always a line of “normal” folks outside the orthopedist’s office? Folks you’d never suspect of lifting anything heavier than a laptop or a grocery bag. A man slips a little on the street, and boom—torn ACL. Or sometimes he just gets out of bed in the morning like always, and wham! His neck locks up.

“Why? I’m not Conor McGregor or David Goggins!” the lover of rest asks, and it’s a fair question. The answer is simple—entropy. It destroys everything, bit by bit. Iron rusts. A fallen apple rots. Muscles atrophy when you rest too much.

You can sit in a chair or run a super-marathon—either way, you’ll suffer from sickness and injuries, just different kinds. Immobility is as destructive as activity.

“Suffering exists,” Buddha’s first noble truth says. The second truth points to the cause—suffering comes from within us. It’s our excess craving for things. The third truth shows the goal: kill the excess, and you kill the suffering.

The fourth noble truth says that liberation comes through the Middle Path, which lies between extremes:

hedonism and asceticism,
matter and spirit,
action and stillness.

Since you and I are just humans, far from Buddha, we’ll keep getting pulled to one side or the other. This means injuries will come regardless. It’s time to return to the center, the “in-between.”

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Uncomparable You / May 26, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

In youth, you can’t help but measure yourself against others. The world around you pushes it—same subjects, same exams, same questions from everyone: “So, where are you applying?” Society fears anything different, as if we’re in Sparta, tossing the “flawed” off a cliff.

Maybe nature’s to blame, quietly driving natural selection. Or the industrial school system, still churning out workers for machines. Or just the raw fear of being cast out from the tribe for being odd, and thus a threat.

What matters more is this: with time, you realize, “I don’t want to live someone else’s life. I want my own.” Later, it hits you: “Huh, I couldn’t live any life but mine anyway.”

The very attempt to compare implies the assumption that there is an objective ideal of life, one you can measure against, like checking a blueprint.

If that were true, we’d all agree. A single ideal would shine in every city square, and every hospital, college, and congress would hand out a golden template. Doubt yourself? Check your life, fix it, and bask in joy, harmony, and love.

But what do we see? Not just regular folks and politicians, but psychologists, philosophers, and religious leaders still argue over this ideal. Some even start holy wars over it.

A subtler trap is thinking someone else knows the purpose for your life. As a kid, it’s your parents. In youth, it’s teachers. As an adult, it’s some guru from centuries past.

In doing so, you declare: "This other person is God, for he sees my life's path ahead of time." Your life stops being a grand mystery. It’s just an answer to a solved problem—the one you can earn, peek at, or buy. Boring enough to kill flies.

You can compare bits of life, sure, but even then, it’s like measuring a shadow, a spit, or a warm chair. Your whole life? Let the one who gave it to you judge it — He knows best.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Roaring You / May 25, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

Today, the label "depression" is slapped on left and right. Not having it feels almost uncool. It’s like the fashionable cough of 19th-century aristocrats, a badge of refinement. Fragile means noble (as if).

Feel sick, truly sick, and you rise above the rest. Psychologist Alfred Adler believed that Behind every inferiority complex there is superiority complex. No one can help me!” That’s absolute power, castrating doctors, family, friends—anyone who tries.

Interestingly, psychologist Robert Moore didn’t see narcissistic grandiosity as a pathology. He thought that more often the issue was a severe lack of energy to live.

In some people, there is such a colossal source of strength that the Ego builds walls and moats around it. Depression, then, is a fierce hunger to love, create, and act.

The Ego’s fear makes sense—this lightning can burn, drive you mad, or kill. Healing means tapping into your Power’s source and learning how to regulate it.

A mighty “Lamborghini” roars inside you. Find a coach for steady laps on a closed track. The city isn’t going anywhere. Taming your “beast” is its own thrill.

Sincerely yours,

-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.

Why the Repressed Returns? / May 24, 2025 by Alexander Lyadov

The phrase “repressed will return” is linked to Sigmund Freud’s theory. Shame, fear, or disgust can push a desire, memory, or feeling out of consciousness. You shove the foreign away into space, close the door, and finally breathe a sigh of relief: “Phew, I am safe.”

But only a very naive person would think this. The fact that he experiences fear means he has a weak understanding of this phenomenon. Therefore, he cannot predict the behavior of the "alien."

Destroying what you don’t understand is not easy. It seems like you’ve cut off its head, but suddenly two more grow in its place. Or, a hundred years later, you discover the eggs it left behind in hiding.

By the time a person realizes the danger, it’s already too late. The parasite has already entered the host's body, waiting for the moment to break through his chest. The person doesn’t live; he functions as a feeding ground or cocoon.

Addiction, compulsiveness, obsession, phobia, mania, madness, soul loss—there are many names, but the essence is the same. The personality doesn’t belong to itself. The alien has returned and taken over.

But ask yourself—why has the repressed returned? What does it really want? Why is it seeking revenge on you? Why does it need you specifically? Could it be that its life revolves around you?

Don’t be fooled by the aggression of the alien. A poorly socialized dog bites because it was never taught to play. The rejected part of the personality longs to be included. You, too, have felt that vague sadness: “Ah, something is missing. But what?!”

It’s so sad, it’s almost funny. Your endless conflict with your alien side illustrates just how much you need each otherThe most fruitful synthesis comes from opposing beginnings.

Since ancient times, humanity’s main task has remained unchanged—how to make contact with the Unthinkable within, so as to renew oneself, not burn out.

Sincerely yours,

-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.