Touching the Mystery /  by Alexander Lyadov

Some remember childhood details like it happened yesterday. Others hold so few memories, you wonder if they skipped straight to grown-up. I belong to the latter group.

Luckily, memory spared a few impressions. Like watching diafilms when I was three or five.

A diafilm was a roll of film with fairy tale frames. In a dark room, the projector splashed colorful pictures across the wall. An adult read the text under each one.

Maybe kids back then had fresh eyes, or my imagination ran wild, but every diafilm cracked open a portal to another world. I vanished from here and popped up there—with them.

Later, a faint echo of it hit during rare movie nights or gripping books. Dreams come close, but they lack the diafilms' richness and color.

As an adult, I found those kid sensations again when I met... The Mystery. One that words can't describe.

First time, out of nowhere—no effort on my part—I felt what Christians call grace. I’ll tell that story one day. The experience was too intimate and too incomprehensible for the mind.

The next time it happened during a psychedelic ceremony in the jungles of Peru. Suddenly, I found myself on the other side of the portal. There was Another world — perhaps even more real than this one.

The cynic in the room snorts: all delusion, hallucinations then and now. I won't argue. I'm convinced enough to keep chasing this Mystery—and finding it in everything, everyone. Like in you.

Merry Christmas!

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​.

Course Announcement: The Ritual of Transformation /  by Alexander Lyadov

Time to get to work—in January (or February), I'll run my signature course: “The Ritual of Transformation: How to (Re)Breathe Life into Your Company.”

This course is primarily for founders and CEOs who can feel, with bitterness, that their company’s potential is asleep. Their attempts to change things have brought only cosmetic results.

Between what is and what could be, there yawns a chasm. At this point, it becomes clear: a fundamentally different approach is needed.

You no longer believe that somewhere out there is a COO, guru, consultant, or coach who will one day perform a miracle for you. This is your life, your challenge, your business. Your hands itch to act. You just don’t know how.

In this course (or its follow-up), we will explore questions such as:

Why are 9 out of 10 transformations doomed before they even begin? Why do strategies often mimic someone else's future, not yours? What single dilemma accounts for most business problems? Why are sources of new growth invisible to the eye—or even repulsive?How can inevitable resistance and conflict be turned into a source of sustained movement? What makes it worth enduring the horror of the pause between the old and the new? How to craft a ritual so your business renews itself in time?

My goal is to help the leader become the catalyst of real company transformation—by going through this ritual first.

The course draws on 30 years of experience running transformation, strategy, and creative sessions for founders and teams at VC startups, SMEs, and firms up to $500 million cap.

Format: online lectures plus live Q&A. For those already deep in change and needing stronger support, I may also offer small-group formats and 1–2 one-on-one slots.

This course will also be useful for:

  • Top execs eyeing CEO or owner roles

  • Independent board directors

  • Partners in private equity or venture capital funds

  • Corporate entrepreneurs (intrapreneurs)

  • Change agents inside or outside organizations

  • Anyone set to transform self and surroundings.

To make sure you don’t miss the course announcement, reply with: “I’m ready.”

Sincerely, -Alexander

P.S. If someone forwarded this letter and my course grabs you—just email me at al@alyadov.com: “I’m ready too.”

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​.

Very Personal Business /  by Alexander Lyadov

“It’s business—nothing personal.”

People repeat this ​line from The Godfather​ when they call for cold calculation over emotion. Sure, tantrums discharge the psyche, but they build no systems.

The line is also loved by those who hide a private desire behind a mask of objectivity. "The situation demands it—the market, the investor, the team. Not me."

What’s more, one way to resolve a dilemma or conflict is to put the interests of the business above yourself—even if you’re a shareholder.

Yet even with all that said, business was, is, and always will be deeply personal. Especially for the founder. Why?

An entrepreneur, unlike most people, holds a wild freedom: what to pour his life into. Opportunities woo him, each one hotter and brighter than the last.

A founder chooses X simply because it turns him on. Entrepreneurs literally say it that way. Crude, but honest.

Calculation and willpower are powerless here. Libido is either there or it isn’t.

And once a founder catches fire with the desire to bring something into being, he won’t hold back. He gives himself to the process completely.

By answering the call of an opportunity as a free person, he then turns into pure action, forgetting himself entirely.

Contrary to popular belief, the founder does not sacrifice himself. He embodies himself in his company, product, or service. Just as an acorn realizes its potential by becoming an oak—and then a grove.

