A Brief Assessment to Clarify Your Next Area of Focus
To identify where clarity is most needed next
David Tian, Ph.D., is Private Advisor to Founders, High Achievers, and Senior Leaders, Brown University Certified Leadership & Performance Coach, Certified IFS Therapy Practitioner (L3), ICF Certified Coach, devoted husband, proud father, and former university professor — helping build lives of connection, meaning, and fulfillment through Asian philosophy, psychological insight, and relational depth.
LATEST FROM OUR BLOG
What to Look For in a Partner: Why the Checklist Doesn’t Work
When successful people sit down to write what they want in a partner, they usually produce something closer to a job description than a portrait of someone to live with. The list reads like a spec because that is what it is, and the spec is doing a job for the writer rather than describing an actual person. The job is settling an old question about whether you are enough. No partner can settle that question. This essay is about what to do instead.
Why Drive Stops Working at a Higher Level
The drive you used to have was running on a fuel source that gets depleted by the wins it produces. By forty, the tank is empty, and pushing harder is the thing accelerating the loss. This is not burnout, not midlife, not lost hunger. Instead, it is a design flaw in the engine that got you here.
The Move That Got You Here Is the Wrong Move for What’s Next
The playbook that got you to this altitude has stopped producing. The standard remedy — point it at a bigger target — costs more than it produces now. This is not an argument for a quieter life or a different mountain. It is an argument that the next decade can dwarf the last one, and that the constraint is somewhere you have not been looking.