Reclaiming Virtue, Wisdom, and Meaning in Life

Why Balancing Reason and Wisdom in the Modern Age Matters

“It is difficult to persuade mankind that the love of virtue is the love of themselves.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero

I believe that humanity stands at a critical crossroads. Our obsession with science, technology, and now artificial intelligence is systematically undermining the very essence of what it means to be human. This transformation begins with how we educate our youth—with a definite bias toward scientific rationality. While the Western educational model separated from religious institutions to honor cultural freedom and diversity, it left a void that hasn’t yet been filled, deeply affecting our human experience. Let’s explore how reclaiming virtue, wisdom, and meaning in life can start with understanding why virtue forms the vital foundation of our human development. Continue exploring

The Truth About the Rat Race

What is the rat race?

The rat race is a metaphor in finance that illustrates the pointless pursuit to achieve some degree of financial independence, like rats in a maze that never quite make it to the cheese. Popularized by Robert Kiyosaki with his board game Cashflow and his many books, the concept became a concrete way to showcase how we can be financially trapped as the obligations in life keep exceeding what we earn, despite our persistent hard work. Continue exploring

What Is Excellence?

What is excellence? What does it mean to you? Excellence is not about being perfect. It is a value: a state of ownership in your work and a mark of your craft. Unfortunately, in today’s busy world, excellence is sacrificed for speedy work and quick profits. Quantity over quality. I’d argue that excellence is no longer a priority. But why not? Do we perceive it as something too idealistic? Are we afraid to fail or to fall short? Perhaps it’s simply because we don’t really know what excellence is and how we can achieve it. Consider the following poem by Marge Piercy: Continue exploring

Finding Strength in Your Weaknesses

Rethinking Weakness in Work and Life

We’ve all experienced the most popular interview question ever: “What is your weakness?” Nearly everyone prepares an answer to the question. And there’s certainly no shortage of advice on how to respond. I’ve heard answers like: “I’m a perfectionist, and it gets in the way.” Honestly, I think that question might actually be more useful for finding out how genuine someone is than anything else. However, finding strength in your weaknesses is not only overlooked but is often dismissed as unimportant. So why do our perceived weaknesses and strengths matter? Let’s find out. Continue exploring

The Best Advice I Ever Got at School

Why Assumptions Can Cost You Everything

Going to University offers a lot of benefits. These benefits are of course widely accepted in our society. Education is at the heart of how our society functions. It includes who you get to meet, which friends you make, what skills you end up learning, and of course, the diploma. However, the best advice I got at school involved none of these. Continue exploring

The Best Advice I Ever Got at Work

How To Overcome Excuses

The work culture was great. It was empowering. We had the power to do what needed to be done if we could justify it. We had commitments at the beginning of each week and accountability at the end. Of course, we couldn’t always deliver on our commitments. Whether these commitment goals were reasonable was another story. Sometimes I wanted more, sometimes I was pushed for more. But that’s not what the advice was exactly about. Continue exploring

How to Compound Your Effort

How small efforts become lasting structures

Building blocks don’t constitute much on their own, but put together, they can create great structures. Building blocks are often used to explain the most basic unit something is built from. For example, the building blocks of DNA are the nitrogenous bases. The building blocks of a protein? Amino acids. The building blocks of physics? Atoms. Of course, scoping matters. Consider that the building blocks of sentences are words, but the building blocks of words are letters. You’ve probably heard about these analogies at school, but what’s more important is how they can be applied to improve your life. Have you ever thought about your hard work in terms of building blocks? Even more importantly: could you be building anything of substance with them?

Let’s examine how to compound your effort.
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Redefining Struggle with Meaning

Struggling has a bad reputation. It makes us feel uncomfortable, and we just want to avoid it. But it doesn’t have to be this way. When we struggle, what we focus on makes a difference: are we focusing on the painful feelings? Or are we focusing on conscious growth? Often times, it’s the moments when we struggle that push us to stand up, to be our best, and to solve difficult problems. We have all heard the saying: “to step outside your comfort zone.” This reasoning implies that we move away from a place of comfort to a place of struggle. I find this phrase a bit misleading, and I’ll tell you why. However, moving into the learning zone seems to me a sound proposition. Let’s see how redefining struggle with meaning can make a significant difference. Continue exploring

How Playing More Can Make You More Successful

Start, Stick, and Stay at Anything!

I was destroyed in a chess game. It was Halloween 1998 when I saw some friends playing chess over a bench by the courtyard. They asked me if I wanted to play and I said yes! I thought that I was going to beat them through my “natural” intelligence. I lost. Then I lost again. The following summer, I was determined to learn how to play. I don’t know why, but I was motivated to keep playing, and losing, for about 200 more games. That translated to about 60 hours of practice before I could finally win a game! I’ve probably played over one hundred thousand games since. Today I wonder: what happened that made me start, stick, and stay at it? Let’s look at how playing more can make you more successful. Continue exploring

How to Be More Productive: What To Do When You’re Stuck

“Art is when we do work that matters in a creative way, in a way that touches (people) and changes them for the better.” -Seth Godin

When you’re stuck, productivity isn’t about doing more—it’s about focusing on what moves you. A simple way to reconnect with that inner motivation is to revisit your biggest accomplishments. Why did they matter? Most likely, they mattered because they combined two secret ingredients: you enjoyed doing them, and they contributed to something bigger than yourself. Sometimes, it really is that simple. Continue exploring

Find Your Why (Over Coffee): A Morning Ritual with Meaning

Conducting Your Morning: Why Rituals Matter

Imagine yourself as a musical conductor. Picture yourself conducting a symphony of coffee notes as you pour the ground coffee into the French press—awaiting the steaming water. Soon the kettle starts to whistle. Down the water goes, orchestrating fine earthy notes that dance around your living room at the beat of the baton. And only then does the coffee meet with the hazelnut cream—cocoa-tempo finishes as you sip the warmth of this art. Life is like coffee. It’s warm, rich, and filled with hidden meaning if you take the time to sip. Let’s explore how to find your why over coffee, turning a morning routine into a ritual of meaning. Continue exploring