Do you see now why I focus on the intersection of business and personality?

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 Founder's Spine /  by Alexander Lyadov

Best buy this year? A plain chair. Well, it looks plain until your back starts hurting.

Then even one hour at a desk turns into torture. And usually there are eight to ten of them. Not just work was at risk, but my entire way of life.

I strengthened my back. Got a height-adjustable desk. Raised the monitor. But beyond workouts, the real game-changer was the ​Vluv Stove capsule​.

The capsule has only one thing in common with a chair: you sit on it. Everything else is different. It looks like a ball squeezed from the sides. Climb on, and it starts to float and wobble.

Back in school, I would have given anything for a chair like this. Wiggling and rocking, you could survive even the most boring teachers.

Now, instead of a static base, you sit on something dynamic. At first, it feels risky, but your muscles adapt fast. Your body keeps shifting on its own—back and forward, left and right.

Bottom line: the new $150 capsule beats my old $1500 ergonomic chair.

Only one hitch—after 3 months, the rubber bladder wore against the hard seam in the cover. Lucky, the maker swapped it fast. Second time, I taped all the seams inside with duct tape.

Stats in the US: up to 80% of adults get back pain sometime in life, 28% have chronic low-back pain, 39% report back pain in the last 3 months.

Chances are high this problem will touch almost everyone. Of course, a capsule and workouts are no guarantee of health. But if you get healthier this affordable way, I’ll be genuinely happy for you.

Clear business direction and a straight founder's back? They're linked.

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​.

Crisis of Form /  by Alexander Lyadov

The hardest thing is holding uncertainty inside yourself.

Time is pressing. Tangible results are increasingly needed. At a glance, there are a few obvious options. It seems simple. Just pick one and go.

But no. Inside, something shakes its head: “This isn’t it.”

Also, the body remembers past mistakes. Those paths once looked reasonable too, yet every time they led to a dead end.

Feels like it’s a crisis of meaning. In reality, it’s a crisis of form.

With your whole being, you know exactly WHAT you need. And while the desperate search goes on, you live in a paradoxical state: the content is already there, but the right vessel for it is not yet.

This "stupid" phase—feels like an era—is well known to creative people. The birth of something new inevitably passes through the pain of trying on form after form. Quick Eurekas are rare.

Sad truth: most of us last touched real creation as kids. Since then, we've drilled hard at picking the "right" answer fast—from the shelf of ready picks, the one the Significant Other approves.

That’s why we freeze and suffer when a true inner pull hits—for something that's really ours. All the skills we’ve mastered turn out to be useless—or even harmful.

Like drunks or babies, we crave to walk but can't take the step.

Key: Tell yourself:

“Ease up. It is fine. This is how it goes. Emptiness is my ally. Splash around in the fog of not-knowing a bit longer. I won’t miss the true form when it arrives.”

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​.

Witnessing Transformation /  by Alexander Lyadov

The best result of business therapy? When the client carries it inside already. He just reaches out, and the ripe fruit drops into his palm.

What's my role? Witness to the Transformation Process. For some reason, in my presence, it flows easier, quicker.

The Process remains a mystery, even though I know quite a lot about it. Each time, not only my client but I myself am deeply surprised.

Some may see this as a lack of control, or unprofessionalism. Fortunately, hundreds of transformations have freed me from that illusion.

Newness unfolding right before our eyes is true Life itself.

For this moment alone, all systems, procedures, and rules exist. Midwife, forester, farmer — they can only create the conditions, but the Process itself unfolds according to a design unknown to any of us.

That’s the kind of co-creation I want to live in, every day.

Yours sincerely,

-Alexander

====

“I've followed Alexander's newsletter for years, but never found a reason to book a one-on-one.

At some point in life, I caught myself sensing a growing inner dissonance—and no vision at all, no clear picture of the future. I could explain it to myself in different ways, yet my intuition kept nudging me: something was missing.

A session with Alexander was a real breakthrough. The process feels more like alchemy. At first, not everything is clear, but in an unexpected way, more and more discoveries emerge, and with each step the picture sharpens. Some insights are genuinely startling, and the number of discoveries in a single session is striking. At a certain point, a critical mass forms: realizations lock into place like puzzle pieces, and a kind of catharsis unfolds.

But that’s not the end. What follows is a pragmatic roadmap—a reliable guide for the path ahead.

