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 Global Leaders, Brown University Certified Leadership & Performance Coach, Certified IFS Therapy Practitioner (L3), ICF Certified Coach, devoted husband, proud father, and former university professor — helping leaders and high achievers think more clearly about love, leadership, and life decisions by integrating emotional insight, philosophical reflection, and deep relational practice.
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When Success Stops Delivering What It Promised
When success fails emotionally, the usual response is to chase it harder. That reaction feels disciplined, even responsible. It is also often a way of avoiding a harder truth about what success can and cannot do. This essay examines why frustration and lack of gratitude show up precisely when things are going well, and why treating that experience as a moral flaw misses the real issue. The case here is that objective truth matters less as an abstract value and more as a practical necessity once success stops delivering what it promised.
Why Certainty Is Undermining Your Judgment | (#073) Beyond Success: Psychology & Philosophy for Achievers, with David Tian, Ph.D.
Most smart people reach for values when they’re under a lot of pressure or stress.
It feels responsible. Grounded. Mature.
But under pressure, values often do the opposite of what they’re meant to do. Instead of anchoring thinking, they shut it down. Instead of sharpening judgment, they end the inquiry. Certainty replaces contact with reality, and the relief that follows feels like clarity, even when it isn’t.
This pattern didn’t come from nowhere. You learned early that sounding sure keeps you safe. Speed earns trust. Confidence gets rewarded. That lesson helped you win, but it also trained your mind to prefer certainty over accuracy.
The cost shows up later.
Judgment narrows too early. Tradeoffs disappear. And when the first warning signs appear, most high achievers respond by pushing harder and acting faster, which deepens the problem instead of correcting it.
The Hidden Cost of “Everyone Has Their Own Truth”
The phrase “everyone has their own truth” is often offered as a gesture of tolerance. It sounds like a way of respecting difference while avoiding dogmatism. For people who have seen rigid certainty do harm, that impulse can feel earned.
But what happens to judgment when truth no longer refers to how things actually are, and instead comes to mean what fits our preferences or identities. What happens to responsibility, correction, and moral reasoning when reality itself loses its authority to push back.
This essay explores why relativism feels humane at first, why it breaks down under pressure, and why a shared commitment to truth is not a threat to freedom, but a condition for meaningful choice.