Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
The image of human excellence I would like to offer as a counterweight to freedom thus understood is that of a powerful, independent mind working at full song. Such independence is won through disciplined attention, in the kind of action that joins us to the world. And—this is important—it is precisely those constraining circumstances that
My previous post outlined the reasons why most of the modern personal development (PD) advice is generally terrible, which begs the question, how and where can we find good advice? By avoiding sources of advice that have the same weaknesses as the PD genre, we stumble on ancient wisdom. To give some background if you
I consider myself to be a fairly rational and analytical person. This mode of thinking is useful for making many decisions, but not all of them. This is the problem Russ Roberts tackles in his book, Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us. As an economist, Roberts’ default mode it to tackle
The Ancient Wisdom Papers (name inspired by the Federalist Papers shortly after seeing the hit Broadway musical Hamilton) is a series of posts I’m writing to make the case that ancient wisdom should be a primary source of advice and counsel as you navigate the tricky, the ambiguous, the painful, and even the happy
I started The Ancient Wisdom Project because I was getting frustrated with most of the advice the popular personal development/lifestyle design bloggers were espousing. I decided that ancient wisdom traditions would have time-tested practices and philosophies that would be better that anything some 30-year old would have to say about making your life better and more
Employee engagement is the latest fad in organizational culture/HR world. Engagement is loosely defined, in this NYT article, “Why you hate work” as “involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm, focused effort and energy.” Researchers have confirmed an obvious point: engaged employees improve companies’ bottom lines. For this reason, companies want get all their employees engaged. However, engaged
I am turning 35 years old soon and I feel like I haven’t achieved much, both personally and professionally. I have held jobs in small and big companies for mostly for 1-2 years each, traveled and lived in different countries, had 2 failed startups, and have about $500k in savings. I am single and haven’t
[Note: My Epicurean experiment took place over the winter holiday season. I am just getting to posting it now.] I’m on vacation over the holiday season for a full two weeks. I told a few friends and co-workers this and they were impressed that I was able to take that much time off. I don’t
I live in the DC area and one topic that inevitably comes up is career. Depending on the crowd, you’ll hear about the people still figuring what they want to do for real (while they work as government consultants), people who are trying to figure out the next step in their career, and others who
Over the past six weeks or so, I’ve adopted Hindu practices to understand more about myself. I took a few minutes every morning to pay my respects to the Hindu god, Ganesh, I suffered through 90 minute hot yoga sessions, and I read important Hindu scriptures, including the Bhagavad Gita and selections from the Upanishads.