Alexander is deeply perceptive, with a genuine interest in the person, a remarkably broad outlook, and a background spanning psychology, sports, business, and existential questions. It’s this depth and sharp mind that allow him to find unique keys for each specific situation.”

— Roman Slipchenko, founder of ​Areal.design

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​.

Micro-Dose Your Future /  by Alexander Lyadov

The New Year is almost here. Want to receive your first gift?

Good. Sit comfortably. Feel the chair hug your back. Gaze far.

Picture a few years later. You’ve gained everything you wanted.

Yes, absolutely everything — at least everything that depends on you.

So now, at last, you have your long-awaited [XXXXXXXXXXXX].

Dig in with your skin — how it feels to HOLD IT NOW.

Game or experiment —spare yourself minutes for this.

Now ask yourself a “wild” question:

“How could I have a drop of this [x], but today?”

Yes, a drop, not an ocean. But it’s made in the ocean’s image and likeness.

You can’t confuse the saltiness of that drop with distilled water, can you?

If even a drop feels like too much, take a nanogram, a picoliter, a yocto-joule.

Find the right measure and use your imagination — you’ll see that [x] is available.

Next, create a ritual for meeting [x] as often as your soul wants.

Wait for the thought to appear:

“Wow. My life is changing for the better — right before my eyes.”

Yours sincerely,

-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 Blade of Transformation /  by Alexander Lyadov

Everything works smoothly until… it doesn’t.

I remember how my partner and I went to Riga in 2010 to explore real estate opportunities. Banks dumped prime assets on foreclosure auctions—trophies grabbed for bad debts.

There was just one problem. Banks had frozen lending. They had burned themselves badly not long before. A year earlier, unemployed twenty-somethings were freely buying multiple apartments on credit.

Yesterday, bank leadership was driven mad by greed. Today, by fear.

Earlier, in the advertising business, I saw the same cycle more than once. For several years, everyone enjoyed a “season of heavy rain.” Competitors argued over who had the bigger ad budget. Everyone swelled.

Then drought came to the jungle.

Advertising was the first thing cut to zero. Salaries followed. Then teams. Then all that creative glamour dried up. Only those survived who managed to change their business model in time.

Everyone entered the ritual of transformation. Not everyone came out.

The problem isn’t the rain-and-drought pattern itself. It’s that after long years of abundance, players forget how to reinvent themselves. And incentive systems reward imitation of the known, not creation of the new.

Wise is the leader who draws the katana of transformation at least once a year.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

When the Dam Opens /  by Alexander Lyadov

Before us is a ​remarkable video​: the moment a dam finally opens. For years it locked everything tight, and now, at last...

Reluctant, and it seems with a curse, Something starts emerging from the hole. A multi-ton surge of filth, more like half-set concrete.

You expected water, right? It’s a dam after all. Surprise!

Time passes, and the mudflow only grows stronger. Now it’s thinner, so the stream shoots farther. As the mix clears, the fountain turns bluer and more transparent.

Look at it now and there’s no doubt what the dam was holding all this time.

Major changes move in the same way, especially the ones stuck for years. Even if what once flowed inside was prana, qi, or heavenly nectar, a long pause twists it into its opposite.

Not the whole substance, only the part desperate to break free. TMud's core? Still H2O molecule. Just packed with the wrong things.

British social anthropologist Mary Douglas nailed it: "Dirt is matter out of place." Not evil, not harmful, not demonic — just off-script.

If you’ve watched others go through transformations, or lived through your own, you’re not surprised. This is exactly how it works.

The alchemists left us a strict order of the Great Work:

  1. Nigredo (blackness) — the loss and breakdown of old forms.

  2. Albedo (whiteness) — cleansing and brightening of essence.

  3. Citrinitas (yellowness) — crystallization of a new design.

  4. Rubedo (redness) — the fusion of opposites and embodiment.

A master of transformation never condemns the dirt. He welcomes it with joy.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

Beware The Crowd /  by Alexander Lyadov

If a fire breaks out in a theater, what is the real danger?

It is not the risk of ruining the set, the seats, or the decor. And even burns and injuries are not the worst part. The real threat is panic. It infects a person with the madness of the crowd.

In a moment of frenzy, the crowd always feels justified, because:

  • “Everyone around me is an idiot.”

  • “I must survive at any cost.”

  • “That jerk blocked our exit.”

  • “Every disaster has a name, a surname, and a job title.”

  • “What could I do? Anyone would act the same way.”

