Alex Exarchos

Alex Exarchos
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It’s Funny, But It’s True — It’s True, But It’s Not Funny: You Are What You Are Looking For

Why the oldest joke is also the one that costs the most — and how “you are what you are looking for” stops being a slogan There is a sentence you have probably met before, on a card or a wall or the back of a tea box: you are what you are looking for. […]

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Your Chronic Problem Has Survived Every Direct Attack — It Will Dissolve Only in a Counterintuitive Synthesis

Why a chronic problem never falls to direct attack — and what kind of synthesis it finally dissolves in Most problems in a life respond to competence. You analyse them, you work at them, they move. This post is about the other kind — the one problem that has not moved. The chronic one. The

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Seven Micro-Actions That Keep Me Focused, Calm and Alert — And Why They Are Not What You’d Expect

Seven micro-actions I return to through the day — and why staying focused, calm and alert turns out to be something that happens, not something I do I want to be honest about the title before we go further, because it promises something I am going to partly take back. These seven small things do

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There Is No Way to Free Yourself — There Is Only the Way You Make and Walk Yourself

What it means that no method can free you — and why you can only make your own way by walking it I want to start with the thing I spent thirty years looking for, because I no longer believe it exists. The method. The right practice, the right teacher, the right sequence of steps

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There Is No Way to Break Your Covenant With the One and Only Truth — And You Have Tried Everything

What a Covenant with the One and Only Truth actually is — and why it can be neither signed nor broken I want to begin with the fear, because I know it from the inside. The fear that I have, somewhere along the way, broken faith with the thing I was looking for. That I

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The ‘True Self’ I Was Looking For — Until I Realised Who Was Doing the Looking

What I was looking for when I was looking for my true self For most of my adult life I was looking for my true self. I did not always call it that. Sometimes I called it my real life. Sometimes my actual calling. Sometimes the thing I was actually going for. The names changed.

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The Quiet Recognition Inside the ‘Midlife Crisis’

What ‘midlife crisis’ names — and what success without meaning is actually pointing to The phrase “midlife crisis” — to those who have heard it applied to themselves, or have started to suspect it applies — names something real. But what it names is rarely what is actually happening. The label arrives with all its

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Prodromos, the Forerunner: Read Me, Hear Me, Follow Me — But You Cannot Catch Me

What “Forerunner” names — and what kind of spiritual teacher this is For a long time I did not have a word for what I do. Teacher was wrong — it had more than what I could honestly hold. Coach was wrong — it pointed at a domain I am not in. Mentor was closer

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