Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World
In one of my English classes in high school, we read a story that took place in India and drew heavily on Indian culture and customs. I don’t remember what the story was about, but I do remember that the class had a spirited discussion about arranged marriage. When I say spirited discussion, I mean
This month was an interesting one for me, primarily due to a major change in my work situation. I left my company as an employee, and I’m now working on a project for them as an independent consultant. The project is the same one I was working on as an employee, so it was an
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
Unlike some of my other months, I don’t feel like I did much of anything for Buddhism month. For Stoicism month, I took daily ice baths. For Catholic month, I went to Mass almost every day. For Judaism month, I attended prayer services nearly every morning. And for Islam month, I prayed five times per
The first month of The Ancient Wisdom project will be dedicated to practicing the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that is rooted in practice rather than dogma. It is not so much a belief system as it is a life practice system. The fundamental lesson of Stoicism is that there
In January, I left the full time, somewhat lucrative project I had been working on for a few years to focus on building out my business. With dreams of glory and dollars in my eyes, I confidently projected that I would wake up at 5 AM every day, do a bunch of business activities, work
Yesterday, I went to a Bikram Yoga class, which is a 90-minute yoga session conducted in a 104 degree room. I didn’t intend to go to Bikram yoga during my Hinduism month. I would have preferred to go to a regular yoga class, however, this particularly yoga studio had the best Groupon. Being the cost
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
Yesterday I wrapped up my month of Islam. It went by a lot quicker than I thought it would, which surprised me because this was the month I was most nervous about. Judaism and Catholicism were religions that are fairly integrated into American culture, which makes it relatively accessible. Islam is still in the process