Compared to the crowd, the fire seems like a joke. The collective unconscious is a volcano that buries everything under burning ash. Pity the one who becomes part of the crowd, and pity the one who stands in its way.

Ancient people understood the danger of this psychic “plague.” They meticulously followed traditions, rituals, and customs passed down since the dawn of time for a reason.

Our ancestors did not know how to split the atom, but they knew what mattered: never let the fabric of society tear apart. Otherwise, a tiny spark grows into an avalanche of violence—everyone against everyone.

The way out? Even if you find yourself inside a crowd, stay Human. Your lone stitch might just keep the weave from ripping wide.

Yours sincerely,

-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 to Swim With Crocs? /  by Alexander Lyadov

In my favorite childhood cartoon Adventures of Mowgli (1967), based on Kipling’s stories, there is a lesson. The bear Baloo asks the wolf pups to recall what they must say before jumping into a river full of crocodiles.

The pups hesitate, and only Mowgli shouts the magic words: "We be of one blood, thou and I!" Hearing this, the crocs nod friendly: "Path clear."

It’s hard to imagine two creatures farther apart:

  • Wolf's a young hunter; croc's unchanged in 200 million years;

  • Croc lies in wait; wolf packs and drives the prey;

  • Wolf wears it down; croc bets on on a sudden strike;

  • Croc's a lone "introvert"; wolf's a social animal;

  • Wolf is always in motion, croc still as deadwood;

  • Croc’s blood absorbs external warmth, wolf makes his own heat.

Both have blood made of red cells, white cells, platelets, and plasma, yet the mix differs like diesel and gasoline.

And still, at the core, their blood is the same — water, organic molecules, a carbon matrix. They have more in common with each other than with malachite or iron ore.

He who spots a shared drop in the stranger? He looks like a wizard to the crowd. One word is enough for him to turn a deadly contradiction into fertile novelty.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

Opening The Portal /  by Alexander Lyadov

 

Have you noticed that rescue often arrives at the very last moment?

For example, back in the agency days, we ran endless brainstorms to present the client with a “Big Idea” that was due “yesterday,” as was the style then. One problem — the harder we pushed, the more trapped we felt.

We saw ourselves as a creative agency and truly wanted to help the client, so offering something mediocre felt unthinkable. Yet hours into the brainstorm, there was still no trace of a Wow-idea.

I will never forget the moment of transformation. One minute, a room full of talented people sat at the bottom of irritation, anxiety, and despair — and then suddenly, bam! Light appeared in their eyes and kept growing.

What happened? And how? Nothing pointed to a breakthrough.

But what if the truth is the opposite? What if the pitch-black despair is the best sign we’re on the right path? Only now has everything unnecessary fallen off us — above all, our grandiosity, which is simply pride.

A bitter clarity arrived: neither we nor anyone else could save us. The helplessness of our own egos became undeniable. The boastful mind went quiet, humility entered the heart...

…and a Portal into another dimension swung open. Ideas, each brighter than the last, poured out of a horn of plenty. The saving solution rose from within, yet not from us — from somewhere above. A miracle happened.

The takeaway? You don’t need to corner yourself until the very last second. Just remember: none of us is the world’s bellybutton. Then the sacred can reveal its boundless power through us.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

Who Is Holding You Back? /  by Alexander Lyadov

A recent guided-imagery session gave me a terrifying insight. The therapist offered a theme, I stepped into the image, and let it unfold in any direction. Suddenly, I hit a dead end.

Part of the exercise is to walk into places that are closed to you in ordinary life. I was given the greatest freedom possible, yet I still stumbled. It turned out someone was holding me back even in this perfect environment. Who?

The beauty of the image is that you cannot shift responsibility. In real life, we instantly find a swarm of bad circumstances or hostile people to point at: “There. That’s my obstacle. They are the problem.”

Inside the image, the only one who could restrain me was myself. An unpleasant discovery. You want to protest, argue. But now there is no one to argue with.

Then the insight flips: “Wait… if the only one on earth who blocks me is myself, then a single change could open any door for me?”

Of course, transformation is never instant. Like a wild animal long kept in a circus cage, the spirit needs time. Release it into the forest too suddenly, and the native landscape feels strange, even hostile.

Great changes take time. Stay patient.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

Oven of Dreams /  by Alexander Lyadov

 

What kind of oven bakes such astonishing dreams almost every night?

