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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.
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Why More Money Won’t Fix This: The Steward Posture vs. The Dictator Posture | (#090) Beyond Success: Psychology & Philosophy for Achievers, with David Tian, Ph.D.
You hit the number you set for yourself years ago. You waited to feel different. You didn’t.
Most successful people read that and assume they’re the exception. That they’re disciplined. They’re smart. They have it handled.
But they have it exactly backwards, and the thing they’re proudest of is the thing costing them the most.
Why Successful People Cannot Be Alone With Themselves: What the Daoists, Aristotle, and Seneca Understood
The founder is forty-three, single, and has not been alone with himself for fifteen years. The exit closed seven months ago. The number was good. But the feeling on the other side has been a low background hum of dread he cannot trace to anything specific, because nothing specific is wrong. What he cannot do, and has not been able to do since he was young, is sit in a room with no outward goals and be ok with himself. The Daoist tradition, Aristotle, and Seneca all reached the same conclusion from different starting points more than two thousand years ago. The capacity he never built is precisely the activity in which a life worth living gets built.
Is Marriage Worth It? Why the Wedding Is the Wrong Question.
You have been with your partner for years. The two of you are starting to think about a wedding, or your families are, or you are wondering whether you need one at all. The pressure of the day already feels out of proportion to anything else in your life together. A hundred thousand dollars, a guest list, a venue, a date. Before you decide whether marriage is worth it, you should know that almost everyone considering it is confusing two completely different things. Until you see the difference, the question of whether to marry will keep feeling impossible. Once you do see it, the pressure of that day dissipates, and the answer becomes clear.