Bright characters, wild motion, sudden turns in the plot. And the hidden meaning scattered through them like gems at the ocean's floor, waiting for their time.

On one hand, dreams are made by someone—anyone—but not me. Someone hauls the wood, lights the fire, kneads the dough, and watches the crust turn golden. I only manage to catch the pies as they fly out, hot from the heat.

On the other hand, dreams belong only to me, and only my body can extract and digest the “nutritional value” hidden inside. For someone else, they are nonsense. For me, they are a stream of insight.

Dreams have much in common with creativity. The same double nature of “me-not me,” “mine-not mine.” The same independence of the Process from our will.

Yet beyond the gate, someone's expecting us to contribute. Our effort, our thought, our questions, our patience, our attention. And above all, our readiness to catch the falling fruit in our hands.

True co-creation—even if in the Work we're the junior hand.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

Your Unpredictable Impact /  by Alexander Lyadov

Unknown artist

 

Once you start believing you are separate from the world, itch to patch its cracks. You, of course, are fine. The real problem is the world and the people in it.

It’s hard to notice how we ourselves add to the chaos around us. And there is so much foolishness, bad intent, and disorder everywhere you look that it seems impossible to defeat it alone. Or is it?

The Belgian physical chemist and Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine studied systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. His key insight? A tiny fluctuation can push a disordered system to a new level of order in an instant.

Crystallization, chemical oscillations, animal swarms, the shadow economy, and human society — all of them are dynamic structures living between chaos and order. Like a whirlpool or a spinning vortex.

The human mind struggles to imagine any nonlinear process. So what can we say about the impact of one word or one action on the whole society? Especially when that society stands in the eye of the storm?

And what if you — without knowing it — turn out to be that small mustard seed that grows into a great tree and gives shelter to the birds of heaven?

Yours sincerely,

-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 Corporate Cry /  by Alexander Lyadov

The Godfather Part III, 1990

In the third part of The Godfather, Cardinal Lamberto says to Michael Corleone: “When the mind suffers, the body cries out.” Michael is the head of a mighty mafia clan, yet he looks weak and sick.

The cardinal’s wisdom applies to the corporate body too. A healthy body grows on its own. A sick one demands your fix.

A company does not scream with words, but through symptoms:

  • slow making and execution of key decisions,

  • demotivated staff, intrigue, and cynicism,

  • constant conflict between departments,

  • falling revenue, margins, and net profit,

  • avoiding responsibility by everyone,

  • growing administrative overhead,

  • dependence on a single client,

  • wild bets with zero yield,

  • endless firefighting,

  • no new products,

  • a power vacuum and such.

Most leaders treat isolated symptoms. That is wasted effort and money. The cardinal points to a better direction — gaze up.

What is the mind of a company? First of all, it is the founder.

As the business grows, the founder improves the quality of his decisions through others: the executive team, advisors, and the board.

The suffering of the corporate mind is just as easy to recognize:

  • fights and conflicts between co-founders, investors,

  • no one has a long-term vision for the company (or for himself),

  • pipe dreams of "systems business" and ditching the ops grind

  • paralysis between hunger for change and fear of losing it all,

  • lots of meetings and decks about strategy, but no clarity,

  • micromanagement and shareholders’ pet projects,

  • owners blaming the CEO for every possible sin,

  • no idea of where to find leaps in growth,

  • disorientation, lack of focus, loss of meaning, and so on.

Heal the founder's mind—the business heals itself.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

Strategic Dilemma /  by Alexander Lyadov

What matters more — fixing weaknesses or growing strengths? The scale can be anything: a nation, a company, or a person.

You can read a mountain of strategy books and still find no clear answer — only more arguments for both sides. I didn’t grasp it when listening to successful CEOs or sitting in lectures at Chicago Booth. The revelation entered me through… jiu-jitsu.

Suppose you have a chronic knee injury, or you keep getting choked from the back. How does your style change?

You become conservative. You wait. You rely on old moves. The price of a mistake is high. You just want to survive — it’s no time for play. Aggression, spontaneity, and creativity disappear.

Nothing changes until you patch the “hole in the hull.” But the point isn’t chasing 550-pound squats. Nor do you need a reputation as “the Champion-Strangler.”

You just need hygiene — heal the knee and learn to escape the back control with confidence. Hard tasks, but doable ones. They may take six months; “champion level” might take ten years — if you’re lucky.

Fix your weak spots by moving them from "red" to "neutral".

Now you can focus on developing your Tokui Waza (得意技) — a judo term with many echoes:

  • Signature move.

  • Crown jewel.

  • Superpower.

  • Ace in the hole.

  • Knight's gambit.

  • Secret weapon.

  • Competitive advantage.

  • Unique selling proposition.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

As I Am /  by Alexander Lyadov

A strange kind of courage — to speak your naked truth. To the listener—or from afar—it looks bold. But for you it feels almost physical — like a yawn, a laugh, or a gag reflex. Tension before and during it, relief after.

I first met this “urge” at the peak of a DMT journey. When I felt at my worst, an angel appeared from the dark. One woman in the group was leaving in the morning — she skipped the brew and simply stayed with us. In truth — with me.

Turns out, I needed someone to whom I could confess who I really was. In her presence, I spoke aloud the things I always feared to admit to myself. As I spoke, I felt lighter. The moment I stopped, the darkness swallowed me again.

By morning I was almost relieved she left. It seemed that someone else — not me — had turned himself inside out that night. That kind of exposure felt wild for an introvert — the person everyone, including myself, believed me to be.

Later, through psilocybin and MDMA, I studied this phenomenon. Gradually it stopped scaring me. Altered states birthed no stranger—no, the true me.

Now I could open up with a psychotherapist — without any elixir. Then, little by little, I started opening elsewhere too.

Telling the truth about yourself is always frightening. And not everyone can handle it. But when you find the right people, something precious emerges — a flow of sincerity, spontaneity, warmth.

That state is so entrancing that courage arises on its own.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

Natural Change /  by Alexander Lyadov

The paradox of real change is that it goes unseen.

You just do now what always felt out of reach.

"And why did I fear it, shrink from it, stall so long?" you rub your neck.

Your old way of thinking and acting now looks ridiculous, wild, foreign.

But sometimes change "happens"—but never lands in your life.

Once, I decided to bungee jump. At the top, I froze. I waited. The instructors got tired and pushed me: “Three, two, one—go!” Sure, I jumped, but the transition never became mine.

After a miserable night, I returned to fix the mistake. This time I told the instructors: “I will stand there as long as I need. And I will jump only when I choose.”

The second jump was conscious—and truly mine.

I felt like I stepped through a portal and came out the other side as Someone Else. A third jump would have been unnecessary. I already knew something vital about myself-in-the-jump.

I saw the same dynamic in small groups and large companies. People worked hard, money was spent, boxes checked. But when change was forced against the will, it dissolved into nothing.

A leader’s job is to create conditions where the collective hunger for growth steps into the unknown by choice. He doesn’t believe everyone wants that? The company is doomed to stagnate.

The one who is patient and trusts the human spirit will be rewarded a hundredfold.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.

Live, Don't Explain /  by Alexander Lyadov

Moto Gymkhana Competition, October 5, 2014

Long ago I got into motorcycles. Later, I wrote down the insights in an article: “Why I Bought and Sold a Motorcycle: A Story of Studying One Fear.”

Recently, a vivid moment came back to me. I had been training on the track for two years, but still couldn’t decide if riding was truly mine or not. One experience changed everything:

“I clearly recall one training session when I was practicing the figure eight — a maneuver required to pass the licensing exam. The point was to follow the line of two linked circles, each six meters wide. You had to stay alert, focused, and in control of your attention and the bike — playing with throttle, clutch, and brake, constantly shifting angles, with the risk of slipping and falling at any moment. It feels like walking a tightrope or balancing on a razor’s edge. From the outside, the drill looks monotonous and tiring. Yet right there I suddenly felt a rising wave of tangible, undeniable pleasure — from the very act of riding. I understood the true source of my hidden pull toward motorcycles — for years my body had been anticipating this exact kind of joy, one that is hard to experience any other way. Everything suddenly made sense. It was time to buy my own bike.”

Do you see? An outside observer would have noticed nothing. He would never believe that inside a dull routine an insight was born that changed everything for me. Two years of doubt, and then crystal clarity.

But that is the point — personal experience must be lived, not explained.

No matter how someone compares your life, its felt sense is unique. Another person may understand you, accept you, or even love you. Or he may try with all his might to copy your every move.

But even a second of your being is inaccessible to him — just as his is to you.

That is the freedom of living your own true life. You may abandon it yourself, but, thank God, no one can take it from you by force.

Yours sincerely,

